Sunshine and Clouds

In the past week we have experienced a lot of rain which almost makes me think the rainy season has arrived when it is supposed to this year. Our first year we saw no change in precipitation during the late spring/early summer, and last year, when the rainy season finally did come, it was a month later than it should have been. 

After a week of almost solid rain, the sky cleared a tiny bit during the weekend so that we could have a barbecue for Rosie's birthday on Saturday, and get all of the laundry that had accumulated during the rainy week washed and dried. Thanks for cooperating so nicely clouds! 

Cake stacked and iced with cupcakes skewered to the top.

On Saturday, I woke up bright and early (seriously Rosie, you need to stop waking up before 5 am!) and got to work on decorating the birthday cake. I decided go with a hydrangea theme because they are one of my favorite flowers and this is the season that they are blooming in Japan. I had made 3 round cakes and a dozen cupcakes earlier in the week and frozen them and also 3 batches of icing the night before. I leveled off two of the three cakes and stacked the layers with icing in between in the brown plastic base of a planter pot. I did not level off the dome shaped top of the uppermost layer to give the cake a bit more roundness and height. I fully iced the cake in chocolate cream cheese icing so that it would look like a plant pot. I then arranged the cupcakes on the top of the cake and secured them in place by sticking 15 cm long skewers through them and into the cake. 

Finished!

To ice the cupcakes, I used the star tipped icing nozzle and an icing bag. I put blobs of purple and blue in the icing bag separately and tried not to mix it up too much so that I would get colour variation as I iced. I then took a few hydrangea leaves and arranged them here and there. As a side note, hydrangea leaves are mildly toxic (they contain cyanide), so I wrapped the cut ends in aluminum foil before decorating the cake with them. It was really easy and took me just over an hour to decorate from start to finish.

The only problem I ran into was that over the course of the morning, the temperature in our kitchen rose to 27˚ C and the humidity to 89%. The icing started to liquify and things started slipping so I had to pop it in the fridge until the party.

close up of the "flowers"

After icing the cake, I had to run off to work for the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. While I was at work, Mr. Oshima took Theo on a tour of our local water treatment plant, something he has been talking about for months. We got to hear all about poop eating bacteria for the rest of the day. Yaaay! 

When I returned home we had a few close friends over for a barbecue to celebrate Rosie's birthday. 

Totally oblivious to the fact that it was her party

William and the Oshimas

First inspection of her birthday cupcake

Realizing that smashing it is so much more fun than eating it. 

Because the weather remained warm and mostly sunny the next day, I pulled out the little pool and let the kids splash around a bit.

This was Rosie's first time in the pool and she loved it.

Also, thanks to a little inspiration from my cousin over at lately léna, the boys and I spent a few hours on Sunday tie dyeing some old t-shirts and a onesie. 

Now I have a few cups of dye left over and my eyes are roving for anything else that could help me use it up. I've already convinced Dustin to let me have fun with some of his undershirts but who knows what else is going to get some colour around here!

Barrel Of Monkeys

About a month ago I experimented with making my own kimchi. It turned out really well, but I ran into a minor problem while making it. The Chinese cabbage needs to be soaked in a salt water brine for a few hours and I found that I had to pull out every mixing bowl and pot we owned to contain all of the cabbage while it soaked. Afterward, I went out and bought a large plastic pail so that next time I make kimchi I can soak all of the cabbage in one container. 

Meanwhile, the boys found where I was storing the large pail and asked if they could take a bath in it. So, what was intended for vegetable soaking has become the boys' favourite soaking pail. Individually they fit in just fine, but usually they insist on cramming themselves in together. The best part about their new found bathtub it is that it only uses a small amount of water compared with the regular tub. For a tight fisted water dictator like myself, it makes me wish that I had bought the pail months ago! 

I am pretty sure they are going to hate this picture in about 10 years

Thank goodness for completely waterproof bath rooms!

The Beat Goes On

Last week we had two more reasons to celebrate: New Year's and Theo's Birthday. On the 31st, we were invited by a friend to a mochi pounding party. Traditionally, mochi is made by pounding special glutinous rice using a large wooden hammer. There are actually two people involved, one to pound the rice with the hammer, and one to wet the rice, making sure it doesn't stick to the bowl while turning and flipping it. The timing of these two people has to be pretty precise or the rice would cool too quickly, or someone could get their hand smashed by a massive hammer. It forms a smooth, soft, stretchy ball after a while which is then shaped into smaller balls for eating. This is a popular New Year's event, and we really enjoyed getting into the festivities.

The mochi that day was made in a more modern way with the rice first being steamed in tiered wooden stacks, then put into a pounding machine, placed in another machine for cutting the newly formed mochi into smaller pieces, and finally being rolled in a little rice flour and lined up to cool. Some of it was filled with sweet red bean, which is Theo and my absolute favorite. Truthfully, Theo loves all mochi to excess and was in his glory when he was allowed to eat all he wanted.

First, the rice was steamed in this large wooden contraption.

It was then placed in this machine to be pounded into a soft, stretchy mass. A few weeks ago, Theo had told me all about a mochi pounding robot that he wanted to build so that he could have mochi whenever he wanted. He had no idea that something like that already existed, and was speechless and amazed when he saw the pounding machine.

 The soft and warm mass is then put into the top funnel of another machine that pushes it out while snipping off balls.

The newly formed balls are lightly coated in rice flour to keep them from sticking. Here, Theo is sporting a fresh mochi that he is about to devour.

After eating his fill, he helped roll more balls in flour and place them in neat rows. The white, half circle forms that look a bit like two mortars joined together are molds for making kagami mochi, a two tiered mochi that is a New Year tradition and decoration. 

I have no idea how much mochi they ended up making that day, since we only stayed for a couple of hours. It is their family's tradition every year to make mochi and give it to all of their friends, family, and neighbours for New Year.

The family owns a small factory that builds machines for making senbei. Theo had lots of fun poking around the factory, checking out all of the cool tools and machine parts.

They also roasted some delicious black soy beans for us to munch on.

Theo's Mario birthday cake

On January 2nd, Theo turned four years old. We had a relaxed celebration at home with pizza, balloons, and a cake decorated with his current favourite character: Mario. He absolutely loves the Mario Brothers and has been pretending that he is Mario and William is Luigi for months. His interest crossed the boundary into obsession a few weeks ago and now the first thing that leaves his mouth in the morning and the last thing that escapes his mouth at night usually has something to do with Mario. At one point, I asked him who I was, and he told me I was Princess Peach because I am so pretty. Awww...

This past Thursday was Theo's first day back at kindergarten after a two week break. Dustin is also back to work, so hopefully everything will settle back into our pre-holiday routine and I will be able to blog a little bit more about what is happening in our lives.

The Joy of Nattō

At least once a week, I pick a food product which I have only seen in Japan and try it out. Sometimes, when I feel the most daring, I go for something that looks utterly unappetizing. I must confess that I limit myself to interesting and bizarre vegetable matter and dried goods, and avoid trying the mysterious and creepy looking meats I have found. I am really not brave enough to try them, but I am sure that if my dad ever comes to visit us in Japan he will be all over the congealed globs and slices of questionable origin. Dustin, after one too many unpalatable failures, has gradually stopped trying any of the experimental foods I bring home.

A single serving natto box

A delicious soy product that I discovered a few months ago is nattō, or fermented soybeans. I bought it mostly on a personal dare, but it turned out to be wonderful and has become a new favourite of mine. Natto usually comes in individual serving square styrofoam boxes with little sauce packages inside. The sauces are usually a kind of salty fish sauce and sometimes a strong mustard. You mix them all together to create a frothy, goopy, stringy mixture and then pour it onto rice. I have also heard that it makes a really good toast topper, but I have yet to try it that way.

Fermented soybeans with sauce packet

I enjoy natto, but the fermented flavour and slippery feeling that it leaves in your mouth turns some people off. The smell is also fairly strong and unpleasant to some. I didn't outright dislike it on the first try, but it took a few times before I truly appreciated its tastiness. The flavour is really mild, a bit nutty and egg-like with a slight brewers yeast flavour undertone. It has a strong fermented smell but that didn't really bother me, maybe because I am used to the smell of Dustin brewing beer. What I struggled with at first was the texture. It is a cloying sort of slipperiness that coats the inside of your mouth in slime. Little gossamer threads of viscous ooze stretch from your chopsticks and drift onto your face if you are not careful, spreading the fermented smell onto everything they touch I am not sure that I am making much of a case for this food, but someone told me that you need to eat it 8 times to know whether you definitely love or hate it and there is definitely some truth in that. A few months of eating it later, and the texture does not bother me in the slightest and I adore it.

To make it even better, natto is really healthy for you, with lots of protein, vitamin K1 and K2, PQQ, and probiotics. It is said to prevent senile dementia, breast cancer, osteoporosis, blood clots, and aids in digestion. It has become a staple breakfast food for me but I have yet to convince Dustin and Theo of its wonders. If I end up outliving them by 50 or so years, we'll know why!

All mixed and on top of rice with green onions: delicious!

Things I Like to Cook (And Eat) 3

Coconut Pandan Mochi

I love pandan and most things that use it as a flavoring. I have a pretty acute sense of smell, and when I catch a whiff of it in any store I follow my nose to the source and usually buy it. That is how I came across this little bottle of pandan paste. I had a box of rice flour and decided to try out a marriage of a few of my favorite things: pandan, mochi and coconut. I was originally going to try forming them into balls, but after getting very frustrated I decided the best way to get the coconut layer to stick properly (and the mochi not to stick to my hands) was to make squares.



Ingredients:

2 cups mochiko (rice flour)
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 tbsp pandan paste
water
1/2 cup grated coconut


Put sugar in a saucepan with 1 cup of water and pandan paste. Use less or more pandan paste depending on how strong you want the flavor. Heat on low until the sugar is completely dissolved. Mix mochi flour with 3 cups of water in a large bowl until it is smooth. Cover and microwave for 5 minutes. Mix again, cover, and microwave for another 5 minutes. Pour in sugar pandan syrup and mix completely. While it is still hot scrape out of bowl into a greased pan and try to smooth it out as much as possible. Pour ground coconut on top and use your fingers to spread it out/flatten the mochi. Allow to cool and then cut into squares. Enjoy!

Foods I Like to Cook (and Eat) 2

Kimpira Lotus

This is Dustin's favorite vegetable dish to eat with rice. It probably remains in this no. 1 spot because we can only get lotus root from a Chinese grocery that is over an hour drive away. It spoils fairly quickly, so we can't buy excessive amounts, and we usually only make it out to buy more every 2 weeks or so. For anyone interested in the nutritional qualities of lotus root, the USDA Nutrient Database has once again exceeded my expectations.

Ingredients:

200 g  (7 oz)  lotus root
1 stalk of celery
1 red chili pepper
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tbsp sake
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp. sesame oil

Peel the lotus root and cut lengthwise. Slice thinly into half moons and soak in a bowl with vinegared water. Slice the red chili pepper and celery thinly. Drain and rinse the lotus root. Heat the vegetable oil in pan on medium high and add the lotus and chili pepper. Stir fry for about 4 minutes then add celery sake, mirin, and soy sauce. Once the liquid has almost completely evaporated, take off heat. Stir in sesame oil. Enjoy!

Things I Like to Cook (And Eat)

Sesame Carrot and Tofu


This is a relatively fast and super easy vegetable dish to make. It can be made with carrots only, if you don't like parsnips, or parsnips only though I have never made it that way (there would be a mutiny on my hands if I tried). With a bowl of rice, I don't think I could ever get tired of it.

Ingredients:

4 medium carrots
1 medium parsnip
120 g atsuage tofu
1 tbsp of oil
3 tbsp sake
3 tbsp rice vinegar
3 tsp sugar
3 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 c toasted sesame seeds
1 tsp sesame oil




Julienne the carrots and parsnips to matchsticks about 6 cm long. Cut up the tofu into similar sized strips as the root veggies. Mix up sake, vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce in a container until sugar fully dissolves. Put sesame seeds into a mortar and pestle and grind up until mostly all broken (about 1 minute). Heat up oil in a pan on medium high heat and throw in the carrots, parsnips, and tofu. Toss everything around in the pan so the oil coats the veggies. Fry until carrots are just barely soft but still mostly crunchy. Add liquid mix and cook while stirring vegetables until the liquid is almost completely cooked off. Take off heat and add crushed sesame seeds and drizzle sesame oil over top. Mix until the sesame seeds and oil coat everything evenly. Enjoy!