For the first time, I packed mashed potato in lieu of rice for our daughter’s bento today. All the dishes in the bento are the leftover from the previous evening’s dinner, except for the boiled egg.
As Japanese, it required a bit of contemplation to do so – we simply don’t eat potato as much and are not accustomed to it. For me, potatoes are vegetables, and not staple food. But my half Dutch daughter didn’t seem to care at all, and the bento box came back empty without any complaints.
“Soboro” chicken crumble (here is the recipe) mixed in rice with Wakana sprinkle & sesame, Cucumber & carrot salad, Tofu omelet, Stir-fried potato & spinach
Kyoho grapes for dessert
Last night for dinner, I cooked beef steak with pan-fried potatoes, carrot & chicken filet soup, stir-fried komatsuna & corns, and boiled broccoli.
The leftover ingredients have been transformed into the bento for my daughter today.
Menu:
Although I was quite happy with the makeover, my daughter claimed yet again that the chicken (well she thought it was fish) was too dry.
Lately, I’ve been getting a lot more translation assignments. It’s a client driven business, so it’s highly due date sensitive. Because of that, I couldn’t post any of the bento pics last week, working my head off to meet the deadline.
I work freelance from home, primarily because I want to be flexible enough to have ample time with my daughter. She’s the only child, and I don’t want to miss a thing and don’t want to regret at a later stage of my life that I should’ve spent more time with her when it’s too late.
Having said that, I also think having a career is very important for one’s life. It is a great part of who you are, and gives you confidence as well as an independent mindset. Doing freelance was the choice I made, so that I can manage to have both.
The downside is I don’t get paid so well. The rate of freelance translation projects is not something you can brag about. But I take pride in doing this job. I hope one day my little girl will look back at this period of her life and remember her happy time she spent with her mummy, who always gazes at her computer, typing and mumbling something weird.
Tuesday 7/Nov – Bi-color bento with grilled salmon flake & scrambled egg
Wednesday 8/Nov – Onigiri for 2 (the school closed before lunch and it was raining outside, so we had a indoor picnic on the living room floor at our apartment)
Thursday 9/Nov – “Omuraisu” Omelet rice bento
Friday 10/Nov – Grilled Spanish mackerel bento
Menu: Stirfried potato & spinach (with some bacon), Grilled salmon mixed in rice, Boiled edamame, Corn Omelet
Kyoho grapes & pear for dessert
As I was preparing the bento in the morning, my daughter peeked up at my kitchen counter and told me she really liked the potato stirfries I was making. Lately she started giving me her feedbacks on bento, which is totally new. She used to be completely passive, but now she is developing her own preference. My job now is, I believe, that I guide her in a way so that she always likes to have a well balanced meal. What a challenge!
Menu: Stirfried potato slices with spinach & bacon, Soboro chicken crumble on rice, Boiled egg, Cherry tomato, Cucumber sticks
Strawberries for dessert
Menu: Niku-jaga (stewed potato & meat), Broccoli omelet, Boiled green beans, Cherry tomato, Rice with furikake sprinkle
Strawberries & banana for dessert
Niku-jaga is stewed potato and meat, usually cooked with carrot and onion. I once wrote about potato being considered as vegetable in Japan 🇯🇵 (hence it comes with rice in a bento box). Most of my Western friends disagree – click here to find out more!
Did you know in Japan potato is considered as vegetable? We eat potato just like any other veggies and serve with other carbs, such as rice, noodles or bread. We have dishes like niku-jaga (potato & meat stew), yakisoba (stir fried noodles with veggies & meat/seafood that can come with potato as one of its ingredients), and potato salad sandwich among many others.
Niku-jaga
Potato salad sandwich (from http://sandwich1118.com/ポテトサラダ/)
Growing up in Japan, I never considered potato as staple food, since it always comes with another, more ‘prominent’ staple like rice or noodles. We also eat other root vegetables in the same manner as potato, from lotus root, burdock root, carrot and to Japanese daikon radish. The way we Japanese look at potato may be comparable to how Western people treat carrot. They are both root vegetables, and Western people don’t eat carrot as staple food just like we don’t eat potato that way. Always as side dish, salad, or ingredients in soup or stew; the same for us with potato.
In fact, if potato is served in lieu of rice or noodles it could become almost a torture for me after a few days, which always happens in Holland when we go visit my husband’s family. I don’t dare say this to my mother-in-law (better not to offend your in-laws, right…?), but my poor husband always gets nagged by me, because I start craving for rice and noodles really badly, and that becomes the sole thought in my head. Why? Because in my mind potato is vegetable, and I need to eat ‘proper’ staple food to satisfy my appetite.
Growing up in Holland on the other hand, my husband loves potato as his staple food. One evening, maybe one year into our happy marriage, I served niku-jaga for dinner, along with rice and miso soup. I still remember his puzzled facial expression, looking down at his bowl of shiny freshly cooked rice, not knowing what to do with it. He was enjoying the best dish ever from his loving wife, potato & meat stew a.k.a. niku-jaga, that reminds him of his content childhood (despite a bit different flavour I suppose). After a while he finally asked hesitantly, “why do you have rice on the table…? We are eating potato tonight, so don’t need any rice, do we…?” At the beginning I didn’t understand him, but then he told me that niku-jaga for him was like niku-don (pork on rice) for me, eating meat and staple at the same time and no need for another staple to be added to it. His explanation made such good sense, so he kept on enjoying his niku-jaga by itself while I ate my rice with a bit of niku-jaga as a side dish.
And that was when the cultural difference in our eating habit first emerged on a surface, and it has been continuing to this day.
Our compromising tofu hamburg steak dinner the other day
Menu: grilled salmon & potato, asparagus & bacon roll, spinach omelet, shirasu rice
Apple mousse & roasted sweet potato mash with cinnamon for dessert
SMALL TOKYO KITCHEN 