Japanese Home-style cooking for Seattleites?

People who are not familiar with Japanese cuisines may think Japanese food is expensive and Japanese people often eat Sushi , Teriyaki, Tempura and Sukiyaki. People in Japan eat fancy Sushi with fresh fish only special occasions. Japanese love variety of food. They eat not only Japanese but more international meals like people in Seattle. Chinese, Korean, and Italian food are popular and have evolved to meet taste of Japanese. For example, you may find pasta cooked with fish eggs, Shiso(Japanese herb) and Soy source at restaurants specialized pasta in Japan. Japanese people love Chinese dishes and pot stickers are one of Japanese favorite. I bought a Japanese cookbook about various Pot sticker recipes. In Japan, most wives stay home and one of their jobs is to cook for her family within the budget. The family eats at home most of the time and family meals at home are different from ones at the restaurants. My mother used to be very creative to cook supper for her family of four when she didn’t have much money on the day before her husband’s pay-day. Once she cooked Tempura made of dried anchovies (usually used for Japanese soup stock) with vegetables whatever she found in the fridge or her garden. It was tasty and nutritious although it was made of leftovers and didn’t make me feel poor.
It may be hard for someone from foreign country to experience Japanese home cooked meal unless you have Japanese friend who invites you to their home or their parents’ home in Japan. I love to introduce Seattleite how to make inexpensive home style Japanese food and incorporate into their home cooking. Other day, I visited to a community center nearby my house asked if I can teach Japanese home-style cooking class. Two of employees at the center were very interested in the class. I was asked to create and send proposal include budget, my fee and recipes for the class. He suggested series of classes instead of one. I considered relatively easy to make, inexpensive and/or well know Japanese dishes. Also I consider nutritiously balanced menus. Here are menus which I proposed:
Proposed menu
Class1 Rice, Miso soup, Chicken Teriyaki, and salad
Class2 Chicken Donburi and Sunomono(Sweet and sour vegetables)
Class3 Japanese Curried Rice using curry sauce
Class4 Sushi rolls (Possible Vegetalian)
Class5 Rice balls and baked Chicken
Class6 Chicken Udon Noodle soup
Class7 Tempura(some Vegetarian)
Class8 Delicious Vegetarian Japanese dishes
I proposed to buy common ingredients before starting the first class to be used throughout classes include Calrose rice, Soy source, Rice vinegar and sea salt. The estimate budget of these costs $75. Then buy fresh ingredients for the each class at the day of the class. The estimate budget of these costs $35/class. It will serve 6-8 people.
I was going to include Sukiyaki and Katsu. I eliminated Sukiyaki because it requires so many ingredients and beef will use up most of the budget. Katsu will be OK but I include Tempura over Katsu.
I am going to bring this idea to various community centers and senior centers. Hopefully I start sharing my knowledge of Japanese cooking to Seattleites who love to cook soon.

Do you make your bread or buy it from the store?

<-On the left my successful bread.

I love my bread-maker. It is convenient to make dough. In less than 2 hours after I dump all ingredients in it, the bread-maker mixes them, knead and raise the dough while I am doing something else. After testing various recipes and making hard or dry bread several times and, I now can make edible tender fresh and tasty bread. Recently I often bake my own bread to save money and save trip to the store. The bread from large bakery doesn’t taste good as home-made except some expensive healthy and artesian bread and one from small bakeries. I found a package of days old store bought bread. It is 12 Grain bread from major bakery. I looked closely at the package. On the package the letters says, No cholesterol, Low in fat, the good bread. I guess it doesn’t say delicious or tasty.
This bread was left on the counter top in my kitchen more than a week and there are no sign of mold or being old. My home made bread would be hard or moldy in 2-3 days after it was baked. Let’s look at the ingredients on the package. There are so many ingredients listed. They are many kinds of flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin mononitrate, Riboflavin, folic acid, water, High fructose corn syrup, …. , dough conditioner(sodium stearoyl lactyate monoglycerydes, calcium sulfate, enzymes, ammonium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide),….calcium propionate(mold inhibitor), soy flour, nonfat and dry milk. The bread doesn’t get mold because it include mold inhibitor. Does it change the taste of bread? How about dough conditioner? What is dough conditioner?
I agree this bread includes some healthy ingredients such as soy flower and brown rice among many unknown ingredients. I am not sure all these ingredients are natural and healthy though.
My plain home-made bread usually made of, flour (Un-breached enriched white, bread flower, wheat, barley, or such.), milk or water, oil or/and butter, sugar, salt, and active yeast. Some times I add sour cream or yogurt. Comparing with 38 ingredients listed above( see phtos) my bread only contains 6-10 ingredients. Pizza dough can be made of only bread flour, olive oil, salt, water, and active yeast. Making my bread is time consuming even using bread-maker. It will take 3-4 hours. When I need to include bread in the menu and didn’t have time to bake one, I buy bread. I often look at the label to find out the ingredients of the bread.Some bread from stores doesn’t contain suspicious ingredients or some chemical compounds and are natural, healthy, and delicious. I buy some bread from Costco bakery. I sometimes buy bread from a local Italian bakery which bakes their bread with traditional way although their bread doesn’t taste as good and gets dry the next day. Healthy bread such as artesian bread or Italian bread made of only natural ingredients are available but they are costly, Inexpensive way to serve healthy delicious bread is to find a failsafe recipe and bake my own bread. Also I feel safe to know what are in the bread.

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FumikoB’s wheat bread using bread-maker

Ingredients:
1 1/8 cup Milk or water
2 Tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil
3 cups of flour (any variety of flour will do but more bread flour does better. Ex: 2 cups Bread flour and 1 cup of wheat flour.)
2 tsp Active yeast
2 TBSP sour cream(Optional but this will make bread moist.)
Cooking instruction
Add all ingredients to bread pan in bread maker.
Set dough setting and make dough.
Take dough and punch down.
Divide the dough into equal two pieces.
Roll the dough into large balls and place into the loaf pan.
Raise it the warm place until double in the volume.
Preheat oven 375 degree.
Bake bread until top browned for about 30 minutes.