Happy New Year!

Happy new year!

I hope this will be another great year for you all !!

On the last two days of the year, I was very very busy preparing for a New Year!
I cleaned up our apartment thoroughly, and made Osechi which is a traditional Japanese New Year dish.
Click here to know more about Osechi.

Osechi comes in the boxes called Oju.

the 1st box

the 2nd box

 

 

the 3rd box

Ozouni; rice cake in soup

Inari-sushi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10min. Madeleine

Typhoon is coming.. It's windy terribly outside...D-:

Today I found a nice recipe for beginner!

Madeleine & Cappucino :-)

It took only 10 min. before baking. It was very easy even for me!

******************************************************
Ingredients
  100g flour, 1-2 tsp baking powder, 75g sugar, 100g butter, 2 eggs

Direction
1. Melt butter.
2. Preheat the oven to 180C.
3. Combine flour and baking soda.
4. Combine eggs and sugar with a whik in another bowl.
5. Add flour and baking soda into eggs bowl, and mix well. 　
6. Add melted butter, and mix well slowly.
7. Pour into molds, and bake for 12min. That's all!
******************************************************

Easy & Yummy!

Remade Dress

I tried to remake clothes for the first time! I have forgotton to take a before photo...what a silly!
This was a dress with boat neck and baloon sleeves that I made 3 or 4 years ago, which looked no longer out of date!
I removed the sleeves and cut neck line to make it wider, and made a bias tape from the sleeves.
I binded neck line and arm holes with the bias tape, and sewed my waist line with an elastic
thread.
I'm going to wear this dress as casual with a pair of leggins and a parka. :-)

can you see this elastic waist?

also goes well with this dressy cardigan

*******************************************

the last black berries.. see you on next summer!

Steamed Cakes

A water-lily from Thailand bloomed!

Even though it's Sunday today, my husband has gone to his office... :(  Japanese people really work hard... When I had been a worker ( a kind of public worker),  I took only 2-3 days off a month.  At last, I was exhausted and got some troubles on my health, and I quitted my job. Now I'm a happy homemaker, thanks to my husband.

Mushi-pan, Steamed Cakes

I do love cooking, but I'm not good at baking caks and cookies.  I can only make a few kinds of them, and these on this photo above are the ones of them, Mushi-pan, steamed cake. It's very easy to make, and very healthy with a little oil.

*****************************************************
Ingredients
1c flour, 1/2c sugar, 1tsp baking powder, 1tsp oil, 1c milk

Direction
1. Combine flour, sugar and baking powder in a bawl.
2. Add oil and milk into the bawl.
3. Pour into cups, and steam for 15min. That's all!
******************************************************

They look brown because I used brown sugar.

SUSHI~~~!

 

I went to  a fish market with my husband this Sunday.

It was about 1 and a half hours driving from my town... far a little.

Many people are making  a line to have raw oysters.

 

A big mountain of oyster shells!!

Most of Japanese people love them, but I don't like so much.

I prefer fried or boiled rather than raw ones....

Our purpose on this day was to eat flesh and delicious SUSHI! 

SUSHI is a kind of  famous Japanese foods, you know.

 We went Sushi bar near the market where we can eat them cheap...

We call this type of Sushi bar  "Revolving Sushi Bar".

 

Sushi comes automatically on the revolving velt covyer,

and I can select my own food..

 Very unique system!

 

 

I had a happy Sunday :)

New Year Food in Japan

How are you spending this holiday season?

I had a wonderful new year with my husband and dog at my small house.

We usually go back to our hometown where our parents live every year,

but it is tooooooo hard for me to get the air tickets on this season...

In Japan we have some traditional special foods on New Year Table.

Please see photos.

We call them "Osechi".

And we put Osechi in three box case like these.

( also much more in refrigerator!!)

I cooked this on Dec.31.

It was very hard and took long time, and I got tired.

But thanks to that, I had no need to work in the kitchen during this holiday!!

 

Each of foods has meanings and wishes.

( I dont know some of them)

*MENU*

black sweet beans

boiled fish paste

mushed sweet potato and chesnut

seaweed and　something..

burdock pickles

steamed and rolled egg

salmon rolled with seatangle

pickled raddish shaped like flower

roasted beef

herring roe

roasted duck

candied fish (Ayu)

This is called Chikuzen-ni".

It contains chicken, taro potato, carrot, Konnyaku,　lotus root,

Shiitake mashroom, bamboo shoot, green bean.

I didn't like Osechi foods very much when I was a child

because it was a little boring for me...

But now I love them so much!

I love Japanese foods very much :)