3 Places to buy healthy thinly-sliced bread in Tokyo! : ヘルシーで、細切りパンを買えるトコロ！

As a Thai, I’ve always been familiar with thinly slices of bread whose size is a lot smaller than the famously soft and fluffy “Shoku-pan” bread here in Japan. The first few years here, I tried really hard to search for bread that was similar to one I ate in my home country, but I found it really difficult. Most of the bread here is tall, thickly sliced, very soft, and easily torn. Why can’t I just eat the “shoku-pan”? Well, I’m a health freak who just can’t get over the fact that one slice would cost me more than 230 kcal (average). That left so little room for me to add protein or other jam condiments to my ritualized breakfast. Although some are whole wheat bread, they’re still very high in calories.

My way out is to first go for imported hard crispbread such as that of Kavli, that I could find in many supermarkets. For the crispiness and texture, I like it a lot as I could eat more than 2 slices without worrying. Kavli always has really healthy stuffs.

But I still crave for the semi-soft thin bread to make my healthy sandwich, which can still lock in at around 350-400 kcal AFTER being filled with many veggies and proteins…

After a lot of supermarket hopping and researching, I’m proud to say I have found my finest selections!! Let’s see my top three!

1. Santoku supermarket’s selection: Saint Dolce – rye sandwich bread (6 slices)

Why I LOVE:
1. It’s rye bread, thus very healthy (fiber/complex carbs)
2. One slice has only 57 kcal, you can have  a pair of them and still below 120 kcal..that’s like HALF OF A PIECE OF shokupan! 
3. It’s wide enough to make loads of awesome sandwiches!

 

 2. Kinokuniya supermarket: Four-seeds bread (5 slices)

WHY I LOVE:
1. It’s small and thin
2. Loads of walnuts and healthy seeds! (such as pumpkin seeds) and some oats as well…
3. Just plain right tasty!

3. Kamuraya supermarket at Kagurazaka: Pasco selections!

Pasco is a well-known brand for bread. It has so many different kinds of bread but ONLY a lot of rare (and healthy) ones are sold here!

From top: The front of supermarket…not too far from the Kagurazaka station (Tozai Metro line); whole wheat bread!! Thin slices x 5, with raisin and walnut variations…WANT THEM ALL!

 

From top left: Wheat Nuggets (20 thinly-sliced whole wheat bread!! and taste so good by the way); Yume-chikara Bran rolls (6 healthy rolls made from bran, hence lots of fiber here – and it’s on sales lol); whole wheat English muffins (4 muffins, sliced into 2 for ease of making sandwich – healthy!! and it’s on sales too haha)

Note: For the wheat nuggets, you can sometimes find it in some other supermarkets though very difficult. For instance, I saw it in the super in Tokyo Midtown. If you are like me who need to have certain kinds of bread, please do me a favor, take a short trip to this awesome station and get buy those awesome bread. PS: there are a lot of interesting shops that sell good ingredients for Italian cooking there too!

Now all you have to do is to get creative about your next awesome healthy sandwich for lunch!

Pure Cafe: Indulge in Vegan Delicatessen! ピュアカフェで、ボリューム満点のビーガンフード！

So, I have been frequenting myself with Omotesando/Aoyama area lately since…you know….there are loads of healthy/organic/vegan/anything-with-a-lot-of-veggies cafes! One of those is called “Pure cafe” that I used to visit once many years back. I went there many times this couple of weeks because I found my new addiction: “Little Bite” cookies. Here’s how they look like! The left is cocoa flavor; the right is cinnamon maple flavor. My first love is cocoa but the cinnamon is not bad at all. Now I’m torn so I bought both.

They are gluten-free and vegan, hence, no egg, white sugar, dairy products. Despite the lack of those traditional ingredients, they are sooooo good! I don’t allow myself to indulge much in desserts, but these little cookies are exceptional! I put myself on thread-mill just to eat them. That’s how bad my addiction is. Someone save me. lol
If you wanna share my love-guilt relationship with the cookies, you can buy online here and suffer with me.

Anyway, apart from a variety of cookies/healthy vegan snacks on sales here, Pure cafe provides amazing lunch! And it’s no girl-eats-salad kinda lunch, there’s a lot of food. I went for lunch with my friend and we were SO full and satisfied. Here’s mine: deep-fried Tempeh and veggies huge sandwich lunch set.

From left to right: small carrot cake (dessert), salad with beets dressing, lentils and veggies tomato stew, my huge sandwich, and minestrone soup. In the end I left the bread out or else I’ll die. lol

Apart from this, other famous lunch menus are different kinds of grain salad, Taco rice, and salad plate. Order anything, you’ll get to eat your veggies and dessert! Price is 1200 + tax.

Check out the menu and access here! Omotesando station, B3 exit

Choose your no-meat day and find an excuse to indulge in amazing food here 😉 
(I’m gonna miss this place so bad…)

How my “food for office” looks like

Just another random post I’d like to share. Here is an example of what I buy from Family Mart in the beginning of my working day. It usually consists of some drink, caffeine in certain form (coffee/red bull), healthy? snacks, and sometimes lunch.

On this particular day, I had to attend some presentation during lunch time so I did not have time to go out. I bought new sandwich product from Famima to try, along with Peanuts-flavor Soyjoy, smoked squid, veggies drink, and non-calorie fruity tea.

Why did I select these? Let’s start with the tea. I love non-caloric fruity tea lineup from Dydo. They launched 3 flavors now and I love all. This one I bought is relatively new: pear and rose tea. (Details here)

Next, the Soyjoy! Now this is pretty tricky and controversial. I cannot say that this is completely a healthy choice to make. However, it is still better than other chips or chocolate snacks, or even the claimed “high-fiber” biscuits. The trick is to choose the one with lowest sugar possible. As of now, there are 2 soyjoy flavors I bought: peanuts (this one) and chocolate-almonds (I wrote about it here)

For another item for snacking my way during the morning and afternoon, I selected soft smoked squid! It’s still my favorite no matter how many times I ate it. The whole pack is about 60-70 kcal with about 6 g. of protein. Instead of eating sugary stuffs, I think it’s a pretty good chance to take in more protein! Plus, it’s so aromatic and intense in flavor. Once you put it in your mouth, it’s kinda hard to put down. (and it’s relatively cheap too! 108 yen)

I also bought Kagome veggies drink, just to feel like I’m taking veggies, which is so ironic. haha I don’t fully support people to rely on this kind of drink, but just on the day that you know you won’t have a chance to get a proper serving of salad, this may come in handy. Be sure to get the 100% veggies one and not the one with juice blend.

Last is the new sandwich! I was quite excited about this new sandwich from Famima. Why? It’s rye bread with basil/chicken and colorful veggies fillings. The taste is pretty delicious although the chicken is not that substantial. It’s so yummy and flavorful. The texture is good too: you get a crunch from almonds and green beans which goes well with the softer texture of the bread and basil spread. It tastes quite similar to the salad product I wrote about before. The whole pack is around 350 kcal, so….not too bad I think. However, to be honest, this sandwich though delicious still cannot beat the ones from Starbucks whose both quality and price are higher.

Let me know what you bought from your nearest convenience store!

Lunch Pack Sandwich in cooperation with Tanita Shokudo, made healthy! ランチパックとタニタ食堂が健康的に

Spotted in combini nationwide (eg. Newsday, family mart), these 2 products are the result of cooperation between Tanita shokudo and the famous long-standing sandwich brand “Lunch Pack”. On the left is gobou salad and tofu burger (247 kcal). On the right is pumpkin salad and chicken tomato stew (231 kcal). If you notice, one piece would be the carb-dense veggie salad and another piece would be the protein.
These could be better choices among other Lunch Pack products if you want a quick lunch.