…Archive for the ‘holiday’ Category…

Easter 2012

Excuse me while I interrupt my Japan series to talk a little about the very American tradition of dyeing Easter eggs. Actually, I don’t know that it’s uniquely American but it sure isn’t Japanese.

My mom and I have been dyeing Easter eggs ever since Amy’s family dropped the ball and stopped doing so. Amy and I used to dye Easter eggs for her family, making fancy designs, with me telling her which eggs were ugly and which were acceptable for company Those days are over…

Anyway, here’s a look at me and my mom’s Easter eggs from 2010 and 2011. This year, we decided to use pastel dye but some of the eggs didn’t take to the dye very well, unfortunately. Still cute, though!

It took about 2.5 hours for us to complete them. At about 9 o’clock my dad walked into the kitchen and sat forlornly at the table until my mom got up to make dinner. Here are some of our designs from this year.

Swimmy by Mom -resurrected from a previous year

Let’s go METS by moi -of course

Sakura tree by me – in honor of my Japan trip

A bow by Mom – one of her best, methinks. My Dad even noticed this one, so you know it has to be eye-catching

Pineapple by me – in honor of Okinawa

Orange by Mom – so cute!

Rainbow by me

ONIGIRI by me – this wasn’t dyed, I know

Flowers by Mom

Totoro by me – another one in honor of Zamami

A spring day by Mom

Happy Easter! By Mom – bringing it all back to Jesus

Watermelon by me – a classic

Banana by Mom – she’s such a great drawer

Hope you all had a nice Easter and/or Passover or nice spring weekend!

(Yes, I realize this happened a while ago)

Christmas Bread

I was reading the New York Times the week before Christmas and found a delicious looking recipe for Cesnica, Serbian Christmas Bread. I still had some yeast in my cupboards, so I thought it would be a nice treat to make it and have it on Christmas day. I also REALLY want to become a seasoned bread maker since that’s really the only food I don’t make myself.

Anyway, Cesnica is a lovely braided bread with a coin cooked inside, and much like the baby in King’s Cake, whoever gets the coin, gets good luck for the year.

I’m not posting the recipe for a couple reasons. One, I can’t find it anymore. Two, it wasn’t one of my raging successes. It tasted really doughy and while it was good toasted, it’s not a light, fluffy bread you can consume on it’s own. It may very well have been my oven since it’s terrible, but who knows… I did want to blog about it, though, so I could show it off and because I spent a collective 6 hours, making the darn thing.

But first, I was really nervous about baking the coin so I took the question to Facebook. One of my friends suggested wrapping it in aluminum foil and another to just insert it after it’s baked. I also Google-d a bit and found that you can brush it with hot water and baking soda to sanitize it. So, of course, I did both.

I found a quarter (a Hawaiian one since that’s where my parents got married) and soaked it in baking soda and water.

And then I wrapped it in tin foil.

My brother ended up getting the good luck and when he unwrapped it, we found that the baking soda had totally corroded the quarter. Yuck.

And while we’re talking about Christmas (yes, it’s a month late), I thought I would show you my Christmas nails.

Aw, yeah.

And here are some pictures of the process. It’s useless to you, I know, but just humor me.

Ta-da! Too bad it didn’t taste as good as it looks. Nevertheless, I did eat my fair portion – heavily toasted, slathered in butter, and soaked in jam. It’s a Christmas miracle that I didn’t gain ten pounds over the holiday…

From Japan

Mother’s Day was extra special this year (although we were missing my brother) because we hadn’t, or at least I hadn’t, been in constant communication in the weeks leading up to it like we normally are. I was gallivanting in Paris and my Dad just got back from 10 days in Japan. My brother is actually in Australia, so our family members were quite the world travelers the past two weeks.

My sister and I went home for the weekend and went on a lovely picnic lunch (which my mom made, of course) to celebrate her! I have the best mom in the world, I have to say. She’s always incredibly supportive of me and has encouraged me to be myself from Day 1. We like to say in my family, that I’m a late bloomer, but it’s partly because I never felt pressured to figure things out right away. And let me tell you, people, she has the patience of a saint. She can wait it out for a long time for me to get on track but also knows when I need a little gentle push. Anyway, all this to say:

Happy Mother’s Day, Mommy!

Thanks for for all the ways you love me. Thanks for ironing my sheets when they’re too wrinkly and for buying me whole wheat thin spaghetti when it’s on sale even when I don’t ask you to and for listening to me yell about how there’s too much traffic on the GWB and for buying me pineapple-themed things just because and for being so loving through it all. I love you!

And here’s the delicious lunch she so generously prepared:

My favorite was the onigiri which I have been eating for lunch this week

On Sunday, I *helped* with yard work, which I guess was more a gift for my dad than my mom, but the three of us had a good time… My dad found this in the bushes:

How appropriate for Mother’s Day! I’m sure the mother Robin did not appreciate me trying to take a picture of it but I couldn’t get over how blue the eggs were! Happy Mother’s Day to you, too, Mother Robin!

Before my dad went to Japan he asked me what I wanted and I naturally only had one request: white chocolate Kit Kats. (Well, it’s not natural I only had one request, but natural that my request would be food.) Now, I know they have them in the US, too, but the Japanese ones taste SO.MUCH.BETTER! My friend Kate and I used to eat them almost on a daily basis when we lived in Kyoto. Sadly, they were a limited edition kind of thing (my dad asked around) so instead, he got me every kind of Kit Kat they sold as well as all kinds of white chocolate treats

I’m especially scared excited to try this guy:

Wasabi Kit Kats!

He also brought back some of his baby pictures that all three of us kids have been asking for for YEARS.

My Dad was definitely a cute kid and looked exactly like my sister. Well, I guess my sister looks exactly like my dad…

This one was funny because…

He looks so similar to my brother! So cute that they’re in their school uniform.

Do you see it?

And this one was just plain cute.

The above picture is cute for many reasons but it’s so weird to me how similar my sister looks to him. Just put a wig on him and there’s Sonoko!

He also brought back my sister’s baby pictures, which have been sitting in my grandma’s house for 28 years. We have a few pictures of my sister in our house until she was 2 1/2 years old (which is when we moved to the States) but I couldn’t believe the amount of pictures they had taken of her!

(That picture doesn’t do it justice. There’s at least 400 pictures in there)

I guess that’s what happens with your first child. I’ve never seen a more documented baby in my life.

Here are some cute ones…

My mom was a flight attendant and my dad was a travel agent so a good chunk of pictures was taken in airplanes. She was quite the world-traveler and probably saw more countries in the first two years of her life than I have in my whole entire life!

In case we forgot what her name was:

And my favorite picture of all time. I cannot NOT laugh when I look at this.

And then I emerged:

Bossing me around from an early age:

Lots of pictures of us sleeping but I think it’s because that’s all I did so it was the only time we “interacted”.  This one is funny because I have a huge smile on my face.

Probably because it was the first time we slept together without her kicking me.

Oh, sisters.

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