Osechi Dish of 2008

Japanese prepare osechi dish for New Year and it consists of many common ingredients. Some of them are kuromame (black beans), kuri-kinton (mashed sweet potatos with chesnuts),　and kohaku-namasu (red and white pickles).

Although I did not have the chance to get enough ingredients to make osechi dish, I think I did a pretty good job this year!

From left to right:
First row (two colored egg, tataki gobo, and shitake mushroom)
Second row(bamboo shoots and carrots, konnyaku, subasu, and kohaku-namasu)
Third row(kuromame, kurikinton, and tender chicken)

Gobo is burdock in English. Tataki is a way to prepare burdock. You need to smash gobo with a Japanese wooden pestle!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

This holiday season was very quiet, because my husband and my daughter had spent time in Japan. As I had just gone there in Nov. my son and I have decided to stay here. So, I did a lot of baking and cooking!

Here are some of the pictures of Christmas goodies I baked for Christmas.





Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer!



More cookies! These white round cookies are called 'Secret Kiss Cookies', because Hershey's kiss chocolates are wrapped with cookie dough.



At the end of the year 2007 I threw a Sushi Party for my son and his friends.



They were having the best time rolling sushi and eating them!
Ingredients are as follows: sweet egg omelet, smoked salmon, masago(fish eggs),avocado, cream cheese, imitation crab meat, umeboshi or pickled plums,leaf lettuce, cucumbers.
No raw fish this time!

For dessert we had Marble Brownies which my son's friend's mother baked and Strawberry Short Cake which I baked.



I will update our Japanese New Year dish, Osechi Ryori, so look forward!