Taco Rice

There are no Mexican restaurants in Japan so when Nick needs a Mexican food fix, he'll have one of his favorites:  Taco Rice.  They offer this dish at some restaurants in Japan and Nick ordered it for lunch when we went to one his favorite places he likes to go to during work, called One Shot.   

It's a lot like a taco salad only there is a layer of rice on top of the salad greens, then the taco meat and then cheese. (Notice that it's mostly salad) I like that the rice adds another dimension to the otherwise typical taco salad.   At home, Nick layered it differently with the rice on the bottom, then the meat mixture and cheese

 and then we added our salad fixings. Nick's version of Taco Rice is more the Western style - lots of meat and carbs and less salad. LOL

  We did find some salsa in the grocery store in a little jar, similar to a small mustard jar.  Then we added some tomatoes and avocado.  (We looked for tortilla chips but there weren't any at the store where we were.)  Sachiyo often made miso soup to go with our meal so we also had that on this evening with our Taco Rice.  

  I made a few dinners while we were in Japan, as well.  Nick selected some recipes from my blog for me to make during our visit and they were all hits.  I brought along some of the ingredients and pasta so we wouldn't have to search stores for items - which helped.  First I made my Skillet Lasagna for Hana's birthday celebration and everyone loved it, especially for leftovers the next day. 

 You know how Italian dishes taste so good after they sit a day.   Then I made my Sesame Shrimp because Hana just loves shrimp. (And she'll eat any vegetable you put in front of her!)  I don't think there was any leftovers of this one. 

I also made everyone's favorite Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo.

I made a lot of this one and it lasted a few days and made for good lunches for Hana who loves pasta, of course.  I also had to make macaroni and cheese but since I want it to be healthy for my little granddaughter, I used my Super Creamy Macaroni and Cheese recipe that uses pureed carrots and cauliflower as most of the sauce.  It's a good thing, too, because Japanese grocery stores do not have a lot of cheese.  And they definitely don't have that horrible Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, thank goodness.

I had to use yogurt for my ricotta cheese in the lasagna and basically any kind of cheese I could find.  They did have cream cheese, no cottage cheese.  And hard cheese was grated in a package, no nice big blocks of cheese.  Japanese are not big cheese eaters, what can I say. During the course of our stay, I thought of other things to fix that I knew they would like and one of those was crepes.  They LOVED the crepes.  I made ham and cheese crepes twice for lunch but they were just as popular plain, hot off the grill. 

Hana loved them both plain and stuffed with ham and cheese.  She takes after her Daddy, a real good eater.

I'm sure Nick and Sachiyo had more cheese in their diet the two weeks we were there than they've had in a long time.  Welcome to the Western diet! But I think they loved it. Nick even made Dutch Babies on our last morning before we went home.

And it turned out perfectly. 

They actually have Dutch Babies in Japan.  We've been to two restaurants during our visits to Japan that served them.  The difference is that they are not for breakfast, but for dessert.  They also have pancakes in Japan but again, they are for a dessert.  We had pancakes for the first time during this visit and they are not like our pancakes.  They are really a cake cooked in a pan.  The Japanese take the word literally.  

They actually taste like a yellow cake mix but instead of putting frosting on it, you pour syrup over it.  Their French toast is also a dessert. 

Now that makes sense, actually.  Some of the food we eat for breakfast is pretty over the top.  I always think that my last Western meal is on the plane flying over to Japan but during this visit, we actually ate a lot of familiar Western food.  I think the world is getting smaller and smaller.  Can I really feel right at home when I'm 5,000 miles away?  I think I can because it means I'm with this little bundle of joy.     

And love is a powerful thing.