The First Snow and Miso Making

It snowed today!!  It was the first snow in this winter and snowed a lot!  It must have been 10cm.
So, we basically stayed home and made some miso for this year.

This is my 3rd year to make miso at home.  People usually make miso in Jan or Feb for the year and so do we!  We already ordered 5 kg of soybeans and 4 kg of koji and had them delivered the other day.  We saved them for today since I knew it would be a bad weather.
 

Take a look at the amount of soybeans and koji!

There are 2kg of rice-made koji and 2kg of wheat-made koji, and 5kg of soybeans.  I left 1kg of soybeans for making soy milk.


Soybeans are soaked in water overnight, and boiled them in a pressure-cooker for 15mins. Then, they are mashed.

Salt and koji are mixed well in a bowl.

Then, I mixed mashed soybeans and the koji mixture together and place them in a clean pot.  It needs to be rested at least for 4 months.

Now I can't wait for the miso!!

The Bagel Day

My son turned 3 months old last week. He can now drink breast milk better than before. He saves my time now so that I can spend my time on more house keeping and so on. At night he sleeps longer so that he saves my sleeping time as well. Yay, I feel more energetic! Today I baked raisin bagels while my kids were sleeping in the afternoon. Lots of busy moms in the world think the same way as me, don't you think?

Recently my husband craves for any bread! Since we have rice for breakfasts and dinners, and he brings his o-bento with rice every day, he never has bread on weekday. On the other hand, my daughter and I often have some bread for lunch. He is craving for breadddd! So, a rainy cold day like today was great day for baking some for him.

Hmmm...what should I bake? That's the question. It has to be something easy and healthy. Oh, and it shouldn't take long and much ingredients. Then bagels comes into my mind.

I added a lot of raisins. The bagels were smaller than they were supposed to be. What was se wrong with it? Probably I didn't shape well. I should have stretch the dough to make a ring, i guess. Hmmm... But it tasted good! my husband also liked the bagels.

The next day was raining again. It even rained harder, so I baked bagels again!! The weather was a good excuse for me to bake.

I think it turned out better this time. These were a sesame flavor. When they came out from the oven, the flavor of roasted sesame caught everyone's attentions. Yummmm! What a productive day it was!

When the Rainy Season Is Over, It's Time to Dry Umeboshi Under the Sun

Yes, finally the rainy season is over and real summer is here! Huuummmmiiiiiddd humid humid every day... This humidity drains all of my energy out of my body.

Anyway, when fresh plums and akashiso leaves are out, I pickled them with salt and rest them until the rainy season is over. I had to dry the plums and the leaves for 3 days. For the first 2 days, I just need to dry them only under the sunshine but on the 3rd day, it has to be over night.

Here is some akashiso leaves before I pickled.

This is the photo form the first day.

After 3 days, plums got shrunk a bit.

Now I need to put all the plums and the leaves back into akaumesu, which is salted water produced while pickling.

And the leaves!

It looks like umeboshi, doesn't it? However, it just tastes salt for now. I've got to wait until winter! See you then, my umeboshi!!

I hope it'll go well!

Hot Sandwich Maker

I've wanted this for a looong time! This comes with waffle plates, sandwich plates and taiyaki, which is a traditional Japanese cake, plates. I'm not interested in taiyaki, but I couldn't change it to others. The reason I've wanted is I can "bake" doughnuts instead of deep frying. I'm sure fried doughnuts should taste better but it's oily for me, and also my husband is on diet!(really? yes. I've controlled his calories as much as possible.) It's good for my child to eat lots. Anyway, although I didn't want taiyaki plates I had to get the doughnuts plates too.

But now I think the taiyaki plates aren't waste. Probably I can make something instead of real taiyaki! Real ones have lots of sweet bean paste inside but I'm not big fun of the paste. It's a little too sweet for me, so I just can eat only a bit at one time.

Last month I was looking at the catalog to decide which plates to buy, I was thinkng about getting the panini plates as well. However, I gave up because I need to see how often I'd make panini, so I'll wait and see.

Anyway, I need to find good recipes now! What can I make for my family?

Thanks for reading!

Soybean Paste

Sorry, I've been lazy recently that I haven't updated my blog. Since I found my pregnancy in the late March, I've been feeling tired and sleepy all the time. But I can't help it. Every afternoon I try to put my daughter to sleep but I always fall asleep first!!

So, I can't sew much lately. I can't do much. Now, I can take care of my plants on the verandah...

Today here I want to show you my soybean paste, called miso. I cooked it in the beginning of February and let it rest until today. During the spring time, it is said it will only take 3 to 4 months to be done, but during winter, it'll take a half year!

I was going to open it some time in June or July but there is some good smell of soybean paste I felt today. So, I was like "I think it's ready! I can use it today!!," and I did.

I used this soybean paste in miso soup for today, and it tasted good. However, I thought it should be rested a little more.

Now, plums are ripe. I need to make sour plums soon!

Fresh Pasta

Last night I made fresh pasta for the first time in my life!!! It tastes so much better than dried pasta.

This time, I tried this recipe published in Alessandra's blog that I've been wanting to make. I was scared to use flowers from florist because I don't know if it's organic and eatable or not. So, I picked up jasmine flowers that I'm growing on the veranda. It smells super good now.

Then, I picked up the flowers and tried to roll out the dough into flat shape. What was wrong with it? The pasta was thicker than it was supposed to be! Was it because I didn't use a pasta machine? Maybe... It was 1mm thick and was the thinest I could do.

Here is some cooked pasta. You can't see jasmine... Ouch.

Now, I should buy a pasta machine and make it again! But, the taste was good! I want to thank Alessandra.

Banana Bread

Do you like baking? I was really craving for handmade buns and bread for a looooong time. I don't even remember when was the last time I baked...(Oh, am I too old to remember things? hopefully not!) Anyway it should be before I had my daughter in 2009, so it's been over a year.

So, I suddenly decided to bake some table buns in the Saturday morning. There were enough bread flour, butter, active dry east, eggs and milk in the kitchen. Also there were some bananas.

I poured warmed up milk instead of water and added bananas, and kneaded for about 10 minutes. The dough was placed in a big bowl for raising and rested for 20 minutes. After that, I went through some steps and divided them into 6 pieces. I put each dough in pudding cups that has been her toys recently... Of course I washed them before use.

Anyway, they were raised again and sent to the oven! They sat inside the oven for 10 minutes and came out!

If I get a chance gain, I want to bake Danish bread. It's so buttery and yummy. When I smell the butter from the oven, I feel like I want to open the oven right away and put some in my mouth!! Oh, I should stop thinking about it now; otherwise, I have to bake it now!