Finally Here

Finally Kayo's Christmas present arrived today after nearly 2 months in limbo stuck somewhere between here and China. As you can see something bad happened to the original packaging. But.........

Totoro somehow survived unharmed. Thank God.
A quick wrap job and ta-da Christmas in January.
But I think it was worth the wait.
How ever I hope he's not sleeping on my side of the bed.

Rice Bowls

As they say in Japan, your food/ presentation of food should look pleasing to your eyes also. That was my excuse... I didn't have real rice bowls, not too small, not too big, you know. When I saw this colorful set at Pier 1, I just had to.... Promise I'll do more Japanese/ Asian cooking!
The other night I re-made Thai style egg rolls, along with Thai beef salad and coconut rice (all from my new Thai cook book).
Egg rolls are a bit more work to make than spring rolls, but it's worth it in the end. It's been fun trying out some new recipes.

Thinking of... Hibernation

On this bright sparkling January morning... the sun (wait, what does it really look like, it's been so long) shines warmly. But the looks are very, very deceiving. I took our camera against our back door to take a picture of how cold it actually is outside this morning, from inside. After an hour and a half, the temp is on a climb, now to zero. I believe we are getting a freezing blow right from the arctic. With a heat wave of above 20 (U.P. winter standard) earlier this week, we got snow every day, every minute, it seemed. But now, with the sub-zero temperatures, it's even too cold to snow. Guess our hometown Heikki Lunta winter festivity last weekend must have worked!
Speaking of the winter fest, there is no more update on the dinner party. You can only guess. Once again, with Joe's big extended family, the whole event was like a tornado pass through inside our house, then gone. We forgot, or couldn't take pictures of everything we cooked. I enjoyed making Thai style eggrolls for the first time; Joe grilled teriyaki chicken beautifully despite the difficult condition with cold weather. But no photo evidence.
For those who must know, the result of Spam musubi was positive. In fact, we didn't need to enforce or bribe them to finish the dish. All was gone, voluntarily. Their reaction was first, "Sounds interesting. Suppose we try." Then, "Guess it's not too bad." And finally, "It's actually pretty good." Now the question is... how often do we need to eat Spam musubi?? Is it something we make our tradition? That feels like too much to think about right now... 'cause all I can think of today is how smart those wild animals that have long gone hibernation are!! I just came out of hibernation myself... after sleeping off a mild achy case of flue. And I'm not intending to go back... not the flue/ cold.
P.S. We are still saving our first trip to the Spam aisle.

Spam Musubi?!

A long story short, in the past we made a big mistake of laughing about Spam and the Hawaiian. This Christmas our wonderful friends in Hawaii sent us everything we need to make their beloved "Spam musubi." It's a rice ball with a slice of Spam.
Today our little town is celebrating Heikki Lunta winter festival with a firework display later on if the weather permits. We are having Joe's big and extended family over for dinner. We managed to include Spam musubi on the menue, so everyone can try.
Here's Joe skillfully making his Spam musubi.

Can't wait for everyone to try these....
We at least felt obligated to sample before offering to anyone. It was... not bad, actually pretty good after the second bite... even Joe admitted.
Yukiyo, are you happy??

Kayo the Snow Thrower

All I gotta say is thank goodness for our new ergonomic design snow scoop (thanks, Phil & Judy!) after spending an hour shoveling our driveway. Just enough snow to be plowed in, not enough for Joe to get up early to snowblow.
3-4 inches every day, every night... nice fluffy snow, which I still love. But when they plow our street, that packed, chunky, heavy snow gets piled at the bottom of our driveway. In the picture below is our sidewalk completely covered under almost a foot of that heavy stuff... I gave up. Joe has to run his snowthrower with motor this evening. (Notice the four-foot mound of snow, up and over which I had to throw snow!!)
To show my job well done!

Happy New Year!

We actually had a wedding to go to on the New Year's Day evening. It was rather a small affair, but required formal attire. Living up north we hardly have such an occasion. The wedding ceremony at six, and fancy dessert reception on the top floor of the fanciest and oldest hotel in town at nine. In between we went out for dinner with a few of our friends. It was very nice.
We have a few photos to prove that we wore formal attire for the evening.
Here, the best one, is Joe all happy standing right by the dessert table of fancy truffles with gold flakes, liquors, and orchid petals.
The whole evening was a kind of experience that makes you feel rich in life. Except, outside it was barely 8 degrees, very very chilly.

New Year's Eve

We followed one of our few Japanese traditions again on this New Year's Eve. Like my family in Japan we had "sukiyaki" for dinner. Well, it was actually "as sukiyaki as it could get," since we can't have every authentic ingredient around here. I also made some smoked salmon sushi rolls above.
Chewing on the white Japanese rice so happily, I said "I must be a Japanese!" I don't need to eat Japanese food everyday, but every New Year's wouldn't feel right without a bit of Japanese traditions.
Of course, we had to have sake to celebrate with!!
Otherwise, we just stayed in. Our potential New Year's Eve party hosts were both sick again (three years in a row) and had to cancel. We let all other crazy people go out in the cold to watch our local smallish ball drop. We watched a couple of movies on Netflix, so we could stay up till midnight. Then we toasted with shots and went to bed. Kayo had to work next morning....