So for the first time in a long time, Kuniko had both days of the weekend off. We tried to make them count, and fit in the maximum amount of relaxation into those two days.
Friday night we went out to Mikaen, our old standby Chinese restaurant. They have moved their original shop into a new location, and now it is more centrally located and easier to find. The food was great as usual, and we tried a couple of new dishes that were unusual. Didn’t try the dog this time, though. Maybe next time.
We were pretty tired after dinner, so instead of staying out late in Sannomiya we did a tiny bit of shopping and then went on home.
Saturday we had the chance to sleep in and really enjoy it. We didn’t really get up until 9 am, which is a good 4-5 hours past when we normally wake up on the weekdays. The temperature and the season is perfect right now for laying in bed, and I think we took advantage of it.
We did some regular grocery shopping in the morning, and then came back home, rolled up our sleeves, and went outside to weed the garden. We’ve been calling it the “black forest” out there, and finally we made some progress in clearing it out. Next we cleaned the house inside, the place was looking perfect by the afternoon. We had some truffle salt omelettes for lunch with sparkling wine for lunch, and then settled in to watch a couple of movies. Very relaxing.
For dinner we tried our hand at making a Francesinha sandwich. We had several in Portugal, and they were really good. We did a pretty good job with the re-creation. We only had two kinds of meat inside – steak and sliced garlic sausage – but the flavor was quite good. I’m not sure if we got the sauce exactly right, but it was delicious nonetheless. Together with a bottle of Spanish red – yum.
Sunday we slept in again, and then we took a walk out to the beach. I’m always up for a trip to the ocean, and it doesn’t take long to walk there. I slipped off my flipflops and walked in the waves and they were surprisingly warm. Lots of good shells and stones on the beach, too. We had blue sky all day on Sunday, which was a surprise – the weather forecast had predicted rain.
On our way back from the beach we stopped at the local furniture store and bought some replacement pillows. Since we had been sweating all summer our old pillows needed a refresh. Then we did some last minute snack shopping and went home.
In the afternoon I received my new mobile phone, replacing my three year old iphone. While I spent time setting it up and getting it operational, Kuniko was busy in the kitchen baking all sorts of goodies. She made maple cookies, chocolate scones, and cheese, bacon and onion bread. All of them were great, and I had the privilege of being able to sample the results.
For dinner we experimented again, this time with tiny little wraps of goat cheese, mint and honey that we baked in the oven. We had extra wraps, so we made a pizza version with a red basilico sauce with Edam cheese. They turned out quite nicely. Since they were baked and not fried they were marginally healthier than what we had first tasted in France, but I liked them a lot.
After dinner we watched one more movie, “Captain America Winter Soldier”, but it was way over the top in terms of action, explosions, and bombastic stories. Maybe something a little more subtle would have served better for the evening.
Now we are back to work, but Kuniko has Tuesday off of work. On Tuesday evening we’ll probably get together with Kuniko’s family and have dinner in Himeji. It all depends on Kuniko’s father’s doctor appointment today – if he gets the OK we’ll be ready to celebrate with him tomorrow.
