2014

Our 2014 New Year's card.

Thank you for visiting with us and taking an interest in our lives.

Much love from the Watanabe Family.

2013 quilt pictures

The end of the year is upon us.  I have taken inventory of my quilting and sewing projects this year and discovered that I got a lot more done than I thought I had.  Part of that is thanks to the McKenna quilt kits that went together so quickly and easily.  Anyway, here is my 2013 quilt collage.

You can't really tell which are large quilts and which are small quilts from this picture but they are all there.  I've claimed the bazaar quilt and the Turning Leaves quilt as some of mine though I certainly didn't do all that work... But I worked ON them with my friends.

And finally a picture of Tetsu's Christmas sweater.

We visited Tetsu's mother this weekend, partly to show her the sweater and partly to give her some calendars that she had asked for.  How does the sweater fit?  Tetsu took it off within minutes saying it was way to hot for indoors!  Maybe when we go dog walking?

Oh dear... And while I'm at it, here is a goofy picture of me in a blanket/robe that Takumi sent me.  He knows that the rooms get pretty cold in our house, the cats can attest to that.  Here are three of them sitting aound the electric heater... No... that isn't really a hood on the robe get-up.  The blanket folds up into a cushion and that is the cushion cover on my head.

Bye!  See you in the New Year!

Tofu pouches for dinner

How about another food post?  Someone asked me about tofu pouches and since I was using them in a dish I took pictures of the process.

Tofu pouches are called aburage in Japanese.  The actual translation is "deep fried in oil".  They can be easily bought in the tofu section of supermarkets in Japan.  I don't know about in other parts of the world.

Supposedly they are actually thin slices of tofu that have been deep fried and they naturally get an open space inside the slice.  BUT since one can buy them so easily, I've never tried making my own aburage.   If you are going to try to make your own I'd suggest you squeeze as much of the water out of your slices as possible otherwise you are going to have a dangerous oil fire.

This evening I was making aburage and sliced daikon (icicle radish) miso soup.

Slice up the daikon.

Slice up an aburage the same as the daikon and throw them in a pot with fish stock (powdered).  When the daikon is tender add miso to taste and green onions if you have any.  Ta-da!  Miso soup is finished!

But that wasn't really what I making that night for dinner. 

THIS was what I was making for dinner.  Vegetable and pork rolls.  I boiled up some sliced carrots and some greens.  I have no idea what the greens were... You could probably use spinach.  Meat; pork and beef, is most often sold in slices in the Japanese supermarkets.  It is harder to get large slabs of meat products here.  On the other hand, when I am in the States I find I have to ask the supermarket butcher in order to get paper thin slices of meat.

ANYWAY... salt and pepper the pork (and it is pork just because beef is so expensive in Japan) and then roll up the vegetables.  Fine.  Those rolls will be for Tetsu.

Now, I'm not much of a meat eater and so instead I took my aburage pouch and sliced off the four edges.

That gave me TWO aburage sides of the aburage and I placed the inside part down and then rolled up the vegetables the same as with the pork rolls.  The aburage rolls have to be held together with a tooth pick but besides that they work the same as the pork rolls.  I fried them lightly in the fry pan and then added sukiyaki sauce and let them simmer a bit.

You can make sukiyaki sauce with 1/3 cup soy sauce, 3 Tbsp sake or mirin, 5 Tbsp sugar, and 3/4 cup water.

And here is my main dish that night.  In the foreground are the pork rolls... they seem to "tighten-up" better than my aburage rolls in the back row but basically they taste the same.  Cooking both sets of rolls in the same pan combines their flavors.

I would say that the sukiyaki sauce recipe (with maybe a bit of added water) will cook up your aburage  all by itself and then the pouches can be cut in half and used for oinari-san much like my friend made the other day for us. 

Not too Christmasy a dinner but with the miso soup it was filling and tasty!

Snowflake Scarf

One knitting project finished and another one started.

Tetsu is not ready to model his sweater yet.  It was too large at the ribbing and so I spent  a couple hours sewing in elastic thread.  I made Tetsu try it on and so that I could evaluate it and I think it looks better (but not great).   When I got out my camera Tetsu said he had to get spruced up for my blog friends before I could show it off.  No overnight grunge for him on this blog.  Maybe tomorrow (or the next day).

So the new project is one using some absolutely gorgeous yarn from June!  She spins her own yarn!  June sent me two skeins last year that have been put away until I could come up with an appropriate project.  Isn't the teal/lavender combination beautiful?  It has sparkly gold threads in it too!  I have a lot of clothing with teal in it so I may keep this for myself, or I may send the finished scarf on to Leiya.  She asked for a heavy scarf for Christmas but Tetsu's sweater took priority.

I had some white yarn in my stash (where does this stuff come from?  I don't remember buying white yarn) and I will add strips of color to it until I use up June's yarn.  I probably should have made the white strips wider in order to make a longer scarf, but I'm not taking this out now.  I am LOOSELY following a pattern from Interweave Knits called Snowflake Scarf.

I've got a ways to go haven't I?  A good winter project to do over the New Year holidays.

Akita Nabe

This year Tetsu and I did not have a traditional Christmas dinner (not that we ever do).  Tetsu had to work both Christmas Eve day and Christmas Day and we were pretty busy Christmas Eve with a church service, but Christmas Day I got out pots and pans and cooked!

Not really....

My friend had sent me a Nabe set...  a special "stew" made in a pot.  All I had to provide was the pot!

Most places in Japan will have special local dishes or sweets and it is part of the fun of visiting places to try the specialties.  My friend goes back and forth to the prefecture of Akita and so she sent me an Akita Nabe set.

Let's see what's in the box....

A soy sauce based bottle of flavoring, green onions, a type of Japanese watercress, some shaved burdock root, ground chicken, sliced chicken, chicken soup, maetake mushrooms, and konyaku (a gelatinous potato) noodles and some crushed rice balls.  It is the crushed rice balls that make this nabe an Akita specialty.  The rice is slightly crushed with a mortar and pestle and then grilled to make them crispy.

 Here are the konyaku noodles.  They come tied up and I just had to cut through the knot.

 The mushrooms I tore to bite-sized.

I made the ground chicken into balls and then everything except the watercress and rice balls went into the pot.

After simmering for 20 minutes, I finally added the water cress and rice balls.  Yum! 

A taste of Akita and we didn't even have to leave home!

Making New Year's Cards

I am printing out New Year's post cards as I write this post.  A little behind schedule but that is par for the course.  It isn't until after Christmas that I start thinking about sending out New Year's cards. 

It has become a tradition to make New Year's cards every year with a picture of the family.  In the old days it was easier... and maybe cost me a bit more.  Tetsu and I first started the tradition when Takumi was born and we would take a family picture to the camera shop to have made into post cards (rather than Christmas cards, Japanese send out New Year's cards). And then Leiya came along, and then the dog had to be included.  Cats came into our lives too.  Usually we took a photo with the animals included but there were a couple years when we decided to use a picture taken while we were in the States.  No cats or dogs in those pictures.  I figured out a way to order photo stickers and patiently applied family pet stickers to all our post cards.

There were years when Takumi wouldn't cooperate and frowned at the camera, and of course there was always a cat or dog that didn't like the photographing hullabaloo (our old dog hated cameras and would hide whenever I brought my camera out). And then our family began to disperse to different parts of the world;  Takumi to California, Leiya to Ohio.  The logistics of collaging a post card with separate photos (not to mention that we had so many animals that the stickers covered the whole card!) had me pulling my hair for days.

I once took all the pictures I wanted to use in a photo collage to the camera shop and asked that someone there make a collage for me.  Yeah, at the price of $10 a photo and I had 7 animals, two separate children's photos and Tetsu and mine!  I took my pictures home and asked a friend to do it for me and 15 minutes later she sent me that year's New Year card.

Since then I've learned how to make my own photo collage as well as print out the cards themselves.  It takes a bit of brain power but Tetsu says it's worth it.  Notice that he doesn't get involved in the process.

We have 28 years worth of New Year's cards and each one is up on our hallway wall...

Egads!  In a few minutes I'll have 100 New Year's cards waiting to have messages added and be addressed!  Maybe I'll go hang-out at Starbucks for a few hours.
 

The Bethlehem Star on Christmas

Merry Christmas!

I finished the Bethlehem Star wall hanging that I've been working on.  One day late for Christmas (by Japanese time) but in other places in the world it is still Christmas Day.  My last finish for the year!

Here in Japan our Christmas was pretty quiet.  In the next city over the kids were still going to school on Christmas Day though my area was already on winter vacation.  Y-kun came over (at 9:00am) and we took Mi to the vet's for an inoculation, had noodles for lunch and did Christmas shopping for the evening church service.  Oh... and we also did a bit more sewing on Y-kun's quilt.  Nowhere near finished yet...  Tetsu had to work as usual and he won't have any time off until New Year's.

Our church evening service was attended by less people than usual.  Is is just too cold or are all the members just becoming older?  If even the Christians don't come to an Eve service then I guess we can't expect non-Christians to attend.  It is true that we are pretty limited on man-power so no special programs or events.  Only four or five children...We had a Christmas ice cream sundae table after the service and that was very popular!

I have been playing around on my iPad with an application called Repix.  So far I've just been using the free version, but it has been sort of fun...  How about some fantasy photos for today?  These have all been shown at some time on my blog in normal form but on Repix I've chalked worked places and "artistically" added sparkles.

 Scenery from our Morioka trip.

 More Morioka scenery.

The balls of yarn used in Tetsu's sweater.  (Which will be modeled at a later date.  It is very big.)

Have a wonderful Christmas Day!

Christmas ornaments

Each year my English classes make a Christmas ornament in our last English class of the year.  I used an old project that I've done with success before.

Fabric Christmas wreaths!  In an hour's time the kids had great fun making their wreaths and decorating them with beads.

I borrowed Mrs. Furui's pinking shears and cut strips of Christmas fabric.  Let's see... about 1 inch by 5 inches.  I also bought notebook rings at the hardware store.

 Take a strip and with ends together...

 ...loop in around the closed ring. (Push the ends through the loop).

 Pull the ends tight.

Tight enough means more strips can be added to make the wreath full.  Too tight and the ring pops open...  I think we used about 12 strips to each ring.  I had thought each child would use one color but they mixed and matched different strips (different lengths too I see..)

I had found some stick-on pearl beads (for cell phone covers!) in the dollar store, and I cut up a green bead necklace I'd bought at the recycle shop (always on the lookout for craft materials).  The older children are pretty confident with a hot glue gun these days and they glued on the ribbons and beads and the hanging loop.

And for my two 6th grade boys (you can spot Y-kun there) they opted to make pillow cases for their Christmas project.  Both boys had fun rooting around in my stash cupboard.  S-kun chose some Christmas fabric with gold trees...  He is going to wake up with gold all over his face in the mornings!

Wreaths

Yesterday Y-kun came to spend the day with Tetsu and me.  The purpose was to take him out to lunch...  Last year Y-kun came on Christmas Eve day (and he will this year too) but this Christmas Eve day Tetsu has to work, so lunch out was scheduled for yesterday.

Y-kun showed up at 9:00 (he wanted to come at 8:00) and Tetsu and I were doing things like washing dishes and raking leaves.  Y-kun had ideas right away for what he wanted to do in the morning.

"Let's make a wreath!  I know how to make wreaths!  We need to go into the forest and get vines!  Come on!  Let's take Choco and go into the forest!"

Tetsu opted to stay at home and rake leaves and Choco and Y-kun and I went off on a hunt for wreath materials.

Vines were pretty easy to find.  Y-kun stomped into the wild and hacked at vines and untangled branches.  He came back with quite a few nice ones (some he pronounced "empty", dried out).

 The vines we took back to Tetsu who helped fashion them into circles.

Y-kun also found branches, and berries, some short bamboo and some wild lily pods.  Tetsu was quite impressed that Y-kun could find all these materials just waiting to be woven into "something".

To be honest, Y-kun wasn't all that excited about making the wreath itself.  He likes the forest exploring part.  He kept giving up and saying he didn't have any artistic sense but HE was the one who started this project so I made him persevere and with a little help (from me) and advice (from Y-kun) we got two wreaths made.

This is mine... set on a stand with a wood plaque I had.

And this is Y-kun's.  With the bamboo it has a bit of a Japanese New Year feel to it.

I like Y-kun's best and it is now adorning my front door!