Bento Thursday - Ohanami

Right now is my favorite season in Japan - the cherry blossoms, sakura, are out! During cherry blossom time, we often have Ohanami, picnics under the flowering trees. One of the room mothers for K's kindergarten suggested we get together for Ohanami on Monday. I asked K what kind of bento he wanted - Dr. Yellow, naturally. This time, to mix it up a bit, I boiled an egg, took out the yolk, mashed it up and mixed it into his rice to make it yellow. I love how it turned out. Then I added the standard nori windows and stripes. He also requested cucumbers, carrots, green peppers and teriyaki chicken. I got it all ready, showed it to him and he was bummed that the stripes on Dr. Yellow weren't blue like they are supposed to be. I have never done them blue. I ended up getting out my food markers and drawing blue stripes on it. He was so pleased.

My bento was the same as K's, except for the onigiri. I wanted a sesame onigiri, so I made it into a bear. 

Since I was making bentos for K and I, I figured I might as well make one for Y. I left out the cucumbers from his and instead added cheesy salmon and tomatoes. Also, no onigiri - just rice with furikake.

K had such a fun time with his school friends. Only about 10 of them showed up, but a few of them were his best friends. In the morning it was a tad chilly, but it ended up getting quite hot.

Unfortunately, we had to leave a bit early. T was getting restless, we had to get to the bank by 3, and I wanted to pick up Y's birthday present. K was cool with leaving, but asked if we could go back one day.

Just before T was born, I had this huge urge to take K out and do as many fun things with him as possible, while it was just the two of us. Now that we leave in less than a month (probably), I am feeling the same way. During the time we have left, I want to do as many fun things in Japan as possible. So this morning, I made K and I some sandwiches, cut up some carrots and apples, and packed a lunch for T. We stopped by the convini to pick up some treats for after lunch, then we popped on the train, and headed back to the park we went to on Monday. We got there just after 11 and the place was packed. Luckily we found a nice spot in the shade. T tried to eat everything he saw.

K stuck to his sandwich, carrots and apples.

After lunch, we took a walk around. K played at one of the playgrounds, but then he spotted the gigantic bouncy castle. He always asks to play in it, but we always have some excuse. Not today! In the spirit of making his last month in Japan epic, I bought him a ticket. He was on cloud 9. Kids go in for 15 minute shifts. He made the most of his time in there - climbing the walls, running and jumping off of the tubes, going down the slides, and jumping as high as he could propel his little body. He came out glowing (maybe from sweat, but likely from the amazing 15 minutes he spent in there).

He was really hot at that point, so I suggested we get some ice cream - also, to be honest, I can't go to this park during cherry blossom season and not get a cherry blossom ice cream. Ugh. It's amazing.

K took ages to eat his ice cream. Usually I would try to hurry him up, but why? I had to get home to make dinner, but tonight was mostly left overs anyway. K took so long eating it that T fell asleep.

As we were walking to the station, K looked up and said, "Look, mama! We are in a tunnel of sakura!" We were. And it was beautiful.

K had such a fun day and I am so happy. Yesterday we walked out to the gardening store near our house and K fed the fish. Tomorrow his friend from school is coming over. He has been asking to go to a professional soccer game, and I think there is one this weekend. I am debating taking him. It starts at 4, so it will mess up T's bedtime, but part of me wants to just not worry about that and take them anyway. Afterall, I want K to have wonderful memories of Japan. I know we will be back, but not for a few years.

6 Months

To celebrate little T turning 6 months old, we took a family trip to Hawaii last week! Just kidding - it was actually a trip to celebrate our 5-year wedding anniversary, but it just so happened that T turned 6 months halfway through the trip.

For a few weeks now, T has been eyeing food. By that, I mean he gets really upset when people are eating and he's not. I didn't want to start solids until after Hawaii, both for convenience sake and also because I didn't want to deal with an allergic reaction while on holiday, should one occur. I promised, however, that as soon as we got back I would start solids. We got back Monday night, so Tuesday after naptime (and during my unpacking - hence the gigantic mess in the background), T had his first taste of rice. He seemed a bit unsure of it all. Today went much better - I imagine tomorrow will be even better than today. I think I've got an eater on my hands!

He can sit on his own for about 30 seconds now, but can't get there himself.

With a tiny bit of help reaching the top of the sofa, he can pull himself up and stand for a while. He tends to just randomly pick up his hands and topple over though, so I have to be pretty close when this is happening.

Along with solids, I gave him his first sippy up. He seems to like chewing on it, but I'm not sure if he's actually drinking anything.

He loves to roll and scoot around, and his favorite places seem to be under the furniture - any sofa or coffee table will do.

 

K is still an amazing big brother. He dotes on T and it melts my heart every time. While we were in Hawaii, T developed a cough. Whenever K hears him cough, he runs over, pats his back and coos "poor baby".  I think these two will be best friends forever.

 

 

 

One last T-fun-fact is that he has curly hair (in the humidity, at least)!! I had no idea. The day we got to Hawaii his hair curled right up and it didn't straighten out again until the plane ride home. If you look closely at the family photo above, you can kind of see a little head of black curls.

 

Anyway, back to the main post - in preparation for Hawaii I made T a portable high chair. I took photos while making this, but it seems that K accidentally deleted them. Whoops. Additionally, I can't seem to find the tutorial I used to make this, but to be honest it was quite confusing and had no pictures. I was able to work it out, but I was confused most of the time. In searching for the original tutorial, however, I found this one that is the same thing, but very clear and with photos. 

 

 

We rented a house in Hawaii which meant that almost all of our meals were eaten at a dining table in our "home". As a result, T was either rolling around on the floor, asleep, or being held by someone during every meal, so he didn't use the chair at all when we were at home. To celebrate our anniversary, however, we had a huge dinner at the same restaurant at which we had our reception. They had a high chair for T, but he is still so teeny that he kind of flopped around it in. I was able to use this one to strap him in a little tighter. He only lasted in the chair for about 20 minutes, before someone picked him up. It turns out that I probably didn't need to make this for the trip, but I imagine it will be helpful in the near future anyway.

 

 



Merry Christmas

Santa came!!! On Christmas Eve, I asked K what he wanted to leave out for Santa and he said, "two Christmas cookies, a slice of apple pie, orange juice and milk. And carrots for the reindeer." To which I jokingly commented, "Wow! That's a lot of food for Santa - he's going to get fat at our house!!" K didn't want Santa getting too fat and having to stop at the doctor mid-present drop, so he edited the apple pie of out the spread. He also insisted that we label the carrots for each reindeer. Silly Dasher and Vixen only ate half of their carrots.

K woke up on Christmas morning to find this:

He was so pleased that he had, in fact, been a good boy and that Santa had come. Gah, I love that little guy.

While that was our actual Christmas Eve and morning, our Christmas celebration started on the 23rd when we had two families over. These two families are so wonderful and I 100% consider them our family here. (That's not to be rude at all to Y's family, it's just that we don't live anywhere near them either.) This post is going to be kind of a long one, but it will have lots of photos of delicious foods.

As you may recall, up until a week or so ago, we were all sick. This put my dinner prep way behind given that I first had to catch up on everything else that I didn't do while I was sick. Last Friday, we finally went to buy the turkey and other groceries, but by the time we got home, put everything away, ate dinner, and put the boys to sleep, I was too beat to actually start cooking. This means that all of the foods you are about to see were made between Saturday and Monday - mostly Saturday and Sunday, of course. Y is a complete saint. He cleaned the house and took care of the boys so that I could focus on food. It was a ridiculous amount of work to be doing while sleep deprived and with a lingering cold and a 4-month old, but sharing a delicious meal and a wonderful time with our family was well worth it.

Here's what I made: Before dinner, we started with K's favorite Christmas cookies, as well as mint chocolate chip and M&M cookies, candied pecans, and some savory snacks - cheeses, veggies, crackers, and chips.

The ginger Christmas cookies (K's favorites) were delicious as always. I love how all of the spices meld together making this the most Christmas-flavored cookie.

The mint chocolate chip and M&M cookies were a new recipe and they turned out really good. In K's letter to Santa, he asked what Santa would like to eat when he stops at our house. K recommended "mama's M&M cookies" because Santa "would certainly like them." How could I not make some M&M cookies after that raving review?! That being said, I just recently made some M&M cookies and wanted something a little different. Mint and chocolate are another of my favorite Christmas combos, so I went with it. For the most part, I followed the recipe aside from the refrigeration bit - I was in a bit of a rush, people!

Also I used peppermint essence instead of extract. I don't know what the difference is, to be honest, but it did not have the disastrous results that the recipe's baker had. These were quite nice.

The other change was that, of course, I had to add in some M&Ms. I went with half chocolate chips, half M&Ms. Also, when I said they were quite nice, I meant to say they were awesome and I ate my weight in them.

I rolled them into little balls and baked for 8 minutes. Delicious!

The other new recipe that I tried were candied pecans. Holy moly, these were amazing. Unfortunately we have eaten them all. Fortunately, we are headed to Y's parents' for New Years. I think I need to make another batch for the occasion.

These were so super simple. Mix sugar, cinnamon and salt in a big ziplock.

Whisk egg whites, water, and vanilla in a bowl.

Stir in some pecans.

Put the pecans in the bag and shake. Then spread them out on a baking sheet and bake. The recipe says to bake for an hour, but mine were still slight sticky at that point, so I put them back in for 20 minutes. They were phenomenal.

 

 Dinner consisted of: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole (from the can, not that homemade business I usually slave over, thanks to my little brother who FedEx-ed me the ingredients!!),

 

 

 roasted brussel sprouts, applesauce with dried cranberries, carrot ribbons with cashews, and stuffing.

 

 

This little princess of a girl kept saying "oishii!!" (delicious) as she ate her dinner. Gah! Be still my heart! What a cutie pie!!!

 

 

 I wasn't going to make a pecan pie, but one of the friends who came over halfway requested it, so I threw it into the mix as well. As far as pies go, it's a pretty simple one.

 

I also made my favorite, apple pie. Turns out I am one of the only ones who actually ate it. Pecan pie for the win! (Note: the below photo was taken about 10 minutes ago, I didn't eat that much pie!)

 

It was a pretty mental three days in the kitchen, but I haven't cooked since, as we have been living on leftovers. I guess maybe it was worth it?? Who are we kidding? It was totally worth it! I love this meal!!!

 

As a final little story of from the evening, my favorite line of the night comes from our friends' 9-year old son, while playing MarioKart against K. K is fiercely competitive and if he is losing or loses at something, he generally doesn't take it well. This is something we are working on, but it's not going so well; he just hates losing. Naturally, he was losing. In the middle of a race, K goes, "Z!! Slow down!! I want to win." Without missing a beat, he replies "No way. I'm not losing to a 3-year old." Man, I love kids!



Monster Cookies...kind of

K woke up on Monday morning and told me he wanted chocolate chip cookies. "We don't have any cookies, bud. Sorry." "No mama! I want some chocolate chip cookies." "I heard you the first time. But, we don't have any cookies." This went on for some time and he got whinier and whinier until I finally broke down. "Look, dude, I'm not joking. We don't have any cookies. If you can find some, you can have them." He took off to the kitchen. I heard him rummaging around and then I heard the refrigerator door open. The flour and chocolate chips were sitting on the floor. "Uhhh, what are you doing?" "You said we don't have any cookies, so I decided that I would just make them. Can you get my stool? I can't reach the eggs." So that's what we did on Monday morning. We made cookies.

I thought he would be super stoked if we made monster cookies with M&Ms AND chocolate chips, but he insisted on chocolate chips only. Apparently he really did just want chocolate chip cookies. I convinced him that we should put dried cranberries in too. It took some work, but he finally caved.

When it got time to add the oats, however, I realized that we were about 3/4 of a cup short. Gaaa!! I added 3/4 of a cup of flour and it turned out just fine, although I am pretty sure with the lack of M&Ms, plus the addition of flour, these aren't really monster cookies. As a quick note, we only made half of the recipe - I really don't need that many cookies sitting around here.

K got bored and once they were mixed he was over it. He kept asking for the cookies, but I told him we had to bake them first.

Soon enough, they were baked and slightly cooled, and he dove right in.

Sweet Potato Snackies

Today K went on a field trip to the zoo. (For those who are curious, this week, he went to school like a champ - very little crying and puke-free!!) For field trips, the kids have a special backpack that is a bit smaller than their regular one. As a result, while he needed to take a bento, it had to be a small bento (generally just onigiri or a sandwich) and not even in a bento box, but wrapped in foil. They were also instructed to bring a snack. Since K's onigiri contained no fruits or veggies, I thought I should make a snack that had some sort of vitamins in it. I realize these are not healthy in the least, but they do have sweet potato in and that has to count for something, right?

Start by steaming 400 grams of sweet potato. I use a tagine for this, but anything works. You could probably even do it in the microwave, but I've never tried that.

While the sweet potato is steaming, put 70 grams of sugar, 30 grams of fresh cream, 70 grams of milk, 50 grams of butter, and one egg yolk into a pan.

Once the sweet potato is soft, peel and mash it.

Add the mashed sweet potato to your pot and mix it up with the heat on medium. Keep cooking it like this until the liquid is gone and it starts to get kind of stiff.

Put it into a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for about an hour or until it is cool enough to handle.

Once it has cooled down, divide it into fairly equal portions, I got 12 out of it, but the original recipe said you could probably get 15. Put each little ball in a foil wrapper.

Form each little portion into an oblong shape. I don't know why we do this, but these treats are super popular in Japan during the fall and they are always this shape. I like to think it's because it looks kind of like a sweet potato (or a football?? Both equal fall to me.). Once they are all formed, crack open another egg and separate the yolk. Mix the yolk up a bit and use your finger to put some on the top.

Then bake them for 15 minutes at 200C. They should have a few brownish spots on them. If not, put them back in for another 2 minutes or so. Then eat! K begged for one of these after dinner last night, and of course I gave him one. He absolutely loves them. He was so super stoked to have one at the zoo today - in fact, according to him, that was his favorite part of the day today. What a cutie!