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| 2000 |
| August:
|
Healthy vegan snack, vegan peach cobbler, stray
cats, and so on. |
| September:
|
Vegan pizza and brownie as well as experiences
at several vegan restaurants. |
| October:
|
New soymilk product and vegan ramen noodle, and
so on. |
| November:
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Stories about the meeting with Japan Vegetarian
Society chairpersons, vegan wedding meal, and experiences in
Kyoto and Vietnam. |
December:
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Attended Japan Vegetarian Society's meeting,
delicious vegetarian food in YOKOHAMA China town, wasting time
and money on staling foods, and trip to Penang. |
| 2001 |
| January:
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Experimenting some vegan breakfast recipes, receiving
an e-mal from the reader, pondering bug's life, and so on |
| February:
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Tried a macrobiotic restaurant in Tokyo, and
the trip to Laos. |
| March:
|
Struggling to get a vegan flihgt meals at Malaysian
Airline. |
| April:
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Having vegan wedding plates again, business
trip to Cambodia and Vietnam, and busy days. |
| May:
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Nayonnaise discovery and some food disasters. |
| June:
|
Life is going on. |
| 2002 |
| February: |
Attended a meeting on refugee issues in Japan
held by Amnesty International Japan |
| March: |
Fresh soy milk and fasionable fake leather sneakers,
etc. |
|
April |
A conversation with my husband over a TV show
and "Meatarians vs. vegetarians." |
| May |
A trip to the U.S. for research. Had an opportunity
to attend a fantastic vegan wedding of my friend's. |
| July |
A thought on eating whale meat. |
| 12/02/2000 |
|
Went to Yokohama to attend Japan Vegetarian Society meeting
for Tokyo area's members. I didn't expect many people gathering
but the number was much smaller. There were only five people
when I opened the door being late for fifteen minutes.
The topics of the meeting were consisted of two parts. First
one was the presentation of a vegetarian guy who cultivates
the small fields organic way and the second was the speech
of a college girl who attended IVU's conference in Toronto
this year. Both of them were interesting but I couldn't stop
thinking of the vegetarian circumstance in Japan far behind
US.
After the meeting, my husband joined me to go to China town
in Yokohama. Every restaurant was so crowded that we should
wait for at least one hour to be seated. Luckily we found
a small restaurant less-packed and were able to have dinner
in twenty minutes. I was excited seeing vegetarian items in
the menu and ordered mock-ham appetizer, tofu and vegetable
soup, and vegetable Chinese dumplings. My husband, a meat
lover, also loved those foods but had a trouble to finish
the big portion of his pork plate. The problem when we eat
out together is that he can't be satisfied without meat dishes
so that he always eats too much. For him, having a vegetarian
wife may cause overweight.
|
| 12/04/2000 |
Japanese tofu is so fresh that we can't keep
it, even in the fridge, for more than two days. That's why I
found that my tofu was stale today.
|
| 12/08/2000 |
I trashed my hand-made hummus covered in molds.
|
| 12/11/2000 |
Well ripe bananas in the kitchen called me to
bake Dr. Weil's banana cake. It's almost vegan, using flour,
bananas, olive oil, baking soda, and honey. I was prepared with
the ingredients except for enough sweeteners. Even though I
put all brown sugar, maple syrup, and honey in the kitchen shelves
together, it was four-third amount of the recipe required. Late
at night, I didn't want to go shopping so I baked with less
sweet anyway. The cake tasted not bad. Still I didn't have much
cravings for it and again, four days later, it went stale in
the fridge when I tried to take some pieces for my breakfast.
|
| 12/14/2000 - 12/17/2000 |
Traveled to Penang, Malaysia. Again it's for
my friend photographer's book published in March and thanks
to him, I was seated in business class of Malaysia Airline.
I was so thrilled to have business class vegan flight meals
but felt disappointed with those in a setting of napkins and
porcelain plates. Malaysia Airline food staff seemed to think
that vegetarians only ate vegetables and fruits. I had two mealtimes
on the way to Malaysia and in the first meal, the starter was
sauteed eggplant and onions in a small pie shell with green
salad. Then, green mixed salad, fruits, and bread came. The
Main dish was fried rice with mixed veggie and steamed vegetables
(pumpkin, zucchini, asparagus, and red pepper). The taste was
so plain that I should put a lot of chili sauce on the rice.
For dessert, I had fruits platter with syrup. In the second
mealtime, on the plate, there were green salad, baked tomato,
steamed celery and carrots, potato croquette, peach, and bread.
I requested chili sauce again and was desperate for protein,
even felt hungry. On the contrary, Penang was great place for
vegetarians. People told me that I would never be troubled as
a vegetarian because they had a lot of variation of foods including
vegetarian items. According to that they proudly claim, we can
pick up vegetarian food in the open-air food courts.
That's true. Being an essential trading port since 17th century,
people from numerous areas came to Penang and the small island
is now mixed with colorful ethnicity of Malay, Chinese, NyoNya
(Chinese Malay), Indian, and Western. So its food culture is.
There are always enough vegetarian items in Indian restaurants
as well as Chinese, NyoNya restaurants. The majority of Penang
is Chinese so that Buddhism is popular there; it means that
there are many Buddhist vegetarian restaurants located in temples.
Since I was teamed with two meat-eaters during travel, I couldn't
have a chance to try those Buddhist restaurants but one Penang
woman assured that they were delicious for non-vegetarians as
well. Additionally, there were a number of vegetarian restaurants
in China town. For lunch, I had some vegetarian dim sum take-outs
and they were tasteful and looked much better than the oily
meat dishes the meat-eaters ordered. I found even healthy Chinese
vegetarian restaurant that hung the plate saying "NO MSG." Another
Penang woman who herself was a vegetarian told me that it was
so easy to find the place to eat in Penang but the situation
would be different in any other areas in Malaysia. Except for
Penang, the majority of the country is Malay and their food
generally contains animal ingredients.
It was just three-night stay and I regretfully missed most Penang's
vegetarian food. Next time I visit there, I definitely try Penang's
famous soymilk dessert. However, at least, I got two vegetarian
cup noodles at the airport that I failed to buy in Vietnam.
On the day we went back to Japan, our air delayed for six hours
and we switched to Japan Airline. I could get business seat
again but because of the change, I had to have non-vegetarian
breakfast though I wasn't so hungry to eat. Anyway I need to
write a letter to Malaysia Airline to tell that they should
hire a dietitian who is familiar with vegetarian cooking.
P.S. An advantage of Malaysia Airline's business class is that
they give the customers non-animal-testing care products of
Woods of Windsor.
|
| 12/26/2000 |
I trashed my handmade hummus. It went bad again
while I forgot to eat for two weeks....
|
| 12/30/2000 |
| Good omen to the 21 century. I found fake bacon
bits in the new-open fancy supermarket near by my place. Additionaly
I got sesame taste soy milk there! |
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