Fish!

Last Saturday, the family woke up early and got ready for a fun day in the sun.  We put on some comfy shoes and headed out for the March for Babies walk.  We were almost to Kadena when a big, nasty storm rolled in.

We waited but the weather didn't clear.  Normally I'm not one to ditch out just because of bad weather, but a double jogger with a rain cover = one big wind sail and I didn't want the boys getting blown around.  So we headed over to American Village for donuts then playing at Mihama Kid's.  While we were waiting for Mister Donut to open, we walked around Aeon's super market.  

The first thing we smelled - a wonderful bakery!  They also had a nice produce section - a little spendy but everything looked delicious.  I made a mental note of the Okinawan goat cheese.  Then we spotted the fish section - so much better than the sad little frozen packages at the commissary!

Today we headed back and picked up a few treats:

Yummy salmon!

Although most of the salmon (サーモン) was sliced into small pieces (I'm guessing for sashimi and sushi), we picked up a couple fillets.

The majority of the meat section was different fish, both whole and sliced.  Owen had fun seeing いか (ika - squid), えび (ebi - shrimp), and たこ (tako - octopus).  I'm not sure what kind of fish/sauce this is (haven't heard of a hokke before), but it looked good so I figured why not.

Mystery meat

I also got my goat cheese:

Cheese!

I let Owen pick out a few packages of cheese too.  So far, I've figured out that the little pink one has iron (Fe) added and the blue is a cream cheese.  Tomorrow I'm toasting up some sourdough and having a little taste tasting.  The round one from Kraft says that it's blueberry cheese cake (チーズケーキ) and I looked up Petit Gateau (a chocolate cake), but this doesn't seem to be an actual cake.  I'm going to try spreading it on some toast at breakfast, maybe that'll be better than just eating it alone.

For dinner, we prepared the salmon in our broiler.  I definitely over-cooked it (next time I'm thinking just a few minutes on each side).  Although we'd like to try a more Japanese recipe soon (maybe something like this), tonight we topped the salmon off with our favorite beurre blanc sauce and dill.



UPDATE:  by the time I confirmed that hokke (ほっけ) is the atka mackerel, I wasn't feeling that adventurous and ended up throwing the fish away.  Maybe next time.

The Okinawan goat cheese was more like a brie than chevre or feta.  It had a soft rind and a strong flavor.  I'm not a fan of heavy brie cheeses (or the nearly 1600 yen price tag), so I won't be getting it again.

The other cheeses: Hubby agreed that the Kraft "cheese cake" was just blueberry cream cheese.  Not bad on something like a bagel, but not so much just for nibbling on.  The smoked baby cheese was not good (fake flavor, weird texture) and the iron fortified cheese wasn't much better.  The Snow Brand baby cheese (雪印ベビーチーズ) was actually pretty tasty.

Also, I hate it when I come across blog posts about new adventures and no practical instructions (eg maps, directions, links to websites, ect).  But I always seem to get turned around and lost in American Village, so I don't want to lead anyone astray with my poor driving skills.  The Aeon is just off 58 near Camp Lester (this is a map to the Starbucks inside the Aeon mall).  The super market is on the first floor (if you enter near the Starbucks, the super market is to the left).