Friday, March 8, 2013

The Cost of Eating

Most Fridays we go out to eat at the moving sushi restaurant and call it Sushi Date Night.  Last week we discovered the restaurant had cut its menu in half and raised its prices.  The pink plates went up from 105 yen to 120 yen and the red plates from 130 yen to 170 yen. We weren’t so concerned about the price increase because it is still a pretty cheap place to eat.  We were disappointed that many of our favorites didn’t make the menu cut. Too bad for us.

We like most Japanese food and do a lot of our food shopping at the market two blocks from where we live.  There are some foods we like that aren’t available at the Japanese grocery stores or are very expensive in the small containers sold at the local store.  Here are some of the things we buy at the Big American Store, Costco, in big American sizes.

Almonds 1398 yen and Walnuts 1998 yen

Coffee Beans 1498 yen

Parmesan Cheese 1398 yen

Picante Sauce 698 yen

Pickle Relish 578 yen

Peanut Butter 1098 yen

Granola 1048 yen

A Case of Oranges 1266 yen

Soup (with a label in English so I can be sure there is no meat in it) 1468 yen

Ikebana Progress
I’ve completed three additional patterns.
Pattern #2 – straight stitches and eyelets.

Pattern #3 – corded and grouped satin stitches.  I don’t like how this pulled thread pattern bunches up the fabric.

Pattern #4 is a composite pattern made up of diagonal satin and four-sided stitch.

2 comments:

Margaret said...

Interesting to see the foods you get at Costco. It never used to be possible to get that kind of quantity of nuts - times have changed since 1980!
I agree with you over pattern 3. That particular stitch really distorts the fabric doesn't it. But you are making such quick progress on this one. It will soon be complete.

Monica said...

I love how the sampler is turning out. Maybe a quick pressing will help out with the third pattern.