About

Welcome to A Box of Kitchen and thanks for visiting!

What this blog is all about
Two things: food and places.
I initially started this blog only for my cooking journal as I spend a lot of time cooking and taking pictures of food. However, not only I admire food, my husband and I also enjoy visiting places and taking pictures around. So, I thought why not including our outdoor adventures in this blog. After all, the more I appreciate food, the more I realize how nature fascinates me.

Our family
1) Me
Roles: Cook, eater, (food) photographer, writer, passenger
My name is Arudhi. I was born and grew up in Indonesia. In 2004 I lived in Malaysia and had such a marvelous time there. A year later I moved in to Japan to enroll to grad school and live here ever since. At the moment I am working at the university`s laboratory. When I was a student, our school canteen was where I had my lunch and dinner, in addition to storebought food. I just couldn`t care less about cooking my own food. Things started to change when I got married to a wonderful man who helps me find the joy in my life, and in my kitchen. I started to (learn to) cook partly mostly to feed him and mostly partly to satisfy my curiosity in mixing ingredients and experimenting with them.


2) My husband, Ado
Roles: Eater, trip planner, outdoor photographer, rider
So this is my wonderful man, who`s perhaps the only reason why I cook. He doesn`t cook, yet he has (important) roles in our kitchen: washing dirty dishes after meals, reaching stuff at the top shelves, and being my lab mouse food tester. From what I`ve learned, his true passion is motorbike. He`s also the one who encouraged me to go Manual with the DSLR, despite the fact that I`ve been using camera way longer than he has. Many, if not most, of outdoor photographs in this blog were actually taken by him and I do rely a lot on him when it comes to shooting close-ups. I placed his Flickr widget on the left side of this blog and you can check out his pictures showing places where we live. And cats. He `s crazy about cats.

 
3) Booboo*
Role: Transporter (isn`t that a cool name?!)
This Honda Super Cub 110 that we named Booboo is our third family member and practically Ado`s best buddy (and hopefully second best, after me!). With Booboo around, we get to go around visiting places without having to rely on the buses or trains whose schedules are sometimes not being too "passenger-friendly". And we`re so happy to ride this during traffic jams!
*You can read our short post here where Ado had to say goodbye to his Suzuki GSX-R1100


4) Baby G
Role: my commuter and baby girl
My 50-cc Honda Giorno is the youngest member in our family. You can read about her arrival (my baby girl!) in this post. There are still not many things I can tell about her so far, but I totally enjoy my every single ride with this cute curvy scooter.


The kitchen
My cooking station is in our mini teeny tiny kitchen in our (also tiny) apartment, hence the name "a box". Size? It`s (almost) 2 x 1.3 m and with the fridge, the sink, the counter, and other kitchen equipment inside, I have about 50-cm wide standing space left. Indeed, space limitation repeatedly becomes an issue in my learning process (just imagine a cooking counter no bigger than a chopping board), but it is amazing to know how much I could do with it.

My passion for cooking
I love eating. I love food. And I love (feeding) him.
Other than those reasons, I can feel freedom in my hands when I`m in my kitchen. I can cook the way I like to. I don`t need to worry if my food is not an authentic one, especially if it comes to a "traditional" recipe. I think of cooking as an activity that gives me pleasure, not pressure. I also love the way food combines, smells, or changes their colors during the whole cooking process. Beautiful moments! That`s why I love taking step-by-step pictures. If only there`s a camera that can capture smell too!


(Occasional) Measurementless recipes
If you dig up my older posts, especially those posted in 2010-2011, you`ll find most of the ingredients are unmeasured because that was how I usually cook. However, when it comes to baking, I follow the recipes the best I can as I figured that ignoring the measurement will lead me to "unacceptable food waste", which he can`t tolerate with. Well, who can? ;)

Photographs
All pictures in this blog were photographed and therefore, owned by us, unless otherwise specified. You can easily copy any pictures here, but please ask me first before doing so. I`d also appreciate if you can leave me a note or notify me when you pinned our pictures on your Pinterest board or other places.

Leave a comment

To leave a comment, you don`t need to have a blog, or a Gmail account, or any account whatsoever. If you don`t find the comment form, that probably because you`re on the Home page, not on the post page. So, all you have to do is click the title of the post on top of the post or x comment(s) at the bottom of the post. Clicking them will bring you to a single-post page. Keep scrolling down and you`ll find a comment form at the end of the page. I`d really appreciate if you can leave your name (real name, nick name, initials, but preferably not anonymous) because it`ll be easier for me to refer you in my reply later.
It seems that the readers of this blog comes from all part of this world and I`m so happy about that. However, it will be very helpful if you use English, Bahasa Indonesia, or 日本語 in commenting。日本の方は日本語でもぜひコメントしてください。私は日本語で頑張って答えます!

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Email me
If you need to contact me in private, you can reach me at: aboxofkitchen@gmail.com.

Thank you for stopping by and we hope you enjoy visiting our kitchen.
Happy eating!

Arudhi