日報

I'm not losing weight.
I thought I would.
I knew it was getting harder to lose weight the older I got, but still.

Before I started kikkake, I was a salaryman with a desk job,
I ate ramen for lunch almost every day, and I often ate before bed.

Now, including YouTube shoots and product shoots, I cook almost every day and eat what I make.
I hardly ever eat out, and I don't cook late at night, so I eat dinner earlier than before.

So, I had high hopes that maybe something would happen, but
there's absolutely no change.

I imagined bragging here, "I lost weight after I started cooking for myself!" but
it doesn't seem like that's going to happen anytime soon.

I wonder why.
All I'm doing is making and eating as much of the food I want to eat as I want.

Three months have passed since the kikkake online store opened. Thank you very much to everyone who has viewed and placed orders.

Over these past three months, I've been busy cooking and taking photos. As this is my first online store, I've noticed many things since its launch that I hadn't anticipated, and there were many instances where I thought, "We should have done this too."

So, I decided to do a minor renewal and change the look of the top page. It's already changed, so I assume you've seen it, but I've changed product images from squares to vertical rectangles, added icons like [new] and [restock], and included the latest YouTube and daily links, among other small changes. I hope these adjustments have made the site easier to browse.

As the site has just launched, I hope to continue evolving it, and I would be delighted if you enjoy browsing.

If you have any specific requests for elements you'd like to see, or for cooking and product photos, please feel free to send your feedback to info@kikkake-store.com.

When guests come over, you'd naturally think that the best hospitality dish to serve is one you're always making and are best at.

However, in reality, I feel like I often end up making a challenging dish I've never prepared before.

After thinking about why, it seems the trap lies in the word "special."

The dishes I always make are delicious and my favorites, but for me, they're just "normal," everyday meals. I wonder if I end up thinking they're not suitable for a "special" occasion.

If we consider everyday cooking as practice and hospitality dishes as a game, it's impossible to succeed in a game by suddenly trying a technique you've never practiced.

Even though I know this, I still diligently prepare broth from scratch early in the morning because guests are coming, only for it to turn into a flavor I've never tasted before, and I end up thinking, "Huh?"

When it comes to a "game," you just can't help but put your all into it, can you?

The quality of frozen gyoza is too high. Starting with AJINOMOTO's frozen gyoza, there are many different kinds of frozen gyoza on the market now, and they are all incredibly high quality and delicious. And they're cheap! Too cheap.

I think I make handmade gyoza often, but if you add up the necessary ingredients like ground pork, gyoza wrappers, and vegetables, the cost ends up being almost the same. So, when considering the effort involved in making them, I feel that frozen gyoza are more cost-effective.

When thinking about the advantages of handmade gyoza, I used to think it was just being able to customize the filling to my liking. However, a new appeal of handmade gyoza has emerged.

The gyoza I made in the recent YouTube series "20-Minute Evening Snacks" used gyoza wrappers sold at a nearby noodle shop, and these wrappers were surprisingly thick. Since I had only ever used gyoza wrappers sold in supermarkets, I didn't have much choice regarding thickness and hadn't really paid attention to it, but these thick gyoza wrappers were quite good. As expected from a noodle shop's wrappers, the wrappers themselves had a chewy texture and fresh flavor different from regular gyoza wrappers. It was a new sensation to eat gyoza while being more conscious of the wrapper's texture.

Frozen gyoza when I'm short on time, and handmade gyoza on weekends when I have more time. I think it's fun to have more options.

I got a pasta maker, so I tried making pasta from scratch. Making noodles from flour was a lot of fun. "I kneaded flour and it turned into noodles!" It's obvious when you think about it, but the surprise and emotion of "I can't believe flour actually turns into noodles!" was really enjoyable.

I'll be showing how I made it in a YouTube video that will be released this Saturday, so I'd be happy if you could watch it.

This time, to make pasta, I bought "semolina flour." I'd been curious about it for a while, but if you look at the ingredients list on the back of dried pasta, they all say the same thing:

Ingredients: Durum wheat semolina

I have no idea what that means. I understand it's wheat, but beyond that, I wondered if it was a place of origin, a type, or a processing method.

Title: Demon Kakka's Serenade

With this, I'd know it was a new love song from Seikima-II, but with "durum wheat semolina," I have no idea what's what.

Since it was a good opportunity, I looked it up and found that "durum" is a type of wheat, and "semolina" means coarsely ground flour. Durum wheat is harder and more yellow than other wheats, and it's suitable for pasta because it retains its firmness and shape even after boiling. I see! I learned something new!

I thought maybe it would be clearer if I changed the wording, and after thinking about it, I wonder if this is easier to understand?

Ingredients: Wheat "durum" semolina method

It doesn't really change much, does it?

What is it about fireworks that makes them so wonderful?
It's a struggle just to see fireworks.
You have to prepare thoroughly beforehand,
the venue is packed,
so you have to go early because it's so crowded,
you sweat profusely because of the heat,
and getting to the restroom, food, or a place to sit
is all incredibly difficult,
leaving a strong impression of hardship.

But once the fireworks go up,
you're moved by how much bigger and more beautiful they are than you imagined,
and by the sensation of the difference between the light and sound in your body.
After the show, you forget all the hardship,
and you find yourself wanting to see them again next year. That feeling.

In the intense heat of summer,
there's a unique melancholic feeling at dusk.
From that, the large fireworks launched into the night sky
are glamorous, magnificent, and continuously moving,
but it's strange that there's always a slight sadness.

Is it because the beginning already contains a little bit of the end
that we feel a bit of sadness from the moment they start?
Even that feeling of sadness feels good to me,
which is why I really love fireworks.

This was just me talking about something I like,
completely unrelated to cooking.