Comments | vegancooking: Suggestions for meals in Japan?

elinafromtheash in vegancooking

Suggestions for meals in Japan?

Feb 03, 2010 22:56

I live in Vancouver but am in Japan for a month, accompanying my fiance who is here for work. I'm pulling the housewife thing and as such the cooking is kind of my job right now. Which is fine when we're home in Canada but... y'know, travel.

( long-winded details )

-location-asia

Comments 20

orphe_ February 4 2010, 15:25:53 UTC

you should make no-knead bread!

elinafromtheash February 5 2010, 02:02:33 UTC

Excellent.

kakurenbo_noizu February 4 2010, 15:50:06 UTC

I'm a Canadian currently in Japan too! I've been living on mainly local food though ( ... )

kakurenbo_noizu February 4 2010, 16:00:22 UTC

Oh yes, kanji!

AVOID (these are not any specific words necessarily): 牛乳卵魚海老肉　豚鳥
and there are a lot of kanji for the different types of seafood... ask if something has any fishy stuff in it.

Vegan onigiri flavours are usually in kana except for 赤飯 (sekihan). It's recognizable by its pink colour and red beans.

elinafromtheash February 5 2010, 01:52:48 UTC

The asking is definitely a problem - alllll I know is sumi masen and hai. And Daniel forgot his phrase books at home. Thanks so much for the help though, that will be super useful.

laceyslostlove February 4 2010, 15:53:33 UTC

you should make large batches of stock and reduce it to bullion; then freeze the cubes in an ice tray. also; save all ends of veggies in the freezer to use for stock :)

can you get yeast? beer? beer bread is an easy quick bread that's delicious. almost all breads you make at home are vegan ;)

elinafromtheash February 5 2010, 01:53:58 UTC

Yup, we've got yeast. I'm just not a bread baker and have made so many super tough loaves when I've tried.

edgiko February 4 2010, 15:53:53 UTC

You want to look for Umeboshi/Ume (Plum/Apricot) filling so here is what you want to look for..

elinafromtheash February 5 2010, 02:02:47 UTC

Thanks :D

emiwenis February 4 2010, 17:43:13 UTC

produce can be so expensive in japan, I'm sorry :(
Why god why is celery that expensive?! It's like throw-away cheap in the US!!!

I can't really make great recomendations for you because last time I was in japan I was not a vegan, but I was mostly vegetarian because I hated seafood and anything that tastes like the sea, like seaweed. I at a lot of white rice... and I dropped a lot of weight in Japan lol.

You can probably buy better than bullion or bullion cubes online somewhere. I can sympathize it's probably hard to find not meaty/seaweedy ones there.

If I were in Japan, I'd probably be making a lot of yakisoba, my own curries, tofu stir fries as usual, maybe some korean and viet inspired foods.

elinafromtheash February 5 2010, 01:58:22 UTC

For some reason stir fry has never really been my thing to cook but I think it probably is a good idea.

I really wish that when we were packing food to sneak in (red lentils and clif bars, lol) we'd remembered boullion cubes. Would've made things so much easier. I'll definitely take a look online though. Oh, and supposedly there's an import food store that Daniel knows how to get us to, which I forgot, I'll hopefully find something with english on it there.