Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving!

We sure did! We had to work on Thanksgiving Day, so we celebrated on Sunday. I tried to work with what was available to me for our little feast, yet get some of the traditional tastes at the same time. What ended up on our table was Maple Syrup & Cayenne Pepper Grilled Sweet Potatoes, Bacon Braised Green Beans, corn, chicken, homemade chicken gravy, rolls and mashed potatoes. (What couldn't fit on our table: our kabocha pie!)


I couldn't find any canned pumpkin puree, so I mashed Japanese pumpkin, kabocha. Japanese pumpkins are much smaller and sweeter than American ones, and they're also green on the outside. I used the same recipe for pumpkin pie that I did last year, and Chad said it was the best dish of the night!

Add a little whipped cream and it's delicious!

I was really happy to keep the holiday spirit alive this year. It's a little difficult to make the same food for Thanksgiving here, but it's no challenge to be thankful. Can't wait to visit our Michigan friends in 3 weeks!

Comfort Foods

#3 and #4: Nagano no Ringo to Ichijiku

I was lucky enough to get these beautiful apples from a friend. She picked them in Nagano!


The apples were huge! Perfect for an apple-loving girl--especially when they tasted so delicious!

I was also given some figs that very same week from someone else!

As with chestnuts, until recently I had mostly only heard about figs from Christmas songs (though I had tried Fig Newtons--does that count?). It's really too bad I missed out on them all those years! Figs are wonderful fruit.

After gently rinsing our little ichijiku, we decided to try them first as they were:

The flavor was lovely! It kind of reminded us of the texture and taste of plums.

Next, I threw together my own adaptation of a few recipes I saw online for figs. First, I cut each fig into quarters, leaving the quarters attached at the bottom. Then, I added a small tab of butter to the centers, drizzled them with honey and added a few almonds before toasting them in our oven. After warming, I served them with a bit of Greek yogurt. Divine!

(Yes, that's butter oozing out.)

Might not compare to the great dishes you created for Thanksgiving, but we sure found it a yummy treat! Have you tried making any new recipes lately?

Mori no Kichin

I may have mentioned before that I love visiting little cafes, particularly locally owned ones with character. One cafe I've been longing to try out for a long time is Mori no Kichin, or Forest Kitchen.

The cafe sign alone looked cute, simple and inviting, and the atmosphere inside held up to be the same. Despite walking into a strong smoky smell, I was determined to give the cafe a chance. I hadn't waited this long to walk right back out (and, like I said, it was inviting).

The only customers aside from us sat right up at the bar, gossiping and laughing loudly. They even talked about us, wondering aloud where we were from and commenting on how great our Japanese was (yeah! we fooled them!). After a few minutes it was easy to conclude that they were all close friends--perhaps even family.

Chad and I ordered the lunch set of the day and hoped by the time it was served we'd be used to the smoke (and that we could taste our food!). To be honest, although it was nice enough, we were a little worried about how great of a meal we'd be getting.

Clearly, we shouldn't have wasted our energy on worrying! The lunch set was soooo yummy! Miso Katsu, or pork cutlet with miso paste, miso soup, rice, tsukemono (pickled veggies) and a sweet piece of melon. All for 780 yen each.

Will we be going back to the cafe? Maybe someday. But for now, I've got others on my list to try!

Comfort Foods

#2 Kuri

Chad and I went treasure hunting for one of Japan's popular fall foods, chestnuts.

What a beautiful find! Unfortunately, not many chestnuts were left so neatly for the taking. We spent some time searching around trees, shaking them and hoping for little chestnut gifts to fall down to us. When they did, we used our feet or gloved hands to pull away the prickly covering and retrieve the nuts.

Our hard work paid off! Check out our loot above and below.

However, the work wasn't over yet. Many students told me I should try making kurigohan, or chestnut rice, so I thought I'd give it a try. The first step would be softening the chestnuts and shelling them.

I boiled the nuts for about ten minutes before draining the water from the pot. The shells were still quite difficult to remove--after a few patient minutes, I became impatient and decided to attack the task with a spoon.


From there, I added the nuts to uncooked rice in a rice cooker with a little salt and let everything cook. Meanwhile I grilled some salmon, fixed up a couple small dinner salads, and threw together a Korean cucumber salad as well. Below is the little feast from our afternoon toils!


The chestnut rice turned out pretty nicely, although I think a little soy sauce and sake would have brought the flavors out a bit better. There are many ways to make the rice, but after taking an entire afternoon to make ours, we decided buying it from a department store (as pictured below) might be the best future option for us. The kurigohan below had sweet red beans inside and was cooked with sweet sake. Pretty yummy!

Walking Along I Saw...

Little vines and mushrooms creeping along...

Paint drippings on stones...

The biggest snail I've ever seen...

Fantastic paintings near a local temple...

A flower blooming out from the gutter...

And buds and berries.

Rainy days aren't always so bad in Yokkaichi.

Comfort Foods

#1 Nashi



Crisp like an apple, yet sweet and juicy like a pear, Asian pears are certainly a fruit of the gods. Heading into November has left nashi season to fade away until next year, but that makes room for other comforts to come.

Oktoberfest and Tsukimi

The wind has blown a warm yellow moon up over the sea; a bulbous moon, which sprouts in the soiled indigo sky, and spills bright winking petals of light on the quivering black water.

-Sylvia Plath

It was time for one of our favorite little celebrations of the year: Oktoberfest. We started the night with some German beer.

Then it was time to dig into the main course!

Apples with caramel apple dip, French bread, German Sausage Kettle, cheddar cheese and summer squash with onion, garlic, tomato and cheese. Yum!

Beer, apples and caramel apple dip

Close-up of the summer squash dish

Chad and Yasu, digging in.

Never realized until that moment that French bread actually makes Chad's eyes roll.

After eating way too much (and adding more German beer and wine to the festivities), we decided it was time to check out the moon. A less well-known celebration in Japan, Tsukimi, or moon-viewing, takes place in the fall to honor the autumn moon. I think this is a really sweet tradition, and falls in line with the cliche about stopping to smell the roses. We should stop and recognize the beauty of the moon every night, and Tsukimi is a nice reminder. And to top it off, part of the tradition includes drinking sake and eating mochi (rice cakes)!

We had some white mochi with a light sugary powder and anko (sweet red bean paste) inside.

This year, the night for Tsukimi fell on September 22nd, but at that time we were on a plane headed to Thailand. I had wanted to celebrate so badly that I checked the moon calendar to find out when the next full moon would be. Turned out it was the same night we had chosen for Oktoberfest, and despite the clouds, we got a great view.

By the way, you might know a tricky little cat (who doesn't know me anymore!) named Tsuki. Please remind him to be nice to us when we visit Michigan next month. We've got tickets to go home for two weeks!

Every day in Thailand...

...we ate delicious food:

(...including fresh fruit! Mangosteens, rambutans, jack fruit, dragon fruit, pomegranate, papaya, banana, pineapple...)

Dragon Fruit

Pomegranate

Pearl Tea

...Saw interesting signs:

No smoking

No crazy goats, weapons, sex, dogs, alcohol, durian or smoking in this taxi.

A restaurant menu, including a mystery Quick Meal

A McDonald's advertisement for chicken porridge

Visited markets:

Saw very interesting, colorful streets:

(Tuk-Tuks, or auto-rickshaws)

Got massages, relaxed, and enjoyed traveling together!

That's it for Thailand, at least for the time being. We both had a lot of fun and really want to go back! For now, we're settled back into life in Japan, so our blog will be too! Get ready for updates on October and November, starting with our little Oktoberfest.