Rice Soup, Rice Stew, Rice Salad…

I’m not always entirely well disposed to the Japanese tendency to utilize rice for just about every culinary situation you could think of, as well as a good number you can’t. I get the reasons for it, but it does sometimes remind me a little too much of Bubba Blue’s attitude towards shrimp.

The Matcha Variations

Yes

I like green tea: the thick, opaque stuff you drink in the ceremonies. But then I’ve been drinking my coffee black since I was a teenager and the more cocoa solids in my chocolate the better. I’ve got a taste for bitter things and matcha just floats my boat. What I don’t like, however, is green tea flavoured things.

Happy New Year

Yeah, I got nothing else.

So This Is Christmas

 Fried Chicken!

Illuminations!

Santa on a Cross!

Tacky Commercialization!

Irreligion!

Heathens!

Barely Concealed Racism!

I think that’s everything. Please let me know if I’ve missed any of the traditional expat tropes. It is frightfully difficult to keep track.

  

Like White on Rice

Let’s pretend that you care about your diet. Let’s also pretend that when I talk about ‘your diet’ you understand that I don’t mean that you’re on a diet – whatever Atkins, Seaweed, Columbian Duck Egg Every Thursday After A Full Moon With A Cup Of Horse Piss And A Stick In Your Ear fad is doing the rounds at the moment – but that I’m just using the word to mean whatever it is that you habitually choose to shovel into your mouth to provide energy. Well done, Pretend You, you’re now doing better than at least three-quarters of people who live in the First World.

Jerk Chicken

To be honest, this was pretty much the only reason I ever went to Notting Hill Carnival. I don’t do well in crowds, and massive police presences always make me nervous. Still though, jerk chicken. Yum yum yum. Well worth a bit of time on overcrowded public transport.

Voodoo Chili*

Chili-less chili. I know that usually makes about as much sense as a eunuch working as a gigolo, but there’s method in my madness. Not much, but some. The eldest kid can’t handle the really spicy stuff yet, despite my best efforts to toughen him up, and I’m just too damn lazy to decant a portion of onions and mince into a separate pan prior to adding the real heat. The ‘mild’ version I’ve come up with is OK, but it’s not quite there yet, so this is a request for suggestions from the more culinary minded among you.

  

Take Two

Ah now, that's more like it.

Punctuation Matters

P.S. Fuck your "thirty minutes or it's free" guarantee.

Soak ALL the fruit

Here we go again.

The Totally Tropical Taste

This could have been a disaster. I left it in too long and burned the top.

Shake The Bottle

It's orange, you see, and slightly dribbley. Which is all the excuse I need to post this -

A couple of Gs, an R and an E, an I and an N

One of Those Days

Not only did I manage to bake a banana loaf with a whacking great hole in the middle, I couldn't even focus the camera well enough to get a decent shot of it.

Thirty-six Views of Mount Kurumi

Oh. Self-raising flour. The recipe said self-raising flour.

Cat Shit Coffee

Once again proving that somehow, improbably, extraordinarily, I fluked out massively when I found my wife, she bought me shit for christmas.

It’s worth pointing out at this point that my wife doesn’t drink coffee at all, yet she managed to do the research and nail the perfect gift (fit for a prince, almost). The last year has been pretty testing at times, what with the birth of our first child, a month long intercontinental trip with said child, and buying and moving into a new house almost immediately after. We’ve had more arguments in the last 12 months than in the other 8 years of our relationship combined. Yet she consistently comes up with stuff like this. I hope I deserve her, though I’m not sure I always do.

But enough real emotion and slush. I know there are a couple of caféophiles in what passes for my readership, so on with the details you really want. On with the poo tasting.

Aftermath

My love will laugh with me before the morning comes.

Say 'hello' to my little friend

This is likely the closest I'll ever get to feeling like Tony Montana.

I couldn't give a

fig.

Memes

Not funny pictures of cats, but the original coinage’s meaning. Ideas which propagate themselves across time, almost independently of their media of propagation (language, art, thought). It’s one of those comforting ‘we’re not so different after all’ realizations that certain stories, certain characters are universal to all societies, regardless of time, space, culture or race.

There are all the obvious, big, important myths, such as Creation (Kamiyonanayo, Gaia) and Destruction (Revelation, Ragnarok). Character archetypes are also universal, from the Trickster (Anansi, Coyote) to the Sage (Merlin, Mr Miyagi).

Wax on, Wax off