Starting off the New Year

Being an incurable fangirl a lover of a lot Japanese trends and traditions, I’ve always wanted to celebrate New Year Japanese-style. But seeing as neither The Hubster ™ nor I are Japanese ourselves, we’ve decided to just put a Japanese spin on our New Year’s celebrations to make them our own. I’d love to make my own version of osechi (お節) or traditional Japanese New Years foods but
a) I lack the juubako 重箱 (tiered lacquer box) that the food is presented in and
b) Did I mention I’m not Japanese? I’d probably make someone’s obaachan (grandma) roll over in the grave with my version of osechi.

For the past few years, we’ve shared a meal of shabu-shabu しゃぶしゃぶ (Japanese hot pot) with our friends before toasting in the New Year. This year, without access to a decent Japanese market to get the appropriate cuts of rib eye that make shabu-shabu so yummy, The Hubster ™, sister and I shar ed a meal of yakiniku 焼き肉 (Japanese style grilled meat) instead.

One of the traditional foods eaten during Japanese New Year is mochi 餅 (pounded glutinous rice) and it is one of The Hubster’s ™ favorite foods, so much so that he’s called himself a mochi-whore. Specifically, he likes a dessert made from mochi called daifuku 大福 which is a ball of mochi filled with sweet bean paste. While I easily could have bought his favorite brand of daifuku while at the grocery store, I decided to try to make some daifuku for him for New Year’s as a surprise. I didn’t have to steam and pound the rice myself (though I suppose that’s half the fun) but instead ended up making some quick mochi by cooking up some sugar, water and rice flour. The cooking wasn’t the difficult part… shaping it was! Mochi is shaped while warm; I’ve seen videos of folks shaping mochi when right out of the cooker! That’s some hot stuff!! After about 20 minutes, I had a plateful of homemade daifuku.

Dodgy looking but definitely edible. Delicious, even. The powder is potato starch flour which was ESSENTIAL when handling the mochi it. Not only is it hot, it is very, very sticky.

In my quest to establish new traditions for the sake of The Little Empress — and for myself, being a lover of traditions — I decided to start a new one: having a big family breakfast on New Year’s day. Mind you, I need to stop coming up with traditions at the 11th hour since I ended up going on an unplanned grocery run on NYE afternoon… along with just about everyone else in th area. Yegads, it seems like everyone converged on the local Winco for NYE foodage. Of particular note was the mother yelling at her kid that “Mommy can drink all she wants tonight, goddammit. It’s New Year’s Eve.” Shining examples of humanity can regularly be found at the supermarket, really.

I must admit, my brilliant plan for beginning a New Year’s tradition of breakfast was just a ploy to try out my new waffle iron. This could have been done with just me, The Hubster and my sister but my parents so dote on their granddaughter and other folks that I would have invited to breakfast were otherwise engaged. Drat.

We had waffles, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, english muffins, rice and orange juice amongst the offerings. My parents brought the ham and sausage as well as some Filipino suman which is glutinous rice steamed in banana leaves with a sweet coconut sauce. The Hubster ™ loves it and so do I. Though it makes me hungry for the savory Vietnamese banh chung which is glutinous rice filled with mung bean and fatty pork and steamed in banana leaves. Too bad no stores around here sell it Banana leaves + glutinous rice is such a wonderful combination.

Breakfast was a hit and I think my parents got a kick out of being able to spend at least part of New Year’s day with their granddaughter.  So far, so good for 2009!

… and even though one of my resolutions was to eat healthier, I ended up talking about mostly food in this entry. Ah well ;D