Valentine's Day Dinner and Tofu on a Stick

I have just a few pictures left from Sapporo, before I show you what we had for Valentine's Day.

First, here is my last breakfast from the hotel in Sapporo.  We really liked the salmon for breakfast idea, so I made sure to get some on the last day.

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Before we boarded the boat home we found a soda machine and thought this was so crazy that it needed to be bought.  Do you have this flavor in the US?  We had never seen this before, so we definitely bought it to investigate.  Ryan actually drank it and as best as I can remember, he said it was good.

My last picture is this cheese cup that we bought at the convenience store by the hotel as part of our lunch on the boat.  It was good!

Alright, on to Valentine's Day.  I guess you could say we celebrated with a trip to Sapporo, but there was still the actual day, and of course we decided to do something.  So, what did we do?  I picked up ingredients for dinner, we cooked together, and then watched a movie.  It was a work night and the restaurant on base didn't have reservations at a good time, so we decided a quiet night in would be perfect.

It was a Tuesday, so I headed to the grocery store in town that has 100 yen specials on Tuesdays.  Curious what 100 yen equals these days?  It's about $1.32.  This specific grocery store has produce specials on Tuesdays and you can get small bundles of various items for 100 yen, and then they have some other items on sale too.  It's a good day to go there.

Obviously Ryan and I are on a salmon kick, so I picked out some salmon.  This package cost 358 yen, which is about $4.71.  Not bad at all.

Then I grabbed some miso.  I have no idea what kind of miso I bought, but I know it was in the miso aisle, so I picked one that wasn't too expensive.  

I decided to marinate my fish in soy sauce (the less sodium one, but still packs it in) with the miso.

Check out what else I bought at the store.  I picked out some string beans and potatoes.  Each of these packages was 100 yen.  That's a pretty good deal.

We also decided the apple wine was a good drink to enjoy with our meal.

I also bough some strawberries, which is another reason why apple wine sounded good.

So we had some wine, strawberries, and chocolates all ready to go for dessert.

But before we could get to dessert, we had to actually cook dinner.  I started on the fish, while Ryan worked on the veggies.

I thought the grill pan would be perfect for cooking the salmon.  I was right!

Here ya have it!  It was so, so good.  Very simple.  I am definitely doing this again.

Now, just as promised, tofu on a stick.  Hey, it's on my Japan Bucket List, so when we went to the market where I first saw it for sale, I made sure to give it a try.  Ryan was more than happy to take pictures if it meant he didn't have to give it a try. 

This is garlic miso glazed tofu...on a stick!

Here goes nothing.

Taking a bite.

Still smiling!  It was pretty good, but just way too much tofu for me at one time without anything else to go with it.  It wasn't too expensive, so I think I would try it again in the future.

The last thing I want to share is this crazy spread we found.  It came in many varieties, but went with something that looked like chocolate and PB, or we thought perhaps something like nutella.

It came in a little packet like this.  You can see in the picture how this works.  You bend it in the middle and squeeze, and the spread comes out the middle.

The two kinds are on two sides, so I think chocolate and then PB (although I can't read Japanese, but that is what it seems like).

To balance it out a little bit I ate it on a whole wheat bagel (at least I got 7 grams of fiber in the process).  Yummy!

QUESTIONS:  What did you do for Valentine's Day?  What is your favorite bagel topping?