Food News (unintentional discoveries and Japanese Nabe)

Are you tired of cooking the same shizz everyday?

Are you dying to spice up (excuse the culinary pun) your boring dishes?

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Because Chef Anisa has accidently (no relation to blog name) discovered the resolution.

Are you ready?

Simply continue putting off your grocery shopping until your fridge and pantry are not far from vacant. Then, you’ve no choice but to improvise flavors and… TADA! Hello new tastes.

This morning, I had peanut butter and KIWIFRUIT (not banana) on defrosted toast for breakfast. Is this a thing? Have you already tried it? Or have I, in first-world-problems food shortage, unintentionally stumbled across genius? Kiwi-fruit and peanut-butter is INSANE.

Anywho, I wanted to talk about Nabe or Nabemono.

Nabemono (鍋物, なべ物, nabe “cooking pot” + mono “thing or things, object, matter”) or simply called nabe, refers to a variety of Japanese hot pot dishes, also known as one pot dishes and “things in a pot.”

Thanks, Wikipedia.

After hearing my students increasingly talk of having a “nabe party” (apparently the thing to do during a Japanese winter), I was itching (or should I say, shivering hahoehah, I know I’m hilarious) to try nabe, myself. So, last night, I kind of invited myself to Kaori’s for dinner – I’m good like that. She made kimchi nabe which is basically a kimchi-flavoured soup stuffed with loads of ingredients, ingredients which continue to be stuffed into the soup while the already cooked ones are hunted and eaten. It’s a glorious cycle really.

The nabe or pot is placed on a portable stove which is placed on a kotatsu (a low, wooden table frame covered by a futon, or heavy blanket, upon which a table top sits. Underneath is a heat source, often built into the table itself) around which the dinner guests are seated. In other words, as the night progresses, you heat up in every possible way.

After eating for what seems forever, the left-over nabe is mixed with rice and egg and turned into a porridge – often eaten for breakfast the next day.

Are you salivating yet? I’m hungry all over again and I just ate that magical kiwi-fruit and peanut-butter concoction.