on the subject of cupcakes

...oh, uh...

hey...guys...no, it uh, hasn't been about 6 months since my last update...

nope, no siree...

heh.

yeah.

um.

so.

right, okay, so it HAS been like 6 months since my last update. i've had lots of stuff i wanted to write about, just -- didn't have time to do it, since the things i wanted to write about are the things that've been keeping me busy. 

but i digress.

anyway today i'm here to talk about cupcakes.

oh cupcakes,  you say, why not just write about apple pie and baseball and the american dream while you're at it.

no need to be snarky, i have a perfectly good reason to write about cupcakes.

so i was scrolling through facebook, like you do, when i happened upon a picture of some cupcakes, perfectly baked by my dear friend michelle. and then it hits me, man, i could go for some cupcakes. i already had the perfect icing recipe (better than the stuff in a can, not to say that the stuff in a can isn't great, because it is, no doubt--but my swiss meringue buttercream recipe is out of this world), all that was left was the cupcake.

so i hop on my trusty japanese recipe search engine and pick out the most popular cupcake recipe to make. visions of fluffy and moist cupcakes are dancing through my head as i make my first batch of cupcakes in god knows how long. but the results were far from stellar. they ended up more like brownies -- and not like good brownies, i mean like on the dry side brownies. this is definitely NOT what i remembered cupcakes tasting like.

so once again, consulted my go-to recipe engine and decided on another recipe to try. the results were fluffier, but terribly dry. this isn't a cupcake at all. what's wrong with japanese cupcake recipes?? why are they all NOT cupcakes?

this was serious.

i decided it was time to take my plea to facebook, because good lord there's gotta be SOMEONE out there who knows a good cupcake recipe. and lo and behold, a voice.

okay, not a voice, but a post!

gwyn so graciously introduced me to the cupcake project blog -- not only do the recipes look promising, but they also look delicious. the only catch is converting stuff to grams, which i've already touched upon (not fun). when i think about it, i've only really made cupcakes from a mix before -- but as i'm mixing the batter, i start to realize that the batter smells EXACTLY like i remember cupcake batter is supposed to smell like. i've got a good feeling about this.

and after about 14 minutes, the cupcakes are done. the difference is clear before i even take a bite -- they feel lighter and smell richer than the previous cupcakes. taking a bite only confirms it -- yes, THESE are the cupcakes i remember! rich! light! moist! CUPCAKES! this is amazing! honest to god cupcakes HERE! in hiroshima!

okay, so? you say. what's the big deal? they're cupcakes, not a cure for the common cold.

no see, it's super hard to find a taste of home here. i mean, it's not like i go out of my way to look for stuff that tastes like home -- it's hard to do in general because ingredients and stuff are different here, i can respect that. i'm fine with that. but sometimes, you just want a bowl of mac and cheese. or cupcakes. and they just don't have that readily available here. not that that's a bad thing, it's just the truth. so finding something that tastes so much like home is a huge discovery. it's like finding atlantis. you've never seen anyone so excited about cupcakes -- i could have danced out into the streets broadway musical-style, belting out songs about cupcakes to the masses. this should also illustrate to you just HOW BAD the japanese recipes for cupcakes were. those cupcakes sucked all the moisture out of your mouth the instant you took a bite. they were like...the anti-cupcake. evil cupcakes. 

but now i have two foolproof cupcake recipes to make whenever i'm in the mood for some sweet cuppin' cakes. 

next year'll mark 10 years in japan for me. 10 years. ten. that alone is pretty mindblowing, but it's taken me that long to really start to miss things about home (does that make sense?) cupcakes are something you grow up with as a kid -- and to find something from your childhood on the other side of the world? that's pretty awesome. and cause to write a blog, i'd say.

akemashite-omedetou!

【明けましておめでとう】 
akemashite-omedetou, happy new year

happy 2015 everyone! today is january 1st or gan-tan. being the first day of the new year, it's traditional to go visit your local shrine (hatsumoude), say a little prayer for the new year, and get yourself an omikuji which is a small strip of paper with your luck on a scale of super lucky, lucky, sorta lucky, maybe lucky, and unlucky. it also has advice about whether it's a good idea to travel, how business will go, etc, etc. while omikuji aren't just for the new year, most everyone who goes to hatsumoude gets one.

this was the scene at my local shrine, the sumiyoshi shrine, this afternoon. everyone's lining up to offer their prayers. when my turn came, two miko (shrine maidens) were standing behind the offering boxes (where you throw in some coins or, if you're feeling really generous, some bills). the rule of thumb is first, ring the large bells near the top of the shrine, then bow twice, clap twice, and pray. while you're praying, the shrine maidens swish really large paper shide which look like paper strips of lightning, over your head. once you're done praying, you bow once more and you're done. after that, i went to pick my omikuji. they're all scattered inside a box and you pick out one at random. so here's what i got:

chuu-kichi! sorta lucky! which is a vast improvement over last year's maybe lucky, hehe. the rest of the fortune was...just as you can imagine for being sorta lucky, heh, but it's not bad per se. and so with that, my new year's excursion came to an end. tomorrow i'll be headed to the cafe to pick up the nengajou or new year's cards that should have arrived. which means i'll be writing more on those tomorrow!

have a great 2015 everyone!!

nen-matsu

【年末】nen-matsu, end of the year.

alas we've come to the end of 2014. after the tinsel and glitter of christmas -- and i do mean RIGHT AFTER -- japan turns into nen-matsu-mode with traditional japanese music everywhere you turn, decorations like shime-nawa and kagami-mochi (like the one pictured above).

this is actually my first year to put up an actual kagami-mochi, which is pounded mochi rice that they shape into two rounds, a big one on top and a small one on the bottom, with either mikan or daidai at the top (the little clementine looking guy). now buying it is all well and good, but i had no idea WHEN to actually put it on display, so naturally i decided to ask my husband since he's, y'know, japanese. 

"hey," i says to him, "so when do we put this thing on display?" the kagami-mochi is sitting in a vacuum-sealed piece of plastic at this point.

"uh... the 31st...?" 

clearly he's making this up and has no clue.

"oh really?" i says, pulling out my iphone, "let's see what google has to say then."

according to the internets, kagami-mochi is traditionally set on display on the 28th, because 8 is a lucky number, and then it's taken down and eaten on 1/11 (having all those 1s in a row is apparently auspicious). so after boiling the mochi in its plastic packaging, i set it on a piece of white paper with red edges (red and white as auspicious as well), and then bought a bag of small mikan with their leaves still attached and balanced one precariously on top. and voila! 

now all that's left to do is to wait until the 11th and either boil or broil it to crispy mochi perfection!

hope everyone has a great new year, and look forward to more posts in 2015!!

stuff you miss

it's been a long time since i had thanksgiving at home.

so long, in fact, that i can't even remember what year it was -- though i recall it was at my aunt and uncle's house in missouri. i think. this is before i went back to japan for work, so already pushing 8 years ago.

i won't lie -- i miss thanksgiving. it was one of those holidays that i really enjoyed. getting up semi-early to help my mom in the kitchen, making stuffing, sweet potatoes, and hoping that this year the turkey would come out perfect. i never got the chance to ask my mom her recipes for thanksgiving before she passed away, and when faced with the chance to make not a turkey, but a roast chicken, i really wish i had. 

so i made a roast chicken today for the first time. i found i reliable site to help out with chicken prep, but i couldn't find just the right stuffing recipe. 

scrolling through pages on my phone, i started to piece together fragments from that kitchen in columbia. raw turkey wrapped in white paper. boiling the neck to make broth. lots of cubes of bread. mushrooms. onions. sewing up the turkey. butter. taking snapshots of memories and turning them into a patchwork movie. and then i got to work. 

since we always have baguettes in the store, i took the leftovers from that day and cut it up into cubes, then let them sit out overnight. heaven knows it's so dry in hiroshima you could probably make beef jerky overnight, i figured they should be good and dried out by the morning. my plan worked perfectly. by the time the lunch shift ended, i was ready to prepare the stuffing. chop up an onion and some mushrooms, sautee in butter, then add the bread cubes. since the chicken was coming in later in the afternoon, i had to make due with chicken broth, adding in a little at a time til the consistency was like i remembered. salt, pepper, and some herbes de provence for good measure. surprisingly, it tasted a lot like i remembered.

turkeys are massive -- that's about the only thing i could think when the chicken arrived that evening from our meat guy. turkeys take 4-6 hours, whereas chickens take 1. i'm fortunate to have a gas oven since y'know, own a restaurant, so i at least have an easier time baking chickens than your average japanese electric oven. 

one of the other snapshots that sticks out in my mind is sewing up the turkey at the end. it's such a bizarre image -- i mean, it's a turkey, not a pillow, right? but it's also really fun. and so after cramming as much filling into the chicken as i could, it was time to finally bake the thing and see if my hard work had paid off.

oh yeah, it did. i also made way too much stuffing, so i baked the rest separately.

 

the whole time the chicken was in the oven, i couldn't just stand around watching, i had to like peek in every 10 minutes, brush some more olive oil over it, and then peek in again. it just made me so happy to have this pseudo-thanksgiving going on in the kitchen. it brought me right back that kitchen i loved so much, waiting for the turkey to finish.

and when i finally cut into the chicken and took a big bite of stuffing, it was like coming home. it tasted EXACTLY like the remembered it, even if it wasn't baked in a turkey. 

it's things like this that i find i miss the most. stuffing used to be the november norm, something you could count on like clockwork. and then you move to another country and that clock stops. i just happen to be fortunate -- i'm in a situation where i can get whole chickens year round from a great distributor, and where i have a reasonably large oven to fit it too. 

but i won't ever be able to have turkey and stuffing that my mom made again. or any of the meals that she used to make either, for that matter. 

that's what i miss the most. 

so for now, i'm just going to have to try and recreate them in my own way. and i'm pretty sure my mom would like that, too.

momiji-gari and miyajima

omg, how long as it been since i last posted?
wait, nevermind, i don't wanna know.

hey-lo there everyone, i'm back (sorta? for now?) and i've got a picture-filled blog for you today on momiji-gari and miyajima! hooraaaaaaay!

so, what's momiji-gari? 

well, it literally means "maple leaf hunting" but before you picture bands of japanese armed with hunting rifles against snarling maple leaves, let me tell you it's a little less exciting than all that. it just means hanging out and looking at the pretty foliage that lasts about 2 weeks or so (if you're lucky). hiroshima has some gorgeous foliage this time of year and i finally got to head out to miyajima to capture some of it.

wait, what's miyajima?

it's a small island off the seto inland sea right next to dear old hiroshima prefecture and it's home to the itsukushima shrine (world heritage site, what what), wild deer, oysters a-plenty, and momiji manju (maple leaf shaped cakes). it's also got a lotta nature and a lotta foliage, making it a prime place to go huntin'.

so this is the giant torii gate that towers before the itsukushima shrine -- it's like the most cliche picture i could have taken, but this is like THE sight to see when you come to miyajima. see how little those people are? fuckin' HUGE. the tide was out so i was able to walk right on up to it too! 

here's those wild deer i was talking about. they're...pretty tame for being wild, but they will follow you around if they think you have food. this kid was pretty chill though.

 this is the 5-tiered pagoda which is on the hill next to the itsukushima shrine. also fuckin' huge.

but i digress. 

the purpose of my visit wasn't the deer or the shrine, it was maple leaves and foliage, so without any further ado...

whew! these were mostly all taken at the momiji-dani (maple leaf valley) park behind the itsukushima shrine. they were all taken with my olympus PEN SLR and i definitely finagled with the colours.

if you're ever in japan in november, really recommend going to hunt some foliage down -- but avoid going on a weekend. i was there on a tuesday and it was pretty jam-packed, so i can't imagine what the weekends are like, sheesh. 

hope you guys enjoy this little bit of fall from me to you! 

review: haagen-dazs "nagomi azuki"

because i haven't done enough reviews or blogging lately:

haagen-dazs' newest flavor, nagomi azuki!
 
nagomi azuki? the heck's that mean?

azuki is "red bean" and nagomi is like...ugh..."relaxing" or something but i'mma just call this ice cream "red bean ice cream" because they're just trying to make it sound cooler than it is.

which isn't to say that this ice cream isn't AMAZINGLY good because IT IS.

let's have a look. 

pretty packaging, check.

azuki ice cream base with swirls of sweetened red bean paste and actual whole red beans? check.

oh haagen-dazs, you GET me. lightly sweet with that slightly thick, grainy taste of azuki -- i could eat this all year long. even people who are all "ewww red beans~" (not to name names or anything, but you know who you are) will find themselves wondering why they ever doubted the ways of azuki. it's THAT good. 

A＋＋＋ MOAR

typhoon

【台風】taifuu

it's typhoon season (well, okay, it's been typhoon season since like september) and that means one thing for hiroshima: rain, rain, and more rain (three things?).

so what's up with typhoons? well, they spin the opposite direction of hurricanes and have names like bad sci-fi villians (vongfong, phanfone, kalmaegi...? bad sci-fi, that is). they also bring nothing but rain and strong winds and typically tend to destroy okinawa first before moving on to the rest of japan, so okinawa is kinda like florida.

in fact, there's a typhoon here now. it's actually the biggest typhoon to hit hiroshima in like 7-8 years. but you won't see me panicking. why? well, because even though hiroshima is pretty near the storm, all we've gotten is a bunch of rain and some gusty winds -- it's nothing more than a really rainy day. i'm not complaining, mind you, but i do sorta feel like if we're going to have a typhoon, then we should have a fucking TYPHOON, y'know? hiroshima's got that maryland thing going on where everyone on TV will say "OMG GOING TO SNOW" "OMG GOING TO STORM" and then like nothing happens except for like this:

we do tend to get some sideways rain.

oh, and to top things off, today is a national holiday (sports day...? i dunno) and a monday, making it the last day of a three day weekend so basically this typhoon wrecked everyone's weekend (not that it matters to people like me who don't get three day weekends but...). we actually had a typhoon barrel in last week too (though we didn't get nearly as much rain), so it's just been fabulous weather these days.

the moral of the story?

don't visit japan from september to october.

unless you really love typhoons, then by all means you should head to okinawa.