A vegetarian foodie in Japan...

I'm a bit behind on this one too.  Sorry about that.

So what's this biggest news to hit the foodie section?  I got an oven!  In America this wouldn't be big news.  Every apartment comes with an oven and some houses do too.  In Japan, most apartments comes with nothing.  I was lucky I got an air conditioner.  I've been nearly 4 months without an oven and I thought I would survive.  It sucks!  So when I happened across an adorable Tiger oven which was on super sale (¥2000 off plus an additional ¥600 off) I had no reason not to buy it.

My kitchen is decorated in hues of red (towels, recycle basket) so naturally this was the perfect choice.  It's basically a toaster oven with temperature settings on the right and a timer on the left.  For making my famous banana bread, I'll have to set it twice since it only goes up to 30 minutes.

Now on to the cooking, I made some great foods.

This tofu is a little crispy because I made it in the fish broiler before I had the oven.  Now that I have the oven, I'm going to make it again and I'm certain it will be better.  Note: it's only good the first day.  Leftovers of this are positively offensive.

Next, is the best salad in existence.

Double, triple, quadruple the recipe.  For real.

Some pretty peanut noodles:

It tastes great but the sauce is dry.  Needs to be smoother.  Will work on that.

Really delicious pasta:

No other comments except I wish I had goat cheese.

Excellent minestrone:

The only problem is quinoa soaks up all the liquid so it's no longer soup a day after it's made.

The salad is only the best salad ever because of the dressing.

I might not have come to Japan if I couldn't get balsamic here.  A funny story about balsamic vinegar.  When talking about moving in together and saving money, my former friend and roommate said "You don't need to always have things like balsamic vinegar in your pantry."  I replied "Yes, I do."  Two things about this story, balsamic vinegar has ALWAYS been in my pantry and she's not my friend anymore.  (Before you get all crazy, the friendship didn't dissolve over balsamic vinegar but it's a funny coincidence nonetheless.)

Finally last night, I gave the oven it's first test run making a cake for my best friend and coworker's big 25.  The recipe said to bake for 30 - 40 minutes.  At 30 minutes the batter was still soup and after hyperventilating, I set it for another 15.  It came out perfectly baked.

It was, of course, very well received and some commented that they forgot what really delicious (proper) cake tasted like.  My baking days are back.  :)

I hope your week is coming to a close nicely.  The wind is whistling something fierce here but I am bundled up in jammies while drinking hot tea and buried under covers watching my favorite shows.