日報

When I was little, I didn't really like nabe dishes.
No, I didn't like them at all.

Everything tasted like ponzu,
I couldn't find anything to eat with white rice,
And when it came to Yudofu,
I was at my wit's end because it only contained tofu and leafy greens.

Time has passed, and now, nabe is great.
It makes you feel the arrival of winter, warms you up, and is light to eat.
It's also easy to make, which is another plus.
Infuse it with the flavor of the broth,
And adding a little yuzu kosho makes the aroma wonderful.
While debating whether to have udon or zosui to finish,
Today, let's add an egg and make it egg zosui.

When did my preferences change, I wonder?
Perhaps it was after I started cooking it myself.

It's said that children perceive sourness and bitterness more strongly,
But nabe has neither sourness nor bitterness,
So I don't know why I came to like it, but
Nabe is the best!

This is a story from when I was in junior high school.
There was an extracurricular activity where we went to a BBQ site and each group made their favorite dish.

The dishes each group would make were decided in advance, and a paper with the list was distributed to everyone. As I was glancing through it, I noticed that among the dishes for my friend's group were "sandwiches" and "fried bread crusts."

The moment I saw that, I immediately realized, "Oh, that's what we ate at my house the other day."

I remembered my friend saying it was delicious back then, and I'd also heard our mothers talking.
"How do you make this sandwich?"
"Just sprinkle this powder on it."

The sandwich, and the leftover bread crusts fried in oil and sprinkled with sugar as a snack. They were dishes that often appeared at our house, and I liked them because they were delicious. But learning through the extracurricular activity that my friend genuinely enjoyed them made me incredibly happy.

And later, I would discover that the "magic powder" sprinkled on the sandwich was actually just "Crazy Salt," a regular seasoning sold in supermarkets. But even now, I still believe that if I sprinkle this on food, it will turn out okay—that it's truly a magic powder.

I hope that even now, for my friend, it's still a magic powder.

Cooking while being filmed makes me nervous.
To be exact, it used to make me nervous.

It's obvious, but when I'm being filmed, I feel shy, nervous, and self-conscious because I'm being watched by the camera and the person filming, Konegi.

Since I had never experienced anyone watching me cook before, I think I felt a sense of novelty and bewilderment for a while when it came to receiving instructions or discussing things while cooking.

A year has passed since I started YouTube, and I've pretty much stopped getting nervous while filming.

Cooking while being aware of being watched, repeatedly reflecting after watching the finished videos, I think I've become much better at cooking over this past year.

Especially for things that are visible, like cutting straight, cutting at equal intervals, or plating, I think I've improved quite a bit.

I've really come to feel again that being watched and being self-conscious is a shortcut to improvement.

I want to get even better!

Since I started using kikkake, there's something I've been seeing a lot more of, both on YouTube and online shops. It's my own hands.

I never really looked at my hands except when watching TV shows about palmistry or when cutting my nails, but when I look at them again, various things start to bother me.

Are my nails too long? Do I have hangnails? Are my hands rough? Are the wrinkles bothering me? And so on.

I've even started applying hand cream, something I rarely did, so I think my hands are cleaner than last year.

There's a common saying that if you expose a part of your body, that part will change, and it's starting to feel true.

The parts you expose become visible. When you see them, they start to bother you. When they bother you, a force works to change them. Since this is happening with my own hands right now, I felt that it must be true.

So, if I wore slightly more fitted clothes, would I lose a little weight? No, I'm too embarrassed. So, I guess I won't change. *Sigh*

Today marks one year since I started my YouTube channel.

While the company kikkake was established a little earlier, I consider November 10, 2024, the day I started YouTube, to be the most special, so I've taken the liberty of designating today as kikkake's anniversary.

I started YouTube with the feeling of "let's do what we can first" before launching the kikkake online store, and I realized I've published 53 videos in one year.

I couldn't have done this without all of you who always watch my YouTube videos and use the kikkake online store. Thank you again for always watching.

Wow, I made so many videos in one year! I could count the number of videos, but counting the number of dishes seemed a bit impossible.

I started "kikkake" with the hope of sharing my favorite dishes, tableware, and cooking utensils in an enjoyable way, and with the desire to create a shop to sell them. Although it's still early days, I hope to continue to take on various challenges so that kikkake can be a "spark" for you to enjoy food even more.

The goals for kikkake's second year are to reach 100,000 YouTube channel subscribers, expand the online store, and steadily prepare to eventually have a physical shop.

I look forward to your continued support in our second year!

I love cooking while listening to music because it's just the right amount of distraction. Especially when I'm doing a repetitive task for a long time, like sautéing onions or wrapping dumplings, it almost feels like it boosts my efficiency.

With TV or YouTube, I tend to get distracted and my eyes wander, so music is just right.

I remember feeling in my previous job that music was essential for tasks that required time but not a lot of thought, like endlessly packing something.

Similarly, when I was knitting, listening to music or chatting felt just right. I used to think, without actually knowing, that the part of the brain used for knitting and the language center used for talking must be different. I wonder if that's actually true.

On the other hand, when I'm writing, I can't listen to music. Especially with Japanese music, the lyrics get into my head and my writing hand tends to stop.

Among all that, only Mr. Children and Sakanaction, because I've listened to them so much, don't affect me when I listen to them while working, so I sometimes put them on when I want to block out other sounds.

After writing all this, you might think "what?", but lately, cooking has become so much fun that I can enjoy the subtle changes in the sizzling sounds, so I might be listening to music less often.

I love the moment when the moisture evaporates from stir-fries and the sound changes to the sizzle of oil.