Sunday 2 September 2018

Turning Japanese...

It was lovely to have today off but we had a busy time ahead of us! We did have a lazyish start, though, and then Sophie and I prepared the dinner by soaking the Shitake mushrooms in hot water and sorting out all the ingredients we needed.

I grated and chopped up ginger while Sophie measured out all the soy sauce, mirin, honey and rice vinegar for the sauce. I also cut up two shallots and some garlic and when the mushrooms had re-hydrated, I chopped them up and we added them to the turkey thigh mince, along with some breadcrumbs. This was then put into the fridge to chill and we made a start on breakfast while Keith went to get the Sunday papers.

Breakfast was lovely, if a little filling, and at lunchtime we drove the route that Sophie might have to take when she starts work tomorrow. It will undoubtedly be busy when she leaves for work and I'd suggested an alternative route that she did not enjoy driving! Back to Plan A, then! At least tomorrow she doesn't start until 10am so a gentler introduction to the joys of rush hour traffic!

We went to Starbucks on Riverside and then visited Homesense where I met my boss, Sara! We had a chat and Sophie and I kept bumping into them in the store. Sophie bought a diary and a notebook while I couldn't resist some wine glasses called Jane! As we are down to two glasses at the moment, we needed them badly!

On the way home we called into the new university campus at Waterside but we couldn't go any further than the entrance gate, which was a shame. We both wanted to have a look around but what we could see looked fabulous and so modern.

We returned home and mooched about, feeling a little disappointed that we hadn't sold more today on ebay. We're giving it a rest for a couple of weeks which will be welcome!

Dinner tonight took us an hour to prepare and we had a bit of a calamity with the bamboo skewers - the meatballs kept falling off! In the end we just moulded them into balls and put them on two baking trays in the oven. We also cooked rice and stir fried some vegetables to go with the meal. We heated up the sauce and the idea was to pour it over the meatballs in a pan until it thickened into a syrup. It was lovely but it wasn't as thick as I would have liked!

However, the meal was lovely and the meatballs were delicious. We'll definitely cook the recipe again but not bother with the skewers!


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