Flour and Sugar

After 7 months in Japan, I finally bought flour and sugar.  I don’t remember how they stock it in Toronto, but I found it quite strange over here.  Sugar I was able to find relatively easily (but I didn’t buy it from my regular grocery store) but when it came to flour, it wasn’t where I assumed it would be.  Salt, flour, sugar… I would think they’d be put in the same aisle.  They’re all white, powdery substances.  I even checked near the baking section where they have their food colouring and instant cake mixes and whatnot but no luck.  That was last week.  This week I decided to learn the Japanese word for flour and ask someone.  So that’s what I did.  In my dictionary there were 2 or 3 words for flour for some reason.  I decided to remember the shortest one, “kona,” but made note of the other word as being slightly longer and having a ‘g’ in it.  (In my mind it was komugi.  And now that I look it up, I was pretty close, “komugiko”)  Anyway, I approached one of the workers and asked if they had “kona.”  She replied, “komugiko?”  ”Hai,” I said.  Then I think she asked me which one I was looking for, kona or komugiko.  As far as I knew, flour was flour.  She had me stumped.  She started talking and walking toward the flour section (which happened to be beside the oils and ketchups and sauces and stuff… yea, it boggles my mind…)  and the only word I could recognize was tempura.  I think she was asking me what I was going to use it for.  I said not tempura, and I was trying to find the Japanese word for cake.  Oh, that’s right,  ke-ki (pronounced kehh-key).   She hurried off to another aisle and started showing me the Japanese version of Betty Crocker easy-to-make cakes.  I told her, or rather motioned, that I’d just take the other flour.

So, in my first weekend with flour and sugar, I’ve baked a carrot cake, which didn’t rise but tastes really good, and banana pancakes.

This is the carrot cake. It was baked in my microwave oven, using the oven function. I cooked it in that ceramic dish because I couldn’t find anything else. The top burned a little, as you can see.

And here are the banana pancakes: