Homemade Cake and Knitting Ahead

Happy 4th Japaniversary to me! I've been in Japan for 4 years. While this might seem like an inconsequential anniversary to mark, you do not know how often I get the question of how long I've lived here from new acquaintances (thus the necessity to keep track). In a strange coincidence, this date also falls on the day of my other half's birthday. Usually I like to buy a fruit-covered shortcake at the nearby bakery for his special day, but this year I got ambitious and decided to make an American style yellow cake with decadent chocolate cream cheese frosting from scratch. The whole process made me miss the simple conveniences of box cake mix and canned frosting, but my cake turned out delicious (and terribly sweet, just like home!).

If you'd like to try your hand at making it, here is the yellow cake recipe and here is the fudgy cream cheese frosting recipe. If you've got an insatiable sweet tooth like I have, I would definitely give these a try!

In other news, I've been shamefully working on too many crafty projects at once, which I hope I can finish before school starts up again:

1. I'm taking Joi Mahon's Fast Track Fitting class on Craftsy in hopes of getting a good fit my Hawthorn. I made a muslin of the Hawthorn bodice and the fit makes me want to cry.

2. Finishing a short-sleeved Archer but I'm stumbling on what buttons to use without making it look like a pajama top.

3. Japan's typical brutal summer heat continues but I'm already brainstorming fall sewing. I'm ready to throw in the towel with summer sewing since all I want to wear is shorts and tank tops, especially when I'm at home and can get away with being a bit indecent. For my Fahrenheit-using friends, here's an idea of what the weather's like here every day:

Variation? Nah, that would make it interesting.

Anyways, so I've been thinking about cool weather jackets and coats to sew, and I've picked knitting back up.

By the way, I'm in love with my turquoise nail polish, especially against this gray yarn.

I've dabbled in knitting for the past decade, mostly making minor projects as gifts for friends in the form of hats, scarves, and coasters (you still have those, Casey? ;D) but I want to level up my rudimentary skills and make a sweater. I can't believe I've forgotten all the great merits of knitting: the supplies needed for it are much smaller compared to sewing, I can do it almost anywhere (right now for me it's on the couch as I marathon Game of Thrones), there are a lot of great free projects online, and it keeps my hands busy (I'm a reformed nail biter and a notorious fidgeter/picker. Sorry, TMI). Right now I'm making a very simple free project I found on Ravelry to get back on the horse.

I am hoping for fall soon. I've had enough unbearable heat and ready for sweater season. How about you?

Paper Cranes, Tsukemen, and a Sorbetto

This week my schools have been hectic. Every year my students visit the Atomic Bomb Dome and Peace Park in Hiroshima as a field trip, and they offer chains of 1,000 paper cranes there as symbol of their wish for peace. The big schools have no problems rallying 350 students to make a few cranes each, but for the smaller schools, it poses a challenge. I buckled down and helped my 6 student school make cranes. As you can see, I got a little bored and started arranging them.

They fell like dominoes a few times.

The rainy season has started here almost 2 weeks early, and it's really warmed up. The nabe pot has been put away for next year and last weekend we made our first batch of tsukemen: chilled noodles with boiled veggies and pork that you dip in a spicy sesame broth.

I've been in a bit of a sewing funk and can't decide what to make next. There's plenty of fabric and patterns I want, but I just can't seem to find the inspirational spark to put together my ideas, design, and create it. I started making a simple (and might I add awesomely free from Colette) Sorbetto top out of some cheap cotton I bought at a closing sale, but even now I can't decide whether or not to add sleeves.

I am in such a huge ol' funk but maybe something will come along and be my muse. It's been a tiring week at school and I'm hoping our trip to Niigata this weekend will be what I need! Are you looking forward to the weekend also?

Poppies, Jambalaya, Summer Sewing, and My Next Trip

Hi there!
Last week I came down with a cold bug I picked up after volunteering in a beach cleanup on Mother's Day so I've felt under the weather. A seasonal change virus has been going around. At least I got to enjoy most of my weekend time!
The poppies are in bloom and looking lovely. I can never resist taking pictures of flowers.

In a grocery store, I randomly stumbled upon a seasoning to make jambalaya in a rice cooker. Having never seen any form of creole cuisine here and intrigued by the Japanese take of this dish, I immediately bought it and tried it. It was amazing. If I manage to find it in the store again, I will be hoarding it.

Over this past weekend I snooped through the new stock of summer sewing books and quarterlies at my local bookstore. I have a hot and cold love of Japanese sewing books: some are amazing and utterly unique, other times I feel I'm sifting through the same looks over and over. I picked up this new book of summer clothing pieces you can make in a day.

As usual, it's a Japanese sewing book geared towards younger women with beginning sewing skills that has simple and flowy shirts with cute details like peter pan collars.

I'm not usually impressed by how many of these baggy shirts look alike in style and do little to flatter.

But in this case, a few styles look very cool for summer. It gets broiling hot and humid here, so some of these look incredibly comfortable. A few caught my eye in design too, like this cape-sleeved blouse.

I might be making myself a bunch of airy knit dresses like this too.

I'm about halfway finished with my Archer shirt. I want to get it done before it gets hot and I lose motivation to make a long-sleeved shirt. Next on my sewing table will definitely be something more summer-y.

In travel news, the hubby and I have been looking for a trip and decided to tick another prefecture off our map soon. We'll be checking out Niigata prefecture in June as a sort of "Japan wedding 1 year anniversary" trip. It's getting more and more difficult to plan trips to new prefectures. There's not a lot of attractions in northern Japan besides the nice scenery and good foods, so it's far and expensive for us to travel, as I've mentioned before. I have nothing against the Tohoku region... I want to visit! Also on my list of places to go is tropical Okinawa and Yokohama to check out the ramen museum. Maybe during the summer!

Holiday Challenge #2: Thanksgiving in Japan

Having a Thanksgiving dinner isn't the easiest task here in Japan, but there are resources abound. I hadn't had a Thanksgiving meal in 3,4 years, so I started planning this up about a month ago. I went to Costco here in Japan for the first time and got a membership. I got a small turkey breast there. For some of the other foods, I went to smaller imported food stores like Kaldi Coffee and Jupiter for things like canned cranberry jelly and canned pumpkin for my pumpkin pie. Spices like sage and thyme were also easily available (and some in large quantities) at these stores.

I spent a long time cooking but had 2 guests join us for dinner. We still had leftovers to eat the rest of the weekend. I might do this again in a smaller scale for Christmas.

Here's the recipes I used. Give them a try because they were all delicious:
Turkey marinade
Stuffing
Sweet potatoes
Green bean casserole
Pumpkin pie

Foodie

Lately I've been challenging myself to be a better cook and expand my 'food horizons,' i.e. madly collecting recipes.

Here's the result from a world cooking class I took. They had different stations set up, and I chose to learn how to make Borscht from a nice Russian lady. I got to stuff myself silly with lots of delicious food from Mexico, Thailand, China, Argentina...

My crowning achievement has been mastering how to make a pumpkin pie in my toaster oven. It was missing the Cool Whip unfortunately, but it was still good.

 This was my attempt at Moussaka, and it turned out alright. I think the balance of ingredients was a bit off though.

Sadly, I can't say I made this. The great thing about living in Japan is that there's always a new gimmicky product to try. Snack and drink companies love to saturate the market with interesting seasonal products, like this strawberry and milk Pepsi I drank last week.

It wasn't bad, by the way. I don't think everything can be turned into a carbonated beverage, though. Hope you're reading this, Pepsi.

Return of the Rice Cooker

New cake made from my rice cooker! Surprised my good friend with this for her birthday yesterday. She's always helped me since I moved here and I wanted to give her something awesome. This was a 2 layer cake so it took longer than the banana bread. Decorated with whipped topping, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and chocolate candy. The writing is written on coconut cookies in chocolate. All done by me and I made it up as I went along. Japanese cakes always look so cute, and this was my first shot at them, besides the ones I helped decorate at the ward Christmas party, which looked like this:

I love the Japanese use of fruit on cakes. It really gives it color and flavor. American birthday cakes are nothing but a ton of overly-sweet frosting. Bleh.

Summer Vaction Activity 1: Baking

Summer vacation has officially started! Well, sort of. I'm "on call" for 2 and a half weeks, which means I have to stay put, so I'm finding things to do that I haven't had time for. My first activity:

RICE COOKER BAKING!

There are surprisingly many recipes that involve rice cookers, and since I don't have an oven, I've learned to make lots of stuff via stove top and microwave, and now, rice cooker. My rice cooker is awesome: it has a timer like a coffee maker so I can have delicious warm rice in the morning. Making breakfast is not one of my strong points. Anyways, I decided to try making banana bread.
Here's all our lovely ingredients, which is all the basic stuff: flour, sugar, milk, baking powder, baking soda, egg, butter (not pictured: bananas and vanilla).


I whipped up the batter and greased the rice cooker pot thoroughly:


It takes a little while to cook. Here it is, not quite done, but getting there:


Finished and wrapped! That, my friends, is how to make baked goods from a rice cooker:


Remember this survival technique. It comes in handy in Asian countries.