Gary and I had a nice New Years Day. The New Year celebration is a really big deal in Japan with all sorts of traditions and food. A lot of places close shop for 3 days so I had to do a bigger grocery run than usual. I'm pretty much a daily shopper, that's an old throw back to my days in Mexico and getting everything fresh from the market I guess. It's alright though since I can only buy what fits in my bike baskets and my kitchen is small so daily shopping is more convenient. Fortunately, the grocery store is only a couple of short blocks from the apartment so it's no bother.
Traditionally, you're supposed to try to start the New Year the way you want it to continue, so folks clean house, bathe and eat nice foods. I did two out of the three. Gary asked me if I was going to clean house but I told him that since he was the only Japanese in the house he should do it and that I'd do the German tradition instead, unfortunately, as far as I can tell that just entails getting drunk so I didn't do that! Neither of us cleaned the house, but it wasn't really messy anyway so that's alright.
Mostly, the other couple of days were spent quietly. We have been waiting to hear from our agent regarding the building we want to rent for the church but with the businesses closed there wasn't any movement on that. Gary wrote him right away this morning though to check on the status so hopefully we'll hear something soon!
I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions but I've determined to study Japanese harder and to keep trying new recipes. That second one is something I always like to do though so I guess that doesn't count as a resolution. Oh well.
On to Food!!!!
Gary and I had fun cooking mochi (a Japanese rice cake) in different ways. First, we tried grilling it, but my stove has a safety feature and kept turning itself off...I guess it didn't like the cheap little mochi grill I had bought! Then, we tried the toaster oven, but it didn't get soft enough on the outside. Finally, we boiled some and they came out soft and chewy and perfect! We ate them in Japanese soup that Gary made and also alone, dipped in ponzu sauce with daikon radish or dipped in soy sauce with sesame. Supposedly, people die every year eating mochi because it's super chewy and easy to choke on, but I like life on the WILD side and went for it!
Gary's soup was one his mother always makes with a shitake mushroom base..very tasty! I had splurged on the best kamaboko, (that's the pink and white fish cake in the picture), it really was delicious!
I was also going to make Sukiyaki but it was late and we were full so I saved that for the next day. I found some beautiful beef and made the sukiyaki from scratch. You can buy pre-made broth for it but I wanted to try my hand at the broth and it was pretty easy. The next day I cooked up some udon noodles in the left over broth and we ate it for lunch.
That's it for now! I hope you all had an enjoyable New Year as well!
Awesome sounds like you guys had a great time. I'll keep praying for you both. God Bless.
ReplyDeleteDavid keeps joking that I better learn to eat sushi (of which I'm allergic to some of the ingredients) and I figure there's enough other yummy stuff to try instead, lol! :)
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