Friday, September 04, 2009

Before breakfast

When I first came to Japan I couldn't speak any Japanese, but one of the principals at my school was insistent on teaching me complicated sayings that I thought I would never need or remember. One of them was "Asa meishi mae" which literally means before breakfast. In a less literal sense it means "a stroll in the park" or " a piece of cake" and this morning I managed to mix the literal meaning with the real meaning and achieved a whole day's work before breakfast - well 10am anyway! Today was my childrens' social study's outing so they needed a bento lunch box (Japanese style so no stuffing a sandwich in a bag and adding an apple) so I was up at 6am making that. After preparing for two kindergarten classes I made 3kg worth of strawberries and wild strawberries into jam as a "donation" for a friend who is organising a wonderful project called "Children's Kitchen" - more about that project another day. I then did my 30 minutes exercise before racing into the shower and was out the door by 10:10 to teach my 2 classes of midgets (none of which put their fingers anywhere near my bottom!).
It felt so good to get so much done in one morning that I decided to take the afternoon off and watched a DVD and had a nap.... it was far too hot to do anything else. A nice reward!
By the way.. I seem to have confused some of you with my measurements in the last recipe. At the moment my daughter is studying volume at school and they talk a lot about "cc"s so I got a bit carried away... - 1cc is the same as 1ml. Therefore in the recipe below 250cc really means 250ml or one New Zealand cup....

4 comments:

  1. You have enough strawberries to jam this time of year? Wow. And seriously, wouldn't it be easier if a sandwich and an apple would suffice?

    How is your sister going?

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  2. Asa meishi mae! Nice to have the word for it. I discovered that during my last pregnancy, when I felt horrendously ill after eating anything, and spent most of the time exhausted, so I got into the habit of doing all the housework as soon as I got up, before breakfast. Used to be up at 6, breakfast at 10. Now it's more like up at 7:30, breakfast at 9:00!

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  3. I am impressed! When I get up to make bentos I usually collapse on the sofa after from the early morning work and watch videos until the kids wake up.

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  4. My friend Megan has just provided a great bento link that's almost made me keen to get up early to make one for lunch.

    Much better than my boring sandwiches!

    http://www.aibento.net/

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