merry merry

Hope Santa brought everything you wished for.

Santa brought socks, a cell phone case and cell phone strap for Satoshi.

Santa brought Kat all these snacks from Dean & Deluca

 

the sushi card was cute!

For Christmas Eve, we opened this bottle of Domaine Raison's Assemblages Rouge, a medium body red

It said that a good food pairing was kakuni (braised pork belly), so I made sweet sour spareribs, but it kinda didn't match...

For Christmas dinner, I picked up the pintxos set from RF1

This went better with the wine.

We hope you enjoyed your Christmas!

christmas eve and christmas day

How was your Christmas?

Our Christmas was very low key.

I saw this at the supermarket and had to copy.

Doesn't really look like the photo but I loved the idea, the recipe suggests using a balsamic vinegar dressing, but I used a lemon one instead to keep the baby mozz from turning black.

I baked some lamb chops in the oven for Christmas Eve dinner.

It came with a spice packet which had curry powder and other spices in it.

I followed the Meat Guy's directions on how to bake it in the oven....

Room temperature for 30 minutes then in a 200 C (400 F) oven for 20 minutes.

It wasn’t in the direction, but at 10 minutes, I flipped the chops.

This was so tender and flavorful, even after reheating it for Satoshi after he came home.

Christmas morning...super pretty sunrise.

I went to Daimaru to send some gifts for New Years to MIL and BIL since we will not be travelling.

I picked up this brioche chocolat from Daisy, a bakery from Saitama that has a shop inside the JR Tokyo Station.

This was so good, with chocolate crisps on top and lots of chocolate ganache inside.

Dinner was nibbles from RF1 and gateau chocolat from Maison Cacao which I also picked up inside of the JR Tokyo Station.

61% Colombian chocolate topped with cacao nibs...so rich but so good with a cabernet sauvignon from Maison Fortnant.

We don't really give each other presents anymore, but Satoshi surprised me with this little bottle of jam sandwich cookies and a tiny bouquet of gerbera and carnations.

I hope Santa wasn't quarantined and was able to visit you this year.

Have a nice week.

playing with your food

If you've ever travelled to Japan, you may or may not know that the potato salad here is more like mashed potatoes.

I'm not sure why this is but I have found a new way to put potato salad out on your table for Christmas parties.

All you need is some potato salad, some lettuce and stars cut out of carrots or yellow bell peppers.

Just layer the potato salad between leaves of lettuce, top with a carrot (I used light yellow carrots) or yellow bell pepper star and voila!

You'll have a Christmas tree...fun, yeah?!

When I saw this being done on tv, I wasn't sure as to how big the pieces of lettuce should be, so my leaves were quite large.

I made individual "trees", but think that if you break your lettuce up into smaller bite sized pieces it will be easier to make your potato salad tree.

If you do try this out, let me know what you think.

Merry Christmas everyone!

cute

Wanted to share this very cute ornament with you.

My Twitter friend, Lily made it. You can actually put a finger in it!

Her card was cute too, it looked like an origami envelope, and when you opened it, there was actually a message in it.

Too cute, thank you!

merry christmas

Merry Christmas! I hope Santa brought all that you hoped for.

I bought us this assortment from Kiuchi Brewery, makers of Hitachino beers...Real ginger ale, Daidai IPA, Shuwashuwa umeshu (fizzy apricot wine), classic Japanese ale & Red Rice ale...we'll probably start tasting a couple of these tonight.

Christmas eve was an assortment of nibbles...veggies with bagna cauda sauce, kamaboko dip with ritz crackers and karaage (fried chicken).

I also had a glass of prosecco.

This morning, we traded gifts and Satoshi went off to work. Low-key Christmas as usual. I can't believe that 2014 is almost over.

We appreciate all the cards and messages from family and friends! (Thank you!)

Happy Holidays everyone!

yesterday

Yesterday was a holiday, the Emperor's birthday. We did our O-soji (cleaning for the new year)

Then we headed to Umeda for lunch and went to see "The Vancouver Asahi", a film about immigrant Japanese in Canada who found baseball as an outlet to overcoming many struggles.

The beginning was a bit slow but the rest of the film was good. Reminded me of when we researched my ancestors' roots.

After the movie we caught part of the sunset mixed in with some Christmas illumination.

And since Satoshi and I would be able to have dinner together, (usually during the week we don't), we bought some Christmas cakes to have with dinner.

Apparently, everyone and their uncle had the same idea as the food floor of the department store was krazy!

These were from Arrow Tree, they use lots of fruits, the one in the front is a strawberry mont blanc (yellow sponge cake, whipped cream and a huge strawberry in the middle), the one in the back is a strawberry pannecotta (custard, strawberry mousse and lots of berries)...both 1581 yen for the two (tax included). We enjoyed both, not too sweet and lots of fruit.

It's the day before Christmas, I hope Santa brings everything you wish for...Happy Holidays!

ginger molasses dark chocolate crinkles

I got the idea for these cookies from blog friend, Sheri, who got the idea from this blog.

The link above is for the full recipe. I cut the recipe in half for my cookies.

Ginger Molasses Dark Chocolate Crinkles (1/2 the recipe) makes about 12 cookies

50 grams flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, ground
1/4 teaspoon ginger, ground
1/8 teaspoon clove, ground
112.5 grams dark chocolate, weighed then chopped
22.5 grams butter, salted
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg, room temperature
32.5 grams light brown sugar
*granulated sugar and powdered sugar to coat cookies

Whisk flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, clove. Set aside
In a bain marie (over boiling water), melt the chocolate, butter, molasses & vanilla. Take off heat and let cool a bit.
On high, beat the egg and sugar until the mixture gets "ribbony"
Fold in the chocolate mixture
Stir in the flour mixture
Refrigerate the dough for 1 to 2 hours
Preheat oven to 325F (170F)
Whisk some cinnamon with some granulated sugar
Make 1-inch balls and roll into the granulated sugar mixture
Then roll the balls in powdered sugar
Place on parchment paper about 1-inch apart
Bake for 12-15 minutes.**
Cool the cookies a bit before transferring them to the rack.
Cool completely.

NOTES: these cookies are more chocolatey than spicy. I left out the salt because I used salted butter. Next time I make these I will double the amount of spices. Also, I will chill the dough for 2 hours, as the dough was too soft to handle after 1 hour. Since it was too soft to handle, I used a scoop and "plopped" each ball into the sugars, rolling them around using spoons...
**My turntable spins the cookies, so I didn't rotate the pan, and I baked them for about 15 minutes. If you are baking them in a regular oven you need to rotate the cookies, baking them 6 minutes, rotate the pan and bake for 6 more minutes or so.

What are you baking these days?

hello december

Saturday it rained...pretty much the whole day.

But Sunday the weather was perfect...hot even!

We decided to check out the fall leaves and headed to the Minoo waterfall.

Most of the leaves had fallen off the trees are were kinda dry and "crunchy" underfoot!

Though, there were several trees that hadn't lost their leaves yet...like this one.

We were feeling a bit hungry and bought a bag of Momiji Tempura.

We tried this when we first moved here and weren't too impressed with them.

Recently, my friend and his mother came to visit and she wanted to try this so we bought her a bag and she loved it.

So, we decided to give it another go...

Warm and crunchy, these were the perfect snack!

The outside coating reminded me of Chinese Pretzels that we have in Hawaii.

In Minoo, they use edible maple leaves and salt them for a year to preserve them. Then they dip the leaves in the batter and fry them up.

For 70 grams they cost between 300 and 400 yen depending on what shop you buy them from. The lines for these were long and krazy!

I'm glad we tried these again!

While walking towards the waterfalls, we heard several "oohs and aahs" we turned around and saw...a shower of maple leaves, cascading down, so beautiful!

I took a video of it if you're interested...here....I gotta remember to take videos in landscape view...always forget, sorry!

We made it to the falls, the leaves nearby were really dry already, not too vibrant.

Here's a shot of the crowd...gads!

Since it is back to rainy today, I decided to take out some of our Christmas decorations...how is your first day of December going?!

christmas dinner

What did you have for Christmas dinner?

For our Christmas dinner I made Rolled Beef with Japanese Tartar Sauce.

Besides the shiso (perilla) leaf, I used baby leaf, a slice of red bell pepper, as well as some maitake in each roll.

This cooked up really quickly because the beef was paper thin.

We also had some cherry tomatoes, some bleu cheese and some beer.

Dessert was a rich custard pudding by Tada Farms, from the Tohoku area.

Nothing too fancy nor time consuming, my kind of cooking.

It's Friday here, Satoshi is off for the next week. We'll be doing O-soji and maybe getting out and about if the weather is cooperative.

Happy Holidays everyone!

thanks santa

Merry Christmas!

Unfortunately, Christmas isn't a holiday here, so Satoshi had to go to work.

Just wanted to share with you what Santa brought...books!

and an iPhone5S (on the left)...Thank you!

(the girl at the cell phone shop was amazed that my 3GS (on the right) was still going strong after being used for 4 years...)

And from Satoshi, these pretty roses!

I know most of you will be having Christmas tomorrow, so I hope Santa brings everything you wish for!

p.s. Santa is bringing Satoshi an iPhone later this week too...truth be told, I'm NOT looking forward to explaining to him how to use it...

Merry Christmas everyone!

it's beginning to look like christmas...

Actually, right after Halloween, up went the Christmas decorations in Osaka.

How is this huge deer?! 6 meters tall (19 feet) and bursting through the window of the Herbis Plaza Ent building...

Here it is from the outside.

And at Tokyu Hands, they had their army men decorated and ready for Christmas.

Christmas is quickly coming, are you ready?!

'tis the season

Christmas is coming, what a great way to celebrate with all sorts of sweet treats from around the globe.

First off though is not a sweet treat... A french classmate went to Belgium recently and brought back this cute sachet filled with lavender, perfect for Christmas (merci!)

Mini pandoro from MUJI. I had read about pandoro on Rowena's blog, but had not tried it myself.

Have you seen how big Pandoro or Panettone are?! Lucky for me, MUJI had these mini-sized (like the size of a big muffin), perfect for a taste.

This Italian eggy bread/cake reminds me of what we have in Japan called castella.

And if you try pandoro, then you have to try the Italian panettone too.

Another mini-size made by MUJI.

This one was more bread-like filled with raisins and citrus peels.

I preferred the pandoro while Satoshi preferred the panettone.

A small box of La Mere Poulard's Les cookies du Mont Saint Michel (France).

These cookies are packed with chocolate chips...yum!

Weiss Contrella Classic Lebkuchen (Germany)...I had envisioned something more like gingerbread, maybe a little more crisp, but these were soft, a little spicy, very sweet and dipped in chocolate.

With a cup of tea though, they were perfect.

Rounding out our Christmas treats, shortbread from Scotland.

Walker's buttery shortbread are delicious.

What are you enjoying these days?

thank you santa

Sunday, we did lots of cleaning and worked on our nengajo (New Years cards).

Santa (aka Satoshi) was nice, for Christmas he gave me a ticket to Hawaii to spend New Years with my family.

Actually Satoshi is working this New Years and has some business in Hawaii.

And since MIL is still in the hospital, we won't be getting together in Kyoto for our usual New Years gathering.

So, Satoshi thought it would be nice for me to go to Hawaii too, even though he has to work.

Am feeling a bit achy and think I may be coming down with something.

Still, I hope to see some friends, visit with family and eat some comfort foods during the time I'm there.

christmas day

Christmas Day, I woke up at my normal time (7:00) so that I could make breakfast and send Satoshi off to work.

Then, I went to Nakanoshima to check out the duck since it was the last day that it would be there.

The wind was blustery and icy. There were even some flurries (woot!)

Even though the weather was overcast, the duck did look nice during the daytime, don't you think?

I walked back to Umeda and stopped in at Burdigala for a cappuccino and something sweet.

Then before going home, I stopped in to the department store food floor and bought some salads and some chicken for our dinner.

I noticed that the Hankyu trains are all decorated and eagerly awaiting the Year of the Rabbit.

How was your Christmas?

p.s. I tried one of the OneGlass wines (Pinot Grigio) with dinner...even if it is only 1 half glass (100 ml), it was still delicious.