healthy cooking on weekend and work days | japanese eggplant rolls, study routine, puppy training

healthy cooking on weekend and work days | japanese eggplant rolls, study routine, puppy training

Hi, I’m Sarah, and I live in England. I’m on my usual early morning walk with Pepper, and I’m seeing a ton of ripe blackberries 🖤 I want to pick some and make jam soon, because they just look so tasty 🤤 I even found some wild strawberries, although they’re so tiny I’m not sure they’re worth picking 🍓 Sometimes Pepper gets a bit scared on the walk, but she’s learning to be confident as she’s gets older. She spends most time on the walk sniffing things, so we go slowly 🐶 It’s a beautiful morning with a cool, refreshing breeze. When we get back, I put back the dishes that dried overnight. I do this every morning! I recently purchased new everyday dishware from Ittala ✨ Four large dinner plates that have a nice design that goes with everything, and they’re more resilient than the Ikea set we had before. Four matching bowls as well. My husband wanted some more colorful dishes, and chose these cute rectangular ones 💙 They have a bold design but they’re cute too. Space is constantly an issue in our small kitchen. I wonder how to get better use out of the space. Let me know if you have any suggestions 😳 Today’s breakfast is just a crumpet with butter. I always have crumpets in the freezer because I often crave them in the morning. Make coffee with the pour-over. Smells wonderful ☕️ Add my usual oat milk warmed in the microwave. It’s simple but delicious and starts waking me up. I love the crunchy outside of the crumpet and the taste of rich butter 🧈 I need to clean up my room a bit, starting with the wastebasket. The bottom fell out! Oh no! I was very surprised 😱 Try to piece it back together for now 😅 Use my favorite Highland Soap Co. hand cream in the Juniper & Lime scent. When this one runs out I want to try their other scents! I have dry skin so I’m constantly using lotion 🙃 I’m going to write in my reading journal about the latest book I read. It’s called “The Essex Serpent”, and I bought it from the Charity Shop (Thrift Store) for £1. Put a sticker to mark the next entry in my journal. I like to just write a short summary and whether I like the book, and any strong impressions I had or characters I really liked 📕 I’m still experimenting with the fountain pen my husband gave to me, and I still keep getting ink on myself! Finishing my coffee while writing. This book was a historical fiction set in England in the late 1800’s. One surprising thing I learned was that the Tube already existed then 🤯 It took me a while to get into it, but it was decent book in the end. I wouldn’t read it again, so I’m planning to donate it back to the charity shop. I’m planning to make a simple lunch of pizza bagels 🍕 Just cut the bagels in half as usual. I’m making this to use up extra pizza ingredients I didn’t use last week. Top with the usual pizza toppings, starting with sauce. I make this sauce using canned tomatoes, basil, garlic, salt, and a tiny bit of sugar. Top with mozzarella cheese. I have pepperoni today, so I’ll use that as well. But cheese is enough honestly. Bake at 160 for about 20 minutes, or until the toppings are browned. I’ll serve a side salad with the pizza bagels. Use the peeler to top with carrot ribbons 🥕 Today’s dressing is just a bit of olive oil and salt. Let’s eat 😋 It feels a bit silly to eat pizza bagels with salad, because it’s something I really associate with being a kid. Delicious and so easy ✨ In England, bagels are sold in groups of 5 instead of half a dozen (6) like in America. I’ve had bagels at cafes here that aren’t really bagels, just soft bread shaped like bagels 😂 These “New York Bagels” are fine, about the same as mass-produced American bagels at the supermarket. Later that afternoon, I want to do some Japanese studies and work on video editing. I’m re-energizing with lotus biscuits and a cup of tea with milk 🍪 I really love these sandwich lotus biscuits. They taste amazing when dunked in tea 🤤 Sorry I still have some red marks and bruises on my arms- they’re all from puppy biting and Pepper getting too excited. Usual wanikani reviews 🇯🇵 I keep getting things wrong today. I’m doing subtitles for a video. I use a program called AegisSub. I’ve tried a lot of methods and this works best for me. It allows me to save a raw text subtitle file, which I can then upload to YouTube so the auto-translation works well. I also draft Japanese translations using ChatGPT, which my Japanese husband helps me correct. Doing subtitles usually takes me 1.5 -2 hours in total. It’s quite an endeavor to make the whole video, but I enjoy editing 😊 It’s become a hobby, because I really like filming too even though it’s hard to get used to doing it. I really hope my videos have been improving over time! Your comments keep me going and encourage me a lot 🙏🏻 I got a new portable lamp to use around the house. I had another corded lamp, but the bulb went out and it wasn’t replaceable. This lamp is USB rechargeable and I can carry it around to different rooms. I want to use it by my desk for gloomy days, and at the dining table too 💁‍♀️ The lamp looks like this. Minimalist and natural, which I gravitate toward. Get rid of the old lamp and replace with the new one. It has three color settings. It’s cute and looks as good as anything in this weird corner of the room 🤷‍♀️ Put Jemima Puddleduck back there for now. I got her at Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District last year. I also got some new highlighters, because I lost the only other one I had. These are cute colors and I’m looking forward to trying them out for studying and work. Tonight I’m planning to make a Japanese-style dinner 🇯🇵 Plenty of vegetables will be featured tonight. Several of them are leftovers I want to use up. Wrap and microwave the leftover half squash for 3 minutes. I tried to find Asian eggplants, but stores here typically only have the fat Italian eggplants 🍆 I’ll make do with what I have and see if the recipe still turns out ok. Cut the eggplant into long strips like so. Salt the strips and let it sit for a while to draw out the moisture. Cut tomato wedges for salad. All our knives are getting really dull lately. Finely chop four shiso (perilla) leaves. These are very difficult to find in the UK. I order them from Waso from time to time. They’re hard to substitute, but you can use basil if you’re desperate. Cut the red cabbage for salad also. I bought a red cabbage for a recipe, and it’s hard to use an entire cabbage between two people. Finely chop two green onions. Make a meat filling, starting with the green onions and shiso. Add 200g ground beef and pork, grated ginger, 2 tbsp flour, 2 tsp soy sauce, then mix well with your hands until the mixture is really sticky. This was especially tricky without Asian eggplants, which are long and thin. You’re supposed to roll the filling up in the eggplant strips, so I just pieced them together and rolled it up like that. It ended up working well enough but it was time consuming and annoying to do 😩 The way the video is edited it looks easy to keep from boring you, but this took forever! Fry the eggplant rolls in sesame oil over medium high heat. If you can find Asian eggplant, this recipe will be much easier 😌 After about 3 minutes, flip to the other side carefully, and cover and steam for 5-6 minutes over lower heat. Cut the microwaved squash, including skin, into bite-sized pieces. If you’re using squash with hard skin like butternut, it’s better to peel it. Put in a pan with 100 ml water. Add 1 tbsp each of soy sauce, sake, sugar, and mirin. Cover with foil and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the squash is fully cooked. Add the cabbage and tomato from earlier over lettuce to make a simple salad. Make homemade dressing: 1 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tsp soy sauce, 1 tsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp tahini. It’s always hard to use tahini without making a huge mess 😑 Mix well and top the salads. After the trouble, the eggplant is done and smells really delicious! Let’s eat this healthy Japanese-style meal 😋 It’s really delicious! The simmered squash has a mild but tasty flavor that goes well with the rolled eggplant. White rice is a must with this type of meal 🍚 Japanese and Korean social media has had a sort of purple rice trending lately, where there are packets of things like black beans and grains people mix in. I have to admit I don’t totally see the point for health, but I wonder if it’s tasty 🤔 The salad with sesame dressing was especially delicious, and I’m addicted to making this dressing now. Enjoying my cute new lamp around the house. Good night 🌝 It’s morning on a workday, and I’m making this tea I found at a Japanese store in Leeds. It says “あまおう” (amaou) which means something like sweet royal, which is a type of strawberry in Japan. I’ll have yogurt today, this new flavor I got from waitrose. I recently discovered this granola at a specialty grocer, and it’s really delicious. It tastes a bit like coconut from using coconut oil 🥥 Also top with blueberries 🫐 The strawberry milk tea is mild, not too sweet, and delicious 🍓 The yogurt combined with the granola and blueberries is perfect. I need a lot of energy on workdays and like to eat a large breakfast 💪 Most days before work I spend 30 minutes or so studying Japanese. I do lots of different things, but WaniKani is a website I use every day. Before starting work, I make a large coffee with oat milk. I have a few things I need to do this morning, and I’m writing my to-do list for the day. I need to call the pet hotel to book Pepper for an upcoming vacation we’ll be taking. I tried to call, but no one picked up 🙄 They called me back later though while I was working, so I was able to make the reservation! Later, I take a break from work and do some training with Pepper. She sleeps in her crate during the day with the noise machine when she’s not playing or doing training. I need to take her out for a potty break, but she seems to be thirsty. We want to hang the water bucket in the crate for her, but she gets excited and knocks it over, so maybe someday when she gets older she can have the water in there all the time 😂 I do training to encourage her to like the crate and to not get so excited when we just walk around the room. She gets overexcited and jumps on us and bites us a lot still 🤕 I would only recommend getting a puppy if you have lots of time and patience! She got distracted and jumped on the couch instead 😂 She’s obsessed with food, so luckily she’s really easy to train. Apparently that’s a typical Labrador trait. She gets it near the end and waits patiently, and I reward her a lot! The desk always gets messy while I’m working 🌪 When I work from home, I always love the end of my day. Who doesn’t I guess 😂 I usually work from 8am-4pm. I am able to keep to my working hours for the most part, but I always have a lot to do. I drank tea and had a few more lotus biscuits while I was working 😋 I have a huge work laptop I need to lug around- it’s a 17″ monstrosity and it’s so heavy. Tonight’s dinner starts with making turmeric rice. Add 1 tbsp butter. Add 1 tsp each grated ginger and minced garlic and fry until fragrant. Add 1/2 tsp each turmeric, salt, black pepper, and 1 tsp garam masala. Add 200g basmati rice that was soaked beforehand and fry everything together. It already smells delicious ✨ Add 400ml water and simmer for about 15 minutes until the water is absorbed. Roughly chop 1 onion, 1 tomato, 1 green chile, and put in the food processor with cashews, ginger, garlic, cloves, black peppercorns, cinnamon, cardamom, and coriander powder. Blend everything into a puree. The rice is nearly done. I’ll let it steam for 10 more minutes. Add 2 tbsp butter and a bit of oil, then fry cumin seeds until fragrant. Add the puree into the pan and start simmering and reducing it for about 10 minutes. Cut paneer into cubes. It’s hard to cut 😩 This much paneer makes about 3 servings. Add 1/4 tsp turmeric and garam masala, and 1/2 tsp kashmiri chilli powder. Add a dollop of cream if desired. Add frozen peas and simmer for a few minutes until they’re cooked. Add 1 cup of water to make the gravy, then add the paneer into the mixture. Add 1/2 tsp fenugreek leaves. I added a bit more cream 🥛 Garnish with cilantro, and it’s done 🥰 Serve with the turmeric rice and a wheat paratha. I’m a paneer addict and I make it often, and also order it from Indian restaurants a lot 🤤 The combination of curry and turmeric rice is perfect and rich. The paratha takes the meal to the next level for me 😳 I don’t often cook Indian food, but I want to branch out and try more recipes. My husband loved everything I made and helped me finish the huge portion of rice. I’m addicted to the taste of whole wheat parathas and curry together. Thanks so much for the kind comments you’ve been leaving. I really appreciate the time you take to leave them. Thanks for watching till the end, and I hope to see you next time 💖

my instagram https://www.instagram.com/sarah.no.hibi/

Hi, I’m Sarah, and I live in England. This week’s vlog is a look into some ordinary days in my life and what I do on the weekend and on workdays. I love Japanese cooking and spend a lot of time scrolling on Japanese social media, and I’ve noticed a new recipe trending on cooking accounts for “eggplant gyoza”. I would say it is definitely NOT gyoza but it looked interesting to me anyway. I think the idea was that it’s a sort of diet low-carb thing with eggplant wrapping the filling instead of dumpling wrappers. Anyway, regardless of whether you care about your diet, it was healthy and tasty! The video also shows you some time with our puppy walking in nature and training, my random chores, my reading journal and planner routine, and some other meals that I made including paneer curry with turmeric rice and classic American pizza bagels.

If you liked the video, please like & subscribe for more vlogs 💖

Subtitles available in English 🇬🇧 and Japanese 🇯🇵. Other languages are available using auto-translation.

timestamps
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00:00 intro
00:28 weekend morning puppy walk
01:20 crumpet+coffee breakfast
03:20 chores and reading journal
04:45 pizza bagels
06:37 study+editing
09:19 japanese style eggplant gyoza dinner
13:42 workday breakfast
14:45 morning study+planner
15:25 puppy training
16:29 ending work for the day
16:59 paneer curry dinner
20:35 outro

recipes
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Stuffed eggplant rolls (in Japanese): https://www.kurashiru.com/recipes/d76d92b5-4d30-4841-8c86-26daa9d73ea0
Sesame dressing (in Japanese): https://www.kurashiru.com/recipes/bdcb7995-314c-43f1-8d76-74a19bfcb80b
Simmered squash (in Japanese): https://www.kurashiru.com/recipes/451b52cd-601b-47d4-ac8e-4c1f73188f61
Matar paneer curry: https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/matar-paneer/
Turmeric rice: https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/turmeric-rice/

music credits
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lavender by massobeats: https://freetouse.com/music/massobeats/lavender
honey jam by massobeats: https://freetouse.com/music/massobeats/honey-jam
Source: https://freetouse.com/music
Music for Video (Free Download)
https://youtu.be/X_vUn50ZJto