Aomori Recipe Contest: Second Place!

Yesterday, I attended the final cook-off! It was about creating a daily dish using any of the 3 items (mineral burdock root, apios, and/or dried chrysanthemum) produced in Aomori prefecture.

The contest was held by LSearch (the group that help to promote trade and industry in Aomori) at Denryokukan (the show room of Tokyo Electric Power Co. in Shibuya) and five lucky finalists were selected! There were 5 judges. One is Jyunko Takashiro (a famous foodist) and the other four were from the (selected) general public. I cooked "Mineral Burdock Root, Apios, and Chicken Stuffed Fried Bean Curd, Salty-Sweet Sauce".

The winning recipe was a very beautiful sumashijiru (clear soup) with apios balls, but I am glad that mine was selected as the second place. All pictures above are taken by my boyfriend. Thanks for his support and the encouragement!

It was chilly in the morning, but it changed to fine autumn weather (and was hot) in the afternoon! I even sweated a little!!!

After the contest, my boyfriend and I went to a cafe and had a lunch. I think jose might love this! I will write about it the next time.

I gotta go now!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!

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My Accomplishments

It's a fine Autumn day again today, but gradually getting chilly! Looks like winter is on its way!!! And that was right! The forecast said that yesterday was the coldest this season!

After so long! I will list my recent accomplishments.

On 10/16, my recipe finally won the grand prize at the garlic contest held by the site called kenkokazoku: online shopping site of health food product! The prize winning recipe is "Shrimp and Spinach Stamina Tartar". Luckily, my "Sausage and Spinach Pepperon Rice" won the special prize as well!

On 10/18, my fellow blogger Nazarina passed me this pretty award: Butterfly Award - For the coolest blog I ever know. Thank you!!!







Also on 10/25, she passed me another award: I'm a Chocoholic. How come she knows I like chocolate. Ha-ha! Thanks a lot ;)



On 10/22, my prize winning recipe, "Enoki Natto Meat Sour Miso Bowl" (I wrote about it before), went on Suntory's website!







On 10/24, I received some dashi products from Kamada, in return for putting my recipe on their catalogue. Kamada is famous for natural dashi soy sauce. The recipe, "Japanese Style Stir-Fried Sausage and Komatsuna (Japanese Mustard Spinach)", was the one I submitted to their contest using their product early this year.

On 10/29, my e-mail recipe newsletter for cell-phones was introduced at mini-mag (the publisher)'s weekly magazine! About 200 new readers have subscribed to my newsletter! Thank you!!!

Then last but not least, I have 3 finals to attend in November!!! 2 of them will be held in Tokyo, but one will be in Hiroshima! I need to take shinkansen (4 hours!) to go there. Am I deserve to participate... ?! Hope so...

By the way, yesterday on the news, I saw our prime minister Taro Aso saying that he would increase the consumption tax rate in three years... I think he shouldn't say that now... He just gave us a bad impression to his economic policies he announced yesterday, you know...
Aso pledges 27 trillion yen to fire up economy

I am taking a day off today and Monday is a holiday! Yay!!! Tomorrow I have one of the finals in Tokyo, so I hope I can write about that the next time.

Have a great weekend + Happy Halloween!!!

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Kuidaore Taro Got a New Job

Hi! We have fine weather here again ;)
I had a lunch with my co-worker after a long time!

Do you know Kuidaore Taro?
I once wrote about him before in my diary.
He is a mechanical drum-playing clown in front of Dotonbori (in Osaka)'s famous restaurant Cui-daore: a massive eight-story restaurant with a different Osaka cuisine on each floor.
The restaurant has closed on July 8th and he was removed since then.



However, yesterday, I saw on TV that he is coming back to Dotonbori! He will be back in front of Nakaza building (image on the right) next to the Cui-daore restaurant where he used to stand. Interestingly, Taro is just for rent and he belongs to Taro Company, which owner (Michiko Kakinoki)'s family has launched.
This article shows how popular he is!!!
Kuidaore Taro to debut as 'talent'

I wish I could be famous like him! Ha-ha!!!

Okay, talk to you later!
Have a nice day ;)

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