The Cooking Corner - Overnight Oats - choco banana

Ebi-kun eats like a horse in the mornings, he puts away far more than both daddy and myself, I'm not sure where he puts it because there isn't much of him!

In the winter we alternate between porridge and eggs in the mornings but now the summer is here, no one wants porridge, and eggs every morning gets a bit boring!

A lot of my health nut friends have been posting about overnight oats and I must admit, the thought of cold porridge makes me want to vom... but... I though it was worth a try!

The first batch I made was tropical fruit and went down well, so we tried choco banana today, also good except when I was making the breakfasts up last night I had left the choco chips on the shelf above the oven so they had melted! That meant is was less of a choco chip, more of a choco chunk!

The great thing about overnight oats is that it doesn't take long to put together and in the morning you just take it out of the fridge and eat - minimum washing up too!

I used the jugs that came with the nutribullet but any big glass or jar would do.

RECIPE: (makes 1 serving)

• 1/3 cup yoghurt
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 medium banana chopped
• 2/3 cup milk
• few dashes of vanilla
• 1 tbsp honey or maple syrup
• 2 tbsp choco chips (or a sold blob!)
• 1 tbsp chia seeds (for those in Japan I got them at Kaldi)

You can easily sub in things like almond milk or gluten free oats to suit your needs.

Put in a cup/jar. Put on a lid and shake well until mixed - if you don't have something with a lid you could mix it in a bowl and mix well instead.

Put on the lid and pop in the fridge.

By the morning it has all combined into a thick mixture. I'm not overly excited at the texture, as I'm not really a fan of gooey foods but it goes down ok and it really fills you up! Because it's oats, it keeps you feeling full for longer too, which means I don't get those mid morning munchie feelings!

I will share other versions as we try them!

And if this is something you eat at home, share your favourite combos!

Ebi-kun Breaks Into YouTube...

Yes, it is true, boy wonder has started his own YouTube channel!

He has been talking about this for a while and I have had my reservations - you know, with the internet being a big scary place. So I had a good think and decided that with some guidelines in place it would be OK.

He wanted to start the channel for a couple of reasons:

First, he thought it would be fun. Fun, I am down with that and we came up with the idea of food tasting because he LOVES trying new foods and sometimes (I wish I had videoed them all!) his reaction is hysterical.

Second, he wants to learn how to make money! Again, seems like a reasonable request for a 10 year old. Since selling cookies or doing a lemonade stand really isn't the done thing here, in fact I don't ever recall ever seeing kids trying to make money here! An alternative idea was needed.

Third, he thought it would be good for picky eaters to see that trying new foods can be fun, even if they taste horrid. He can't get his head around friends that won't try foods!

Now, I have no idea whether this little venture of his will ever make any money, he doesn't have a product (as of yet) so it will only be from ads shown on the video and you need a decent amount of traffic to make that happen. So we are embarking on a learning a new set of skills, together we are learning the tricks of the trade and we will see where this takes us!

The rules we have in place...

1. He only uses his nickname online (as you know I have been doing this for years)

2. He never shares where we live other than in Japan

3. All comments will be moderated by me (if anything mean or nasty is said, they will have to deal with mama bear!)

4. If it stops being fun, we stop doing it.

5. I have the right to amend the rules if I see the need to do so (hahaha need the clause in there!)

Here are the first couple of episodes, it will make his day if you click through to You Tube and subscribe, give him and thumbs up or even leave him a lovely comment! (on youtube not here!) Ta.

Click HERE to subscribe

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Maybe a chef?

Ebi-kun has always enjoyed food and loves trying new foods, he is really adventurous with his tastebuds! The only issue we have had with food is the speed that he eats, one hour to eat dinner or lunch is not unheard of, he definitely savors each mouthful!

We somehow ended up watching one of Jamie Oliver's food revolution shows the other day, where he went to Huntington in America and non of the kids in the class could name any of the veg Jamie showed them. Ebi-kun just kept repeating, I can't believe it! I can't believe it! He's so funny, 8 going on 80!

He also loves being in the kitchen and will often ask to try two different food together, just to see how it will taste. Maybe he will end up being an ice-cream flavour inventor! Who knows? I do love that he enjoys what he eats and appreciates it and that we can eat out anywhere - if anything, I'm the fussy one!

A Fusion Food Day…

Yesterday was a prefectural holiday for Ebi-kun, we didn't have any special planned, so we just hung out at home and had a trip to the park. Before I had started breakfast Ebi-kun was reading the Mission Explore Food book, the page about fusion food so he asked if we could have a fusion food day! Nothing like leaving it to the last second to do this! So we had some bacon and eggs but no bread except pita, so we ended up with bacon and egg pita pockets, it was actually really good and we will be trying it again!

After lunch he started brainstorming different food combo's we could try for lunch, of course it is the end of the week so I didn't have that much in but what he came up was a Italy / Japan combo….

We bring to you…margarita nori maki! A layer of nori seaweed, spread with rice add a layer of warm tomato & basil sauce add a topping of cheese then roll. Serve with string cheese and apple!

Personally, I can't see margarita nori maki being the next big thing. Cheese and nori are just not a good combo! I already had a big pot of cream veg stew for dinner so no weird fusion combo to finish the day off but he asked if we can have a fusion dinner at the weekend…. watch this space!

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Seasonal Snacks

One thing Japan does really well is seasonal snacks! Not only have the produced every flavour of Kit-Kat you can imagine of but they have other seasonal snacks pop up too. Autumn is a season of yummy food, mushrooms, pumpkins, chestnuts and sweet potatoes. Which leads us onto this...
Takenoko cookie, takenoko is bamboo shoot, so this is a cookie snack shaped like a bamboo shoot, they are usually topped with milk chocolate but the seasonal variant is sweet potato flavoured chocolate and black sesame seed cookie....

I wasn't fussed on them but Ebi-kun and Daddy liked them. I would love to know how they come up with such ideas, my theories are..
A) they ask a bunch of kindergartener to invent some new flavours or
B) they get everyone drunk, leave them in a room with random items and see which ones they come up with to make a tasty snack!

It's not just snacks that get a seasonal makeover, beer does to and Kirin's autumn brew is my all time favourite, I will be picking some up next supermarket run!

Koala Snack ball experiment...

This is an 'experiment' Ebi-kun saw on a TV program, I wasn't actually watching so I'm not sure how it all came about. He pestered me all week to try it, so I caved and we did...

First we had to buy a pack of コアラのマーチ - which is a koala shaped snack, it is crispy on the outside and soft chocolate in the middle, they are quite nice as they are....

Then you place all the snack into a jar, put on the lid and shake the jar for about 20 minutes...

It was quite interesting seeing the different stages of smashed up snack. Eventually it turns it a lump of chocolate crunch. We both decided it tasted better eaten before they are smashed up but at least you burn off some calories before eating it if you do the jar shaking idea!

Have you got any good food experiments to share?

Michelangelo Day...

This was a BIG day so I will list all the resources again at the end of the post. We decided to go the whole hog and do Italian the whole day, this included speaking Italian, although neither of us can speak Italian so it just meant peppering sentences with any random Italian words and talking in an bad Italian accent - amusing if not educational!

We started the day with a traditional Italian breakfast, this is what I ate with the kids I taught when I lived there, milk with biscuits dropped in it, then you scoop the biscuits out with a spoon - took me straight back to Pescara, I don't think I have eaten this since I left. Ebi-kun thought it was a great breakfast and that we should eat it more often.

Next up, we made tiramisu for later in the day (not exactly sounding like the healthiest of days so far...)

So, we left that in the fridge and moved on to more important matters...

Fresco painting! We mixed up some plaster of Paris and poured it into some clean food trays, Ebi-kun played with one of the neighbours whilst we waited for it to dry, since we didn't want it to dry out completely.

He used watercolours to paint with and said he quite liked it but you have to work quickly because the plaster starts to dry.

We did try and put hooks in the back but it didn't work, so we decided to use this just as experimental art.

We had a break for lunch, which was some left over spinach roulade, parma ham and mozzarella & tomato. Then we read Michelangelo by Mike Venezia, we have quite a few of the books from this series now. I like how they are not overly simplified and have enough meat in them to get the child interested but they also don't get too bogged down with details so the child gets bored.

Available from Amazon or The Book Depository

We also watched this a series about Michelangelo from the BBC on YouTube.

And this shorter Horrible Histories one...

As we worked we also listened to this Renaissance music. Next was to paint the Sistine Chapel or at least the underside of the table....
If you do this, then use a splash mat - it did get very messy and I am glad I got Ebi-kun to do it without his t-shirt, it is a good job kids come washable.

Here is the finished master piece, still taped to the underside of the table....

Whilst Ebi-kun was painting, I discovered this great site where you can see the whole of the Sistine Chapel, virtually, very cool and a must do, if you are studying  the same thing. We finished off the day with homemade calzone and a nice glass of Italian white (I did that is, not the boy!)

Resources:

Virtual tour of Sistine Chapel

Discovering Great Artists (the art ideas came from this book)

Michelangelo by Mike Venezia

BBC documentary on youtube