foodie kind of weekend

On Saturday, we got together with my host family, their children and their children's children. I've written about my host-mom and a little about my host family here. With everyone's busy schedules, we were finally able to get together. Boy was it loud! 4 kids running around, mostly laughing and sometimes crying. My host-mom, who loves to cook, cooked up a storm! We had lots of good food and though it was hard for the adults to sit and chat because of all the running around, we still had a nice time.

Here's a little peek at the goodies we received from my host-brother, host-sister & host-mom.

From my host-brother--A moist cake called kuromame king made by Morinaka. Inside is a whole chestnut and the top are plump sweetened black beans. The cake is similar to a moist pound cake. This cake won the Monde selection for 2007. Monde selection is a Belgian award given to foods and beverages with International quality around the world. The Japanese really line up for stuff like this.

From my host-sister--Assorted cookies from Alsace. These cookies were very crisp and delicious.

From my host-mom--an assortment of sweets from Konigs Krone. These cakes were very moist and not too sweet.

Sunday was spent watching a recently released movie and just hanging out. I also picked some of our strawberries they are a little bit bigger than the first time and still very sweet.

For part of our dinner, I roasted 2 cloves of garlic then whizzed them in the food processor, added about 200g of cream cheese, some parsley and pepper. It tasted really good on Ritz crackers and toasted French bread.

This cup was so cute, it was the utensil and napkin holder at a little cafe we had breakfast at before the movie. When you turned it around it had "Bon Jour, cava?" written on it which I think meant "Good day, how are you?"

Hope you have a nice week.