Feet futons

OK, I have to stop complaining about how cold I am - I've just read about the Arctic temperatures over at Heather's place (http://shinshuulife.blogspot.com/2010/01/wed-be-better-off.html) and she wins! And actually yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day, even though we've once again woken up to a very heavy frost (and solidified olive oil). The weather here is so fickle, but I really appreciated the reminder that Spring will soon be on it's way, especially after such a cold spell.



I took Heather's advice and invested in some warmer footwear for inside the house:



They are effectively feather futons (duvets) for feet (modelled here by M - I should have bought them in any other colour than pink!). They are doing the trick, warm toes = happy mummy. And these, teamed up with the huge, cosy fleece house coat sent to me by a very sweet friend up in Hokkaido (I owe you, Vicky!), are making me far more pleasant to live with.

Something else that made me happy this week was being asked to sample some prototype food products which have been developed with a view to becoming new '名物' (meibutsu, local speciality) for Kotahira. It's very much a Japanese thing, the desire to have a unique product which might become synonymous with the place of it's origin. If they can come up with just the right kind of product, they could rake in millions as the tourists come in their hoards to buy their omiyage (souvenir goodies). The powers that be of Kotohira have decided that they want their town to become famous for... garlic! I was given a bottle of garlic infused soy sauce, and a jar of garlicky miso to experiment with:



They are branding it 'Garlic Zamurai' and I rather like the package design. The soy sauce has a very pungent garlic smell, so I used it in recipes that called for garlic but without adding any, any they turned out great! The miso is far more interesting, not your average miso at all. It's chunky and spicy (I thought that the slivers of green were negi (spring onion) but they turned out to be sliced green peppers!), delicious actually, although I could probably use more of it if it didn't have quite so much kick to it. I tried it out on K the other night, making a sauce to spoon over some pan-fried tofu:



I can't quite remember what went into it, but it went something like this:

2 tablespoons miso
60ml dashi (stock, I used kombu)
1 tablespoon sugar
a splash of soy sauce
a splash of cooking sake

Mix the ingredients together in a small pan and simmer gently until reduced.

Holidaying at home

Been ages since my last post. Been a bit busy, but had so, so, so much fun! We've had visitors, my dear friend Ronna and her husband from our home church back in England! So the week before they arrived I had a ton of cleaning and tidying to get done (including our 'spare' room, aka the dumping room), then while they were here we were zipping here there and everywhere. Their visit was perfectly timed (of course!), we had fab weather for sightseeing and the mozzies weren't biting just then (although they certainly are now), so I took them to some of my favourite places.

Of course we just had to go to Ritsurin Kouen, a beautiful Japanese garden in Takamatsu. It was all very green on this visit with not many flowers in bloom, although there were some gorgeous irises:



We went into the tea house for tea ceremony, which I really enjoy, but was a little disappointed that they only served the tea rather than performing the tea ceremony in front of us.



I took them for lunch at my favourite kind of restaurant - okonomiyaki!



One day we visited Kotahira, where the men climbed 800 steps up to a shrine (Konpira-san) whilst we ladies enjoyed a pedicure by fish (hahaha, more of that another day, waiting for the photo!) followed by a soy sauce ice-cream (very nice actually, very subtle flavour).

Another trip was a ferry ride out to Naoshima, an island in the Seto inland sea which has been turned into an art project. I'd been dying to go, but K really isn't interested in art, and the boys would be quite bored I think. So hurrah, for visitors! We started off the visit at the Benesse House Museum, and was surprised to find works by Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and David Hockney, very unexpected. I think my favourite piece was the Banzai Corner by Yukinori Yanagi - hundreds of Ultraman dolls with their hands in the air, forming the Japanese flag! The World Flag Ant Farm (by the same artist) also caught my interest. Wish I could have taken photos, but of course that wasn't allowed. We wandered around the old village, peering in through gates to view the gardens, but didn't have time to visit the house project (artists were invited to come to the island and make houses into works of art), so I'm just going to have to go back there agin sometime (shame).



This was M's favourite piece, the Red Pumpkin (don't know who it's by) - she spent ages sticking her head through the holes and saying 'BOO'!

As I write this, Ronna and Ian are on a plane winging their way back home :( Their visit flew by, I was so sad to see them leave. But how wonderful to see good friends again, their visit was certainly the next best thing to an actual trip back home! I feel so blessed!