Going back to school, I’m now working less. Since I’m back to being a poor student, I’m trying to cut down eating out and spending less. I still want to blog about food so I thought, why not blog about some of the meals that I cook at home? I’m not very good at cooking so I’m not knowledgeable enough to post recipes and what not, but I certainly love cooking and taking pictures of it.

When I went to Japan, I tried this udon at cooked food and sweets floor at the bottom of department stores. They were sampling udon, the tsuyu and broth and it was so good that we went back on our last full day in Japan to bring some back. They were low on stock unfortunately when we went back so I ended up buying them out of their udon.

There’s this superstition (tradition?) in Japan where moms will make katsudon for their kids for dinner the night before a big exam as “katsu” means to “win”. So just like telling someone to “break a leg” before a show, you are telling them to “win” or ACE that test.

You will find at Japanese restaurants, especially in Japan, they will have set lunches where often it you will order an udon or cold soba and get a “mini don” set. So I went all out and made the katsudon together with the cold udon and miso soup. I actually went to daiso to buy the miso soup bowl, udon/soba plate and the bento box for these photos. I was making it for my family too so my boyfriend actually had to stop me from buying 5 sets of these!

Katsudon is not hard to make at all but it just takes some prep time. But it was SO worth it. My family actually said it tastes even better than ones they’ve had at restaurants.