Posts Tagged "holidaze"

Starting off the New Year

Posted by Michelle on Jan 1, 2009 in Family, food, Life | 1 comment

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

Holidaze

Posted by Michelle on Dec 14, 2008 in Family, Life | 0 comments

One of the “advantages” of living with a real life version of The Grinch(tm) is that we’re not prone to the holiday stress that everyone else seems to get like flu borne on a tidal wave of tinsel and evergreen. Rushing around, buying presents you can’t afford on credit, trying like hell to fit every single holiday gathering into your already rushed calendar while trying to find treats to bring to the office AND remember to send out those holiday cards? Yikes. Not for us.

The disadvantage is that holidays have never been very festive in our home. Year round decoration has always been sparse. The Hubster ™, ever the curmudgeon, griped that “We’re gonna have to take it down anyway…” whenever I suggested putting something on our oh-so-stark apartment walls. Despite the fact that we have lived in our own home since July, there is still hardly any decoration save for some… unique… items that my mother gifted us with. (Like the religious icons, a light up garden angel and a set of sparkling pumpkins. Yeah, I’m not sure what she was thinking either.) The Hubster ™ has since banned my mother from gifting us with any more (as he so delicately put it) crap.

Luckily for me, The Hubster ™ supports most everything I do, no matter how silly, even if that support is only allowing me to do it. So long as I don’t do something insane like asking him to take holiday pictures, we’re fine. (He hates having his photo taken. So much so that even in our wedding photos — yes, our wedding photos! — he is grimacing with a look that plainly says, “I hate this. I hate you all. And I will make sure you will never take a photo of me again.” If ever anyone wonders why our walls are bare, this has a lot to do with it.)

Over the years I’ve bought various forms of Christmas trees including a sad little thing that I procured from a Trader Joe’s display, less than a foot tall with tiny little ornaments. My friend Monkey dubbed it the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. This year, at my request, The Hubster ™ and I trekked to a JoAnn’s Superstore to pick up a tree at 50% off from the holiday sales. (YIPEE for me and it was procured without the usual bit of grumbling on his part.) Since then I’ve also gotten quite a few ornaments and some fake garland and a wreath.

So our first Christmas in our own home isn’t the big to do that I had hoped it would be, with decorations heaped about in a gaudy joyous fashion. But then I remembered that Christmas isn’t about decorations — it is about togetherness and family.  This is The Little Empress’ first Christmas and though our celebration will be small and humble, I’m sure we will find some way to make it magical.