Pumpkin muffins...

This morning one of my pregnancy apps had a recipe for pumpkin muffins as a good source of vitamins during pregnancy. Well, they sounded so nice (and easy!) that I had to give the recipe a try.

Problems that I faced?? No muffin pan! Also, no canned pumpkin. And... last, no dried ginger! However, this did not deter me. First of all... if Amy has taught me via her blog is that you can rearrange recipes to fit the implements that you have! So, I decided to make a muffin-like cake with one of my rectangular pans (smaller than 9x13, but not sure the size...).

One thing that is quite nice about living in Japan is that in the fall there's lots of "pumpkins" to be had. Now, Japanese pumpkins don't look ANYTHING like their American counterparts, they look like this instead. So, I picked up a quarter of a pumpkin up at the store (one from Mexico, funnily enough!) and decided that I could steam and mash it for the muffin-cake.

It came out AWESOME! There was lots of cinnamon and nutmeg in the recipe and I improvised on the ginger by using oroshi ginger... it's more or less mushed up and mixable ginger. The ginger is great for sauces and dressings and things.

And the final result??

Seriously dangerous! I will probably freeze some for snacks later... and to prevent me from eating too much of it before Saturday (aka next doctors appointment).

Now that I know how well my oven does with baking... I will baking much more in the future. I just haven't found a recipe that was easy enough that I wanted to try! :-)
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I LOVE Ikea!!

Yesterday, Shimon and I rented a car to do a bit of shopping. It may sound strange, but it's much less painful to have a car when you go to certain stores... Ikea and Costco are two such stores.

Our trip to Ikea was a HUGE success. I knew that I wanted to check out the kids and baby section because I hadn't really had a chance (or reason) to do so up until now. There was so much! There were beds, furniture, sheets, duvets, clothes, stuffed animals and more! Sadly I didn't have the dimensions of the baby bed that we're going to get so I had to skip getting sheets or a duvet. But I did manage to find some other fun things...

Here we have a blanket, a crib bumper, and a snake rattle. Note: they all match!! :-)

Baby towel with a hood... and a random character... who knows what that's supposed to be, Either way, it's cute, but not cutesy.

This is something still in the package (and flipped the wrong way, my picture viewer was not cooperating!)... it's this neat wearable sleeping bag kind of thing. Since our little bundle will be joining us in winter, I figured it might be handy. 

So I officially LOVE Ikea! And what was most remarkable was the fact that we only spent 2 hours walking through the store and making our purchases. I was quite surprised as it was a national holiday... I thought it would be much worse. Turns out Costco was the worse place... but I won't get into that!

Food safety, Japan and Pregnancy

As many of you may know, eating during pregnancy is a bit different than eating when it's just for one. Thinking about how many grams of protein, how many servings of green veggies to eat, etc. There's a lot to process and keep tabs on.
Now, you may remember that in March of this year there was a large earthquake and tsunami that decimated large areas of Japan. It happened to have been one of the largest earthquakes in recorded history and was certainly the largest quake I've ever felt. Then there was that little thing at the nuclear plant in Fukushima.
Those of us living here are used to following the radiation updates and the news from that area.

The biggest problem for me as a pregnant woman in Japan has been food safety. Though foods are on the shelves, especially produce, some come from areas that are banned for import by the US. I figure it's good to avoid buying that produce for the time being. What's the problem, you ask? The majority of produce is coming out of the areas considered to be dangerous these days!
The Japanese are quite big on buying local... many areas are well known for certain types of fruits and vegetables and a lot of the local areas happen to be in the area not far from the nuclear plants. What kinds of things do I have to avoid, you may ask. Carrots, cabbage, spinach and other greens, strawberries, some types of onions, napa cabbage... the list goes on! And that's just fruits/veggies... then there's pork and chicken and beef that are all coming from somewhat suspicious areas.

This may sound like a big whine-y post, but... I just envy the people who don't have to worry about radiation right now! It would be so nice to be able to buy whatever it is that I fancy to eat on any given day, without having to worry about the safety of the food I'm buying!