More Pasta!

I learned some new things about pasta!

First, I learned that adding balsamic vinegar to tomato sauce tastes excellent. My brother sent me some balsamic vinegar from Italy a few years ago, and I recently started using that vinegar in my marinara sauce. It makes the sauce taste tangy and a bit sour. I like it a lot. I also like to dip baguette into my balsamic vinegar, and then into olive oil. That's good too.

Recently, I haven't been boiling my pasta in water. I've been adding it directly into the sauce, and cooking it there! It takes a bit more time, but when I do this, I don't have to use an extra pot. Plus, the pasta absorbs the flavor of the sauce. I had no idea that there were so many ways to make pasta!

My First Car

My first car ever was a Honda Accord LXi from 1989 or so... I got it when I was 17, and drove it to school every day. When my dad bought a new car a few years later, I got his old one, which was a Toyota Cressida. It was fun to drive and had a lot of luxuries like a CD player and a 6-cylinder engine, but it eventually broke down. After that, I inherited my mom's old (but not as old as the first one) Honda Accord. This one lasted until I moved to Japan, and I haven't bought a new car since then.

Marinara Sauce

I like marinara sauce, and make it almost twice a week for my pasta. What do you put in your marinara sauce? I use:

Garlic
Onions
Olive Oil
Red Wine
Basil
Oregano
Tomatoes (of course) - fresh and canned

I noticed that if you fry the garlic and onions in the olive oil before you add the tomatoes, it tastes very good. Lately, I've been adding eggplant too. Eggplants absorb the flavor of the sauce very well.

99-cent Stores

It's very convenient that our school is across the street from Seria, one of several "hyakuen shoppu" in Fujinomiya. Of course, we have similar stores in the US, but they're different in subtle ways. In my experience, 99-cent stores in the US carry more food and toys; whereas in Japan, these types of stores carry lots of dishes and random household goods such as dish detergent and cutlery. I didn't usually go to 99-cent stores when I lived in the US; since I didn't like most of the food, and I was too old for the toys. I do visit them when I go back on vacation, though.

New Carpet!

Take a look around next time you come to our school - the carpets are all new! We went to Jumbo Encho in Fuji and bought a lot of those tile carpet squares. They're more expensive than regular carpet, but we can replace them more easily if someone spills a drink on them. Still - please don't spill drinks on them!

Some of our students went to live abroad last month. We miss them, and hope they're having a good time. If those students are reading this from England and the US, "Hello!" from Anna and I!