Okinawa-rama

I've never been a big produce person. It looks beautiful. I want to be into it, but whenever I buy veggies, they sit rotting in my crisper. Then I signed up for this service called freshinoki, a produce delivery service. They pick up fresh, locally grown veggies from a market up north and then deliver them to your door. It's great, no thinking involved. But, not really cheap at $25 a bag.

That didn't really bother me too much. The good thing about that price is that I felt that I HAD to use up those veggies or it would be a waste of money. I threw them in everything. Lots of stir-frys, soups and salads. But in the end, I still couldn't keep up and so, still, there are vegetables rotting in my crisper.

So I quit the vegetable delivery and made a pledge to visit the neighborhood produce market by myself, saving money and giving me a little more control over quantity. I further pledged to buy the vegetables not according to what I planned to make with them, but by what looked good instead. One of the things that I liked about the produce delivery was the figuring out what to do with all that eggplant or pumpkin or greenbeans. (You don't get to choose what's in the bag. It's a vegetable surprise.) Buying food for the ingredients sake, rather than the recipes' was a little funner for some reason. Like a little cooking adventure.

Today I hit the market. I only had 1000 yen (about 10 bucks) and got eggplant, a giant yellow onion, three garlics, lots of long green onion, a bag of bright carrots and a small pumpkin. Is that expensive? I never bought enough fresh vegetables in the states to even know!

Anyway, I don't have any pics of veggies so I'll throw a few random pics from today up instead:


Gaber and I went to a B-day party today. That's Teresa on the left and Angie (the b-day girl) on the right.


Here were a couple of the gifts. They are kokeshi dolls, a traditional children's toy/ now collectors item, from mainland Japan.


When we got home, Gabe bounced.


And bounced.


For dinner tonight we went to a restaurant shaped like a barrel of beer. (So, yeah, all those vegetables I bought today...still in the fridge.)

WAIT! I do have a picture of the vegetable market. Here it is: