« January 2011 | Main | March 2011 »
We're heading up north to Niigata this weekend for a few days of skiing and onsen. That would be Hideaki doing the skiing and Shuma and me doing the onsening. And hopefully we'll get to play in the snow altogether- a family first. Shuma is certainly ready for it, with his warm snowsuit from Canada.
Perfect for Jamaica month: a warm, sunny day! Actually, we've been having lots of days like that recently, but today it actually got up to 22 C. Not quite Carribean weather, but getting close. I can now rest assured that winter is on its way out and spring will be coming soon.
To enjoy the weather Shuma and I lounged around in the park. The grass is still dead and brown so we had to put down a tarp, and the trees are still naked so there wasn't much to look at, but facing up we had the beautiful blue sky all to ourselves. And I also had a very nice view to my left.
I can stare at Shuma all day, but he soon got bored of looking at me and started to play with my sunglasses, my hat, my camera strap, my hands. When he started poking his fingers in my nostrils (a perfect fit!) I knew it was time to go. We have many nice days in the park ahead of us!
A few days ago Shuma had his first unplanned nap. He's never been much of a napper and instead sleeps really well at night and takes very short little catnaps after feedings during the day. I do try to put him down in his crib or swing chair a few times a day to encourage napping; sometimes it works and usually it doesn't. But this time I had just put him down for a minute while I went to do something, and after a minute of crying he suddenly went quiet. When I went to see what was wrong, this is what I saw:
Yes! Expecting it to be a short sleep, I made use of my unexpected free time in the kitchen:
Making cookies. I'm such a good houswife! Really though, what else could I do with a short amount of free time? And it did turn out to be short, and thanks to my stupid tiny Japanese convection oven, which can only take one tray at a time, I only managed half a batch before Shuma woke up, crying even harder than before.
But that only meant there was another tray of cookies to bake during the next nap. Yay! And lots to eat. These are double chocolate walnut cookies, and I don't quite have a proper recipe but basically just take your regular chocolate chip cooke recipe, add a tablespoon or so of cocoa powder and some chopped walnuts, and that's it. Very yummy.
So this month's theme has turned out to be not much of a theme at all, thanks to an uncooperative baby and shopping difficulties. But congratulations to Julie, who guessed that Jamaica was the theme (and even figured out the town where my parents were visiting- Negril).
I love Jamaican food and was really hoping to cook lots of it this month, to remind myself of my many happy visits there. Unfortunately it's rather hard to find some key ingredients here- it's not that they're all completely unavailable, but I can't really justify a trip to the city (even train fare is something to worry about these days) to track down hard to find items. Also, the boy is in a clingy mood lately and I've been limiting my cooking to quick and easy meals.
But the meal above doesn't contain any particularly exotic ingredients. It's pumpkin soup (using kabocha instead of Jamaican pumpkin); mackerel rundown (mackerel cooked in coconut milk with hot peppers, thyme, tomatoes, onion and garlic); rice and peas; and boiled dumplings.
It's the first time I've made- or even tried- rundown, as it seems to be more of a home-cooking dish than a restaurant dish. It's apparently supposed to be served with boiled green bananas, yams, breadfruit, and/or dumplings (boiled or fried), and since the first three are hard to find here (yes, you can't even buy green bananas- they're sold already ripe) I went with boiled dumplings and added rice and peas.The rice and peas may look strange to a Jamaican but it seemed to go well. Hell, the whole meal may look strange- I have no idea what it's "supposed" to look like.
But it was delicious! Not quite authentic, as I couldn't find any fresh hot peppers (I ended up buying something called bannou tougarashi, a pepper from Kyoto, which had no heat at all), but I'm very pleased with how it turned out, especially the rundown. Now I know what to do when mackerel is on sale!
Another clue to where my parents are vacationing right now are these cool coveralls. Now can you guess?
Oshogatsu (New Year's) didn't begin or end in Osaka. It started just after Christmas with oosouji (great cleaning), which for most families involves the complete cleaning of the house from top to bottom in order to purify it for the coming new year. My oosouji consisted of doing a giant pile of dishes and giving the sink an extra-thorough scrubbing, so it wasn't that great of a cleaning, but I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
Our home thus purified, we took the Christmas wreath down from the front door and replaced it with the shimekazari above. This is a special decoration that designates a space as holy, welcoming the gods and warding off bad luck. Each component symbolizes some sort of wish for the new year (the fake pine branch in ours represents longetivity, but don't ask me about the other stuff), and it is hung not only on front doors of homes, but at shops, restaurants, and on cars. This particular one was chosen because it was the smallest, least gaudy, and most importantly, the cheapest we could find and it wasn't until I took it down a couple weeks later that I noticed it said koutsuu anzen, which means "traffic safety". It was meant to be hung on a car.
My husband, who is allegedly Japanese, helped pick it out and either didn't bother reading it or didn't think he needed to mention that this was for cars only. But the numerous people who saw it (our landlords who live next door, their son's family, who live upstairs, various mail carriers and delivery people) probably thought "Jesus, when is that idiot foreigner going to learn how to read?"
Inside the house was another decoration: the kagami mochi (literally "mirror mochi"). These slabs of mochi (rice paste) are usually topped with a daidai citrus, symbolizing the wish for fertility. But as we've had quite enough of that already we went for the non-traditional but more appropriate maneki neko (beckoning cat), which represents our desire for cold hard cash.
After we'd all returned from Osaka in the new year, we went to a local shrine for hatsumoude (first prayer of the year).
Once we'd offered our prayers we bought our fortunes in the form of these omikuji. Mine on the left says kichi (good luck) and Hideaki's says hankichi (half good luck), which is a designation we'd never heard of so we asked the lady behind the counter what exactly it meant. It turns out that she was a philosophical type, and her explanation started off with "Well, the fortunes can't really be ranked from good to bad" (except that they totally can) and went on for quite some time, with gist being "it doesn't really matter what your fortune says, it's how you yourself decide interpret it". We found it pretty funny considering omikuji always come with extremely specific designations ranging from daikichi (best good luck) to daikyou (worst bad luck) and very detailed predictions in a number of categories like "love", "study", and "health". We still have no idea what hankichi means: is it half luck as in neutral? or as in half-way between regular good luck and best good luck? what is the difference between hankichi and chuukichi (medium luck)? But we've been having lots of fun mimicking the shrine lady (for example, in answer to "Is this towel clean?": "Well, it can't really be designated as clean or dirty. It's up to you to decide its level of cleanliness").
On January 7th we ate the customary nanakusagayu, which is rice porridge with the seven herbs of spring. Those herbs were described a few years back, and a few years before that I posted a recipe.
The next thing to be done in the new year was kagami biraki (breaking the mirror). This is when the kagami mochi that was displayed at the end of the year is broken and eaten. We did ours as isobeyaki (grilled and wrapped in nori seaweed) with melted cheese and flavoured with shichimijouyuu (soy sauce with seven spice mix).
The last custom involved with the new year is Setsubun, which coincides with the Chinese New Year's festival (in the olden days Japan followed the same lunar calendar as China, and Setsubun was actually part of the New Year's festivities). To celebrate, we tossed dried soybeans in and out of all windows and doors to our apartment while whispering (you're supposed to shout, but Shuma had just been put down for a nap) at demons to get out and good fortune to come in. Mamemaki (throwing of the beans) is an ancient custom, but a much newer one is the eating of ehomaki, which are special futomaki (fat sushi rolls). The ehomaki must be eaten in a specific way: by hand, without being cut, without talking or pausing, and while facing the year's eho (auspicious direction). Kyoto Foodie has a nice explanation of ehomaki.
Neither Hideaki or I are particularly fond of ehomaki as the filling tends to be too sweet and it's so large that eating it without pause is unpleasant. So this year I found half-sized ehomaki, which we ate in silence while facing south-southeast, pondering what kind of luck half-sized sushi rolls would bring us.
Wait, I know the answer: "It doesn't really matter what size your sushi roll is, it's how you choose to interpret it."
There are still a few months of cold weather to get through, but a boy can dream. Dream that he was on the beach with his grandparents, floating in the warm water, baking under the sun, and contemplating his next rum punch.
Have a lovely vacation, Gramma and Baboo!
This hat is very special in a few ways. One is that it was the very first thing ever bought for Shuma (not counting a pregnancy test and a bottle of folic acid supplements), way back when Shuma was just a tiny speck on the ultrasound screen. My parents, who had only just found out that we were expecting, bought it for him while they were on vacation. A wee bit early, since he was still the size of a blueberry and stuck inside my belly and thus unable to wear it. In fact, he's still about half a year away from having a head big enough to fit it. But that's OK, it was a wonderful souvenir (and I was both relieved and strangely disappointed that it didn't have little fake dreadlocks attached to it).
The other special thing about the hat is that it's a clue. I mentioned in a recent Canada-themed post that I'd soon be commemorating a warmer, more southerly country. It's the country where my parents bought the hat, and the country they are returning to in two days. I wish we were with them, so (assuming my model cooperates) I'll be featuring said country a bit this month. Maybe some outfits, maybe some meals, maybe a clip or two of Shuma's favourite songs, we'll see.
So can you guess which country it is?
Recent Comments