Regarding weather or not the meat is too old, I will have to agree with people saying "If in doubt - toss it".
Fuck, getting this smell out of my apartment will probably take weeks.

I thought I could try making ramen today. I quickly changed my mind after discovering it's a rocket science.

I finally got my hands on some chicken, so I actually made some chicken carcass stock for my miso soups. I didn't trust its taste at first, but when the whole miso soup was made, it did taste really good.
As it can already be inferred, I haven't given up on my Japanese cuisine month and probably will extend it, since I won't be able to use up all the ingredients I bought. So far it has been an adventure. I have no health problems to report and absolutely everything I made was either edible or tasted plain awesome. Now that I`m a bit more familiar with the recipes, I can conclude, that many dishes I previously thought to be japanese delicacies are actually what they eat on daily basis (I still don't really understand why daikon radish is so popular among the Japanese?)
Regarding availability...well, that's quite a bother here in Latvia. While most ingredients are inexpensive, especially if you aren't just buying them for one meal, there are several ingredients that are quite costy or hard to obtain, especially with regards to spices. I still haven't tried tofu as it's so damn expensive and finding ingredients for dashi is such a pain in the ass (why do shops even sell miso pasta if they don't sell anything to make dashi out of?). I can't say I have paid for food much more than I do other months, BUT i usually buy all kinds of crap to eat while watching movies/anime. This month I only bought what was necessary for 2 decent meals a day. As far as I can understand, everything I bought is much cheaper and tastier in Japan.
Would I jump to the opportunity to successfully live in Japan because of their cuisine alone? Yes, yes I would!

Valentine's day

Damn busy morning. Quick breakfest and I`m off to my damn sweetheart. WTF am I doing anyway!?

It's a shitty pic with shitty bento, I know

Cheap chopsticks

Sweet as fuck wine.

It has started. I haven't gotten down all the recipes I require yet, but I don't think that it will be a problem, because, judging by how much money I just wasted in RIMI, I can't really afford to eat 3 meals a day. And even that is not a real problem. I just made my first meal, that didn't taste all THAT good, due to lack of spices, but it was edible. The important thing is, it had so many nutrients and vitamins that I could live with one such meal a day. In fact, I did start noticing that I feel much better right after finishing it. I guess my body really needed those vitamins.
There are still several rare but important ingredients I need. I think I will need to scour the city a bit. I just wish I had the time for it.
Wish me luck. Wish me fortune.

I have finally decided to do something really new and ambiguous...well, at least for me. I have decided to do a Japanese Cuisine Month. It may not be as exciting as it sounds, I`m not going to make a new Japanese dish every day for an entire month - that would be insanely expensive and require more time than I`m willing to offer. Instead, for one month, I will eat the way Japanese do. I mean what they eat daily, not just delicacies. What's even better, I have a high chance of actually saving up some money that way, as for the most part they eat rice and vegetables only, which aren't all that expensive. However, with rice comes along my first obstacle - I will require A LOT of rice and a sane choice would be to buy a rice cooker, which aren't as easy to find in Latvia. Regardless, if everything goes as planned, I may start it up somewhere next month, after getting my salary.

THIS SHIT is AWESOME SHIT !
Try it now!

On related news, I`m continuing to study up on my Japanese finally. Ja Sensei really does help. Though I only do it while commuting for now, so it's not moving along too seriously. I do have some ideas in store to move it a step further, but that's for another time.

And yeah, my damn sweetheart will probably just say that I`m predictable, but: I finally tried out Sake (Choya Sake to be more precise). It's weak and has an odd taste, but it's quite good in combination with spicy foods. At least that's the impression I got from it. Not everyone agrees with me.

Just remembered that I completely forgot to write a review on my experience with Chinese restaurant.

Together with my usual partners, we decided to visit a Chinese restaurant and did so on 14.12.2012. Our restaurant of choice was Ginger (see attached location), mostly thanks to the location, but also the reviews weren't as bad and they did have a nice deal of 50% off everything on Fridays in December.
To put it short - it wasn't a regrettable decision.
To elaborate, let's start with the food. It was our first time having anything Chinese so I wasn't sure what to expect. We managed to order 3 different portions with 3 different kinds of meat, with seafood included. Thanks to the Chinese tradition of serving one big portion on 1 separate plate, from which you put stuff on your own, I managed to taste-test everything and I`m now in awe of Asian culinary. I did like Japanese sushi better, but if I had to bring someone to a restaurant and raw fish wouldn't be an option, a Chinese restaurant would be my second choice.
The restaurant was filled with colorful lanterns and our seats were put on a kind of elevation (I think it resembled some kind of a boat harbor or something). It was enough to put up a nice setting girls would most definitely enjoy, but, above that, it didn't feel cramped there. I dislike most restaurants because I always feel somewhat cramped there and thus can't relax, but Ginger didn't have that vibe on me.
I will, have, have to deduce a point for service. The boy that served us didn't really seem very professional. I mean, he was trying to be nice and did know his stuff, but he just wasn't a professional waiter and didn't really know how to handle customers. Not that it matter to me much, but there are lots of people for whom it does matter.

Here is a bad quality photo of my damn sweetheart and  Armands, as
we were leaving.