Homemade recipes, Arin Krin (The Garlic House), The Olive, Taj Okinawa, and potty training!

Fun things have been happening at the Goddard house this fall! Every day seems like an adventure when you live abroad anyway so these might seem small, but they are fun to us!

Potty training happened this October and really only took a few days for Little E to understand. I’m really glad we waited until the move was over and we were settled. She and I tried earlier this year but it was not successful and we were both crying by day two!! With a few simple tricks and a bit more maturity (on both our parts :)), we were ready this time! I took some pics to remember our week of staying inside the house!! Here is the potty station in the living room (it’s still set up).

I closed off the Tatami room (typically her playroom) because it has traditional grass mats and I didn’t want any accidents on them! Here’s the barricade. Occasionally she’d climb up and look over the barricade like some Les Miserables scene.

We let the toys run rampant that week!

On another note, we’ve been having food adventures as well. Making new food, going out to new restaurants has been exciting!

Here are some healthy wheat and sunflower pancakes (a recipe I got from my sister-n-law, Dani) and pomegranate jam made and sent straight from my sister Kristi in California!

On a walk to the local mall (Aeon) we decided to get dinner! Venders inside the mall sell the best garlic chicken! We also have some sort of cheese bread and a pizza muffin. SO unhealthy!

My friend, Evie from Oregon posted on Facebook about making some scones which REALLY made me want some so, wa la…homemade blueberry scones.

I had a hankering for gyros (I frequently get this hankering now) but we don’t have any ground lamb so I have to make it out of ground beef. I also don’t want to slave over making pita bread (actually homemade naan is better in my opinion) so I use tortillas in a pinch. It’s not NEARLY the same as those in the Agora of Athens, but with a little homemade tzatziki sauce, it kills the craving!

Adam and I really want to try this little ramen shop here in Awase but we keep forgetting that it’s closed on Thursdays. I was really looking forward to it a few weeks ago and decided I would just make my own. Top Ramen from the states hurts my stomach (probably the MSG in it) so I went and made my own broth by just making up what sounded good to me. AWESOME results!

We went to Arin Krin (aka The Garlic House) with our friends, Shelley and Jared, a couple of weeks ago…SO tasty! I’m going again and will order the garlic pizza yet again!

Now this (on the other hand) was not a pleasant find! We tried out a restaurant just down the street called The Olive. The food was alright, but not something we would want again. We tried mochi there for the first time as our dessert. Bleh! Mochi is rice pounded into a flour and made into a paste. Then it’s formed into balls and filled with flavored creams. We tried green tea and caffe au lait. They had the consistency of marshmallows but were not very good. Bland marshmallows…

Now THIS was AWESOME!! After a day at the Peace Memorial, we were hungry and looking for a Jamaican joint that Adam chose (it was his turn, after all) down by Kadena Gate 2. There was some kind of festival going on and traffic was a nightmare. We got lost, got stuck in traffic, I took some of the paint off the car while parking illegally, and we were mad at each other! We decided to go home…then I decided we should try TAJ Okinawa (an indian curry place I pass every time Little E has Japanese class). SO glad we did! The palao was amazing, the naan was huge (still snacking on it today), Adam loved his curry and the tandoori chicken knocked my socks off (with spice). I actually ate an entire salad too bc it was so good! We will be returning.