Japanese style mixed bean pilaf
When I was staying at Aikku Hospital after having Lily, one of my favorite meals was on Setsubun: a bean pilaf, cabbage and seaweed soup, salad, drinkable yogurt, fruit salad, orange ice and a pack of setsubun beans. One day a couple weeks after coming home I was telling Chad how much I wanted to eat the pilaf again, and he threw together an awesome bean pilaf of his own.
I begged him to make it again the other day, and though I had to pull an arm and a leg to get ingredient approximations for a recipe to share with you, I’m proud to say I was successful!
In the background you can see field mustard. Chad has been whipping up this simple green by boiling it and serving with ponzu and bonito flakes. Back home, field mustard is often considered a weed, but in Japan it’s a semi-expensive veggie side dish!
Japanese Style Bean Pilaf
Serves 4
Ingredients
2 1/2 c rice
2 bouillon cubes (we used chicken)
1 Tbs butter
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed & diced
Salt to taste
2 tsp Oregano
1 Leek, thinly sliced
2 Tbs Rice vinegar
1 Tbs Lemon juice
1 can bean salad (or mixed beans of choice)
1/2 cup Corn
1 Avocado
Fresh parsley to taste
Directions
Prepare rice in rice maker and add crushed bouillon cubes to the water. We use Japanese rice, and prepare it in a rice maker, but you can choose your favorite rice and preparation method.
While the rice is cooking, sauté the onion & garlic in butter. Add the remaining ingredients except for parsley & avocado, and heat through.
Add finished rice and stir before folding in avocado and parsley.
Note: The bean pilaf I had at the hospital was served with a sliced boiled egg on top–a nice bit of additional protein! Also, this recipe is great because you can really be flexible with how much of each ingredient you add based on your personal tastes. We’re going to try adding edamame next time! It’s easy and delicious!
xx Caitlyn
Fortunately for us, now Chad is on vacation, so yesterday (Tuesday) we were able to scurry down toward Sugamo Station to get a ticket from Tsuta. We got there around 10:15, and were able to get tickets to reserve a spot for eating around 3:00. Unfortunately, all that was on offer for the day was Tsuta’s miso ramen, which I was especially bummed about because I tend to go for shoyu (soy based) or shio (salt based) ramen. Of course, that didn’t change our minds about giving the shop a try!
Around 2:15 or so we came back to Tsuta Ramen and joined a line of several other customers. We slowly moved forward in the queue until we were welcomed inside and given our deposits back so we could chose our ramen. We had three choices: normal miso ramen, miso ramen with egg, and miso ramen with extra chicken. We chose the latter two options (which came to exactly 2000 yen total), and then continued to wait in the indoor line for seats to open up. 
We were pretty excited when our ramen was served. We were ready for new flavors–we’d never had chickpeas, sliced onions or chicken in our ramen before. 
A good egg is usually a huge indication of my overall rating when it comes to ramen: it shouldn’t be completely hard boiled, but the yolk should be slightly cooked. My egg was spot-on. I liked the noodles, too, but sometimes the texture was a little grainy for me. I couldn’t tell whether that sensation was from the soba noodles themselves, or from the noodles being coated in miso broth. The ramen didn’t disappoint, but I would personally like to go back and try a bowl of the shoyu ramen. 
Yesterday we were seated at the bar, where you can see two to three chefs working away, usually smiling while they’re doing it! 
Tired boy after our hike…! 
Lunch after arriving in Hakone: Tempura Soba Set 
So in the above picture, you can see a cable car that could take you up the mountain to your hotel or ryokan (Japanese style inn) of choice. Chad mistakenly thought taking the cable car was expensive, so we proceeded on foot. Later, after I almost died from climbing, we found out that the cable car was only around 170 yen… I handled this very gracefully because I am perfect. (I actually almost cried haha.) 
This was taken about a quarter of the way up, before I realized that we were only a quarter of the way up. 
Finally, we arrived at our ryokan. It was pretty creepy to be honest, but the room was nice enough. We were able to relax and be together, and that was the most important thing. Well, besides dinner. Dinner, dinner, dinner. Where could we find dinner? 
It turned out that nearly the entire area around us had absolutely no restaurants or shops or anything. We found one place that was expensive, and several others that were closed, so we decided to go all the way back down to the station to see if any restaurants were open down there. I was super tired, but I tried to be positive and happy (and that part really is true). When we got to the station, everything that had been open earlier had closed. The time being only 7:00, we started to feel a bit defeated. Fortunately, we were able to make the last cable car of the day (which was at 7:05!), and we headed back up to the one expensive restaurant we had seen that was thankfully still open. 
I ordered a tempura set (I know, second one of the day! But it looked better than the other options). Above were some of the sides: delicious tofu, gel fish (which I thought had a strange texture and passed along to Chad), and tsukemono (pickled vegetables). 
The next day, we woke up for our breakfast at our hotel. Above you can see dried horse mackerel being reheated on a little grill. 
Here is the list of everything included in our breakfast. 
This is our hotel from the outside. 
I don’t know if this gives you a clear enough idea of how steep our climb up was, but I get sore just looking at it. After descending the mountain again, we headed to the 
From the other side… 
A labyrinth! 
I really enjoyed the indoor Picasso exhibit–it reminded me of when we went to the Picasso museum in Barcelona years ago. Picasso had a really interesting life! 
Fortunately there was a foot bath located about halfway through the museum.
This was a Symphony of Glass tower. I wasn’t super psyched to climb it, but it was really pretty in the end. 
The view from the top of the tower. 
Pretty glass inside. 
After two days of school, it was already the weekend. Saturday was super cloudy, so we went for coffee at Starbucks and I started reading 
On Sunday we had sunny weather, so we decided to head out to Setagaya to go to the famous 
Despite the rules in place, the owners do allow some pictures if you ask first, so I happily took pictures of our lattes when we were inside.
I’m sure if you’re anything like me, you’re dying to know the verdict. And the verdict is… amazing. Super nice flavor with the espresso really standing on its own. Chad pointed out that BPE espresso is a bit more citrusy than the espresso at 
Here is the pretty piece of cake I chose from several our manager got for us. It was a really nice balance of chocolate and orange flavors.
Lastly, we’ve been sashimi crazy as of late. I think we’ve been having it for dinner two or three times a week, and we still love it! I feel lucky that we can take advantage of easy access to quality sashimi in Japan.
We got on the tram at Ostukaekimae station.
I absolutely love the atmosphere around Minowa station. Just near the station is an old shopping arcade that reminded us of living in Yokkaichi. So much so, in fact, that I kept expecting to see a giant 
Miso soup!
As we sipped our coffees after lunch, we decided that we must have chosen a rather auspicious restaurant! 
Outside the ramen shop, there is a giant oni, or ogre, club.
The noodles were of an al dente texture, and a bit thicker than a lot of ramen we’ve tried, but I liked them a lot. 
Sunday we made omurice, which is basically an omelet filled with tomato-ey rice and chicken. There are all sorts of variations, but we chose an easy (delicious) basic one that provided lots of leftovers for lunch. Yum! 
Last weekend Chad and I stumbled across a bakery/cafe called 
Little Snail 