happy dinner

I was going to try a new ramen place with a friend yesterday, but she had to cancel. I was a tiny bit sad until it started raining cats and dogs outside (thunder and lightning, finally!) and I made myself (more like I assembled) this delicious dinner.


Look how freakin colorful it is! Many colors usually means healthy but... I'm not so sure in this case.

Here's the most important thing you can know about Japan before coming: they refuse to crisp bacon. You can tell the restaurant, "I want it crispy, cook it until it BURNS!" but you will get mildly chewy strips at best. SO, I caved and bought some fat-ass strips of bacon at the deli and crisped the crap out of them. Grabbed a heaping of fresh lettuce, a lesser amount of onions, a few giant slices of tomato... loaded it all into two toasty slices of homemade whole wheat (booyah!)... and voila! Perfect BLT.

The only thing that could have made this better is homemade sourdough whole wheat, but let's just say I gave up my sourdough efforts for the time being. Sigh. Too many variables for such a weird cooking environment.

Strawberries were on sale - a basket for 200yen. This might sound ridiculous but it's not bad for Japan. I am also excited about some slightly green on-sale mangoes I got that are waiting on the sidelines.

On the way home, I made my first visit to an Italian-style pastry shop that I never see anyone go into... and yet I know it's making business somehow. I picked out a lemon curd tart, saving the panna cotta and tiramisu staples for next time. I ordered it by the Italian name on the label, surprising the Japanese pastry chef who had to check which item I was pointing to.

I really, really love treating myself to nice desserts. A crap dinner is all but forgotten with a sublime dessert. There is a nice French patisserie on the way home as well, so maybe I'll have to alternate week by week.