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....