Ladies Lunch

On Fridays I teach two lovely ladies - Ayumi and Satomi - at the Yashima school. It rarely feels like work because they're so fun and we can talk about literally anything, plus about once a month we have lunch together after our lesson! Akiko, the franchise owner, came too, but sadly she's not pictured here. This was a restaurant Ayumi recommended - her friend turned the downstairs of her house into a cafe. The decor was so warm and relaxing . . . we could have stayed there all day. And the menu . . .

If you make a reservation, you can have this special macrobiotics lunch, which means there are no animal products used and no added sugar. Let's see if I can identify all of these tasty little delicacies. Starting on the bottom left and moving counter clockwise: steamed/sauteed tofu and vegetables, brown rice and red beans, burdock and lotus root, miso soup, tofu with pesto sauce (you can't really see it behind the miso), salad made with vegetables from the cook's mother's garden, koyadofu (a kind of dried tofu) wrapped in seaweed and lightly fried with a miso and applesauce spread, dried and fresh shredded daikon radish, and sweet potatoes with another kind of seaweed topping. I ate it all (go me) and it was soooooo delish!

Then we had coffee served on these cute little trays with fresh flowers (!), a macrobiotics carrot cookie, and a plate of "happy sweets." I guess "happy" means "naughty," because they weren't on the macrobiotics menu. :) This included a banana muffin, cheesecake with tomato jam, and a Pione grape (yes, singular). Amazing! The lady who owns the place and does most of the cooking said her husband makes desserts for a hobby, and the cheesecake was his creation. She said he stays up to the wee hours of the morning reading recipe books. Man after my own heart . . .