Weekly Favorites 2/12

Hi everyone. I've started a teacher training program at a local minority language school so I have been reading and thinking a lot about how to become a good teacher. Even though this is only a once a week school, I'd like to offer my best to keep the students' heritage language. Here are a couple of articles that got my attention: 

Education 

In Teachers can use drama to bring writing to life for children I was sad to learn that a lot of children don't enjoy writing anymore because so much emphasis is put on grammar, punctuation and spelling. I think this might become an issue even more when students have to write in their weaker language. It was a good reminder for me to put an emphasis back on the content when I give writing assignments.  

In a similar vein, My Kids Are Straight-A Students And They Know Nothing  tells how context is important for actual learning to happen.

This article Should we share learning objectives with pupils?  actually surprised me because my training manual stated that sharing today's learning objective at the beginning of the class is important, and I thought that would definitely be true. It seems that in some occasions, having the students figure out what they are learning is a useful technique to implement in a lesson. I still have so much to learn!

My son started to learn about continents at his school so I thought this activity will complement what he's learning at school:
7 continents of the world: matching activity for preschoolers/kindergarteners

And speaking of preschoolers, this explains why my son became more sociable, confident young boy since he started his school: Preschoolers' Personality Traits May Be 'Contagious' Among Peers 

Finance
I've also been sorting out our personal finance situation. Here are a couple of articles and a podcast episode that helped me:

5 signs that you're living beyond your means
6 wise strategies to manage your extra income (e.g. raise, tax returns)

Expert Tips for Cutting Credit Card Debt

A Simple Trick to Keep You From Overspending at Costco 

Health
Since I hit that (dreadful) number 40 last year, I feel like I have to intentionally watch my health or I won't feel good. So regular exercise has become my priority: This Is the Type of Workout You Should Be Doing, According to Your Age

But the other day, I think I overdid my exercise and felt really sick with some pain after my workout. It only lasted about 20 minutes but I wanted to know why. You know, exercise is supposed make you feel good! Here's what I found out: Here's What You Need To Know About Feeling Nauseated After Your Workout 

Japanese Language
I was pretty skeptical of those translating apps but this one seems practical enough and promising. I think even my husband can get around Japan with this app. Next time we are able to visit we'll definitely give this app a try. Some of the translations are pretty funny though.
Just how good is Google Word Lens at deciphering Japanese?

If you liked these stories don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flipboard to get notified as soon as I share them. Have a great week!

Weekly Favorites 1/4

I hope you all had a wonderful winter holiday with friends and families.  Sadly some nasty colds caught us all and our holiday wasn´t as eventful and active as we had planned. But we instead had a goood rest and a warm family time sitting in front of the fire or watching a few movies together, so that wasn´t bad after all.

Here are my favorite reads these past weeks:

Education

As an introvert myself, I wish one of my teachers had thought of this when I was a student:
How to teach a young introvert

Some great tips for a teacher who's just come back to school: 
Teacher tips for the first day back from winter break

Home

I wish I came across this article before I had that birthday party

10 Little Things To Do Before Company Arrives

Have you ever thought it'd be awesome if things you created with Lego blocks actually moved? Now they're making that thought come true. And kids can learn how to code too. Sounds very fun.

Lego Boost teaches kids how to bring blocks to life with code 

Music

This article explains how a piano was invetned pretty well. I listened to the recording after reading the article, and I could easily imagine the people back then amazed at this new instrument, perhaps with a little skepticism. Beautiful sound.

What does the world oldest surviving piano sound like

Yum!

I've recently tried this Creamy Butternut Squash Linguine with Fried Sage, and really liked it. I thought the sage might get overpowering but actually it just adds a nice salty accent to the pasta. I'd add more next time. If you omit the red pepper flakes, it'll be very kid friendly. My son loved it too.

Miscellaneous

An inspiring article for these first days of a new year to set goals, decide how to approach your goals and work on it. I've started to make my 100 things to do list too. Hope it helps me reach my goals, as right now they are very messy and I need some structure to tackle it.
How To Invest In Yourself

I remember how sad I felt when I heard of the passing of Alan Rickman. Seems like he was indeed a good person. RIP

Kate Winslet Remembers Alan Rickman Using His Harry Potter Fortune for Good

And speaking of Harry Potter, here's a fun little article:

J.K. Rowling’s 12 Biggest ‘Harry Potter’ Revelations of 2016

I know Christmas is over but here are two fun articles about some unique (and maybe a bit strange) " Christmas traditions" in Japan:

Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas

Why the Japanese Eat Cake For Christmas

Have a wonderful rest of the week!

If you liked these stories don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Flipboard to get notified as soon as I share them

Koi Fish Cookies for Children's Day

Many of you may be celebrating Cinco de Mayo today, but here at Crafty Mochi's house we're celebrating Children's Day that's held also on May 5th in Japan! As the name suggests, Children's day celebrates children's healthy growth and happiness. Typically koi fish streamers are displayed to celebrate this day, like the ones shown in the wall hanging below. And I made some koi fish cookies too!

I've made these koi fish cookies last year too with only chocolate icing, but this year I decided to make them more colorful. The green icing on the top koi fish uses matcha green tea. Isn't that a beautiful color? 

Little guy can't get enough of these cookies. Last year he was still too small to actually eat cookies (although his eyes were telling me he wanted to eat them. hehe.). What a difference one year can make!

Here's how I made the koi-shaped cookies. It's fairly simple.

Step 1: Make cookie dough following your favorite sugar cookie recipe. Roll out the dough. Cut the excess around the edges and make a rectangle. Cut in half lengthwise and cut also crosswise to make small rectangles. I just eyeballed the size of each rectangle but you can of course measure to make them precise. (I hear bakers tend to be precise. not me lol)

Step 2: Cut off a small triangle from one side of the rectangle piece to make a fish tail. I used my star-shaped cookie cutter to trim off the tail side but you can use a knife too. Don't put away these small triangles just yet (see step 3).

Step 3: Using the triangles cut off from the tail side of the rectangle piece, make a small ball and attach it to the head side of the fish. This will become the fish's eye. I made 2-3 eyes from one triangle piece.

Step 4: Bake according to your recipe's direction. Cool the baked cookies before starting to decorate.

Step 5: Now the decoration time!

Place a drop of your icing onto the center of the eye and write a "W" on the body. Pretty easy!

You can also spread clear or white icing over the fish and decorate with sprinkles too, like the third koi fish on the first photo. I used coloring pens for the second fish. I love the convenience of these pens! 

Happy 2014!

I hope the new year's been treating you well so far. The weather hasn't been great here, more snow on the way (oh I hope those of you who are affected by the snow storms are ok!). But I've been enjoying the feeling of starting anew. I feel like everything is possible. Well I'm gonna make everything possible! :)

New Year's celebrations center around counting down on the new year's eve to the new year's day (and possibly being hungover in the morning, hahaha) in western countries. In Japan, however, they consist of reflecting the year that's going to pass on the eve and celebrating a fresh new start on the first 3 days of the new year with families, relatives and friends. THREE days! (And if weekends are included, it'll be five days this year)

We may not have been able to enjoy long holidays like that, but we celebrated our new year's in Japanese style.

It's a Japanese tradition to eat noodles called toshikoshi soba on new year's eve. This year, though, our son is still avoiding buckwheat (it's a high allergy food) so we instead had udon noodles (although I doubt this was real udon).

I served the noodles in tsukimi style (literally means viewing the moon) with egg, mochi rice cake, shiitake mushrooms and green onions in kelp dashi soup. It's called tsukimi probably because the egg looks like the moon.

I found a great tutorial on how to make dashi soup with kelp (kombu) here by the way.

We also had vegan "duck" I found at a local Chinese grocery store. I just fried it but it tasted pretty good. I served it with hot sauce and lettuce to make lettuce wraps. yum.

And here's our Japanese style new year's meal.

On the top is mashed sweet potato called kinton, vegetable stew called chikuzen-ni, and tempura. The bottom right is zoni soup and the bottom left is agar. The traditional Japanese new year's meal is called osechi which includes several kinds of food. I just made two of those this year. I tried something different and threw in some apple in my mashed sweet potato, which turned out great. Our son couldn't have enough of it :) Kinton represents money. Hope this will bring some good luck in our finance this year!

I made the agar cake in white and red because the combination of the colors red and white is thought to be celebratory in Japan. I used milk for the white and cherry juice for the red. I got some of these ideas from Japanese cooking sites.

I hope you all have a successful year in your chosen field, whatever you do. I'll continue to share more handmade fun so hope you'll stick around!

Jr's first birthday

Our little guy turned one year old! I can't believe he's already one. Time indeed flies. I'm so blessed that he's been growing strong and healthy without major injuries or sickness. At his 12 month checkup he's 32 1/4 inches tall, which is at the top of the growth chart. wow! He's slim for his height but still weighs about the average for his age. well done little guy!

On his birthday, we had to head out to my in-laws' that was 4 hours away so we decided to have a little birthday lunch at home then another one at the in-laws'. We started off his birthday with blueberry pancakes with coconut cream (the above). These pancakes were made without egg but turned out to be pretty fluffy and delicious :)

And then we had pizza for lunch. I made shaped pizzas for the little guy using cookie cutters. I'm glad they turned out so cute! The pizzas were made thick and soft, more like bread, so he could enjoy it as well.

I've read elsewhere that it's fun to decorate baby's high chair because most photos will be taken while the baby is on it so I used the chevron patterned buntings in the photos to decorate his high chair.

These are called "issho mochi". It is a Japanese tradition to have baby carry these mochi on his back on his birthday. The unit for weight "issho" is a homophone of the word "one's whole life" in Japanese. It's kind of like a word play but, therefore, these mochi represent one's whole life. It's believed that if a baby can carry such heavy items (about 3 pounds), he'll grow strong and healthy for the rest of his life. Fun, huh?

How did our little guy do?

yay, he did it! :)

I love mixing up Japanese traditions into American lifestyles a little bit.

After a long drive to the in-laws' we were welcomed by this beautifully decorated room.

And lots of presents.

Thanks to my MIL, we really had a wonderful birthday for LO. He loved his first real cake (and his grammy's pumpkin pie on Thanksgivings)!

Baby food - 8 & 9 months old

I wrote about what Baby and I ate most of the days of the last month when we had the vegan month of food event, which you can see it here. And here's the list of the new foods Baby tried during his 8 and 9 months.

8 months old
yoghurt
I know. this is not vegan. I couldn't find soy yoghurt that did not contain sugar, so I was going to wait until he was able to eat yoghurt with fruits and sugar. However, when my MIL came to visit us, she also brought her plain yoghurt (she knew we didn't have any at home). She offered us some and I thought hmm maybe it was a chance for Baby to try some since I didn't have any intention of buying dairy food.

The face he made was so cute though :) He looked as if he bit into a lemon or something because it was rather sour. Anyways, currently he's happily consuming silk soy yoghurt, the peach and mango kind. This is the only variety he can eat, since I haven't introduced other fruits yet. I give him only a portion of it at a time because I'm still reluctant to give him food with sugar.

prune juice
yes. he was constipating. casual google research told me that prune juice was effective to relieve constipation, so I gave him about a tablespoon every morning. I don't know if it worked but he liked it :)

edamame, green beans, grapes, broccoli

around this time, he started to grab his food and bring it to his mouth on his own. so the food was getting chunkier and thicker. sometimes I gave him diced foods so he could practice his pincer grasp.

well, I can tell you letting him grasp his rice will result in a huuuge mess lol

9 months old
my goal this month was to introduce beans, wheat and olive oil. I've also introduced napa cabbage.

beans
black beans and lentils were successfully introduced and Baby loved them, as seen in this baby shepherd's pie.

And we tried Natto! :)

Natto is fermented soybeans. Just like other fermented foods, it has a distinctive pungent smell. And it's sticky and slimy. you may wonder why we eat such stuff but it tastes good (perhaps if you regularly had some when you grew up) and it's good for ya.

Baby didn't like it at first but with a tiny amount of soy sauce he ate it all! I didn't want to use soy sauce yet but I admit it's hard to eat natto without any taste so a little bit should be ok. Natto is a popular food for Japanese babies in Japan.

wheat
Baby had pasta and homemade bread. For him to be able to eat pasta or bread makes it a lot easier for mama to carry snacks when we go out. yay. As I mentioned in those posts, he loves both pasta and bread, especially the bread.

[vegan mofo day 16] lazy Sunday dinner - instant curry from Japan

I was too lazy to cook last night so I decided to try this instant curry my mother sent me from Japan. I know this doesn't really fit my theme "cooking vegan on a budget" (except that food gifts are always appreciated when on a budget as long as it's vegan), but thought it'd be fun to introduce some vegan goodies. 

 

It's keema curry with lentils and soy meat. No animal ingredients or sugar are used. Awesome! It says the spiciness level is medium-hot but I'd have loved it if it had been a bit more spicy. Nonetheless, it was pretty good. I'd love to have it again (yes, mom? hehe).

Since this was a lentil curry, baby had lentils on rice, steamed carrots and some soup. All stocked in the freezer.

Japan is, in my mind, not a country I'd think vegetarian friendly, let alone vegan. At least that was the case when I visited there last time. Japanese meals may be healthier and I do think they eat more varieties of food on average, but most of the traditional meals contain meat or fish. The animal-based broth is used in ramen noodles. The broth in miso soup usually contains fish. Even an innocent looking loaf of bread sometimes has gelatin in it to make it soft or whatever (ugh).

But, fortunately, as far as I can see from stories I read online, vegetarianism has been gaining popularity lately. Vegetarian restaurants are popping up in many cities across Japan. My mother has sent me all kinds of interesting vegan products, like mapo tofu sauce, cold noodles, ramen noodles etc. Even mentaiko (roe of fish) pasta that uses amaranth. They may not use the V word in the package (just saying "without animal ingredients"), but that's ok. I'm happy that I will be able to find restaurants that I can look forward to visiting or won't encounter as many confusing looks as before when I say I don't eat animals. Well, maybe not the latter because a lot of people still don't seem to get that I don't eat animals. never. Not just half the time, or 75% vegetarian. But that'll probably change in the future too, I hope.

[vegan mofo day 9] spicy kale soup, steamed bun and cucumber salad

 

Due to husband's tooth emergency, I had to whip up something soft and small. I figured soup with chopped up vegetables would do so made this spicy soup with kale, cabbage and edamame. Kale and cabbage become flavorful after simmering for a while, which makes a great soup.

This steamed bun was something I found at an Asian grocery store. It says a vegetarian bun but looks like vegan too, including vegetables and soy meat. 

 

Pork buns ("Nikuman") was something I used to enjoy in a chilly winter day ages ago, picking one up at a convenience store on the way home from school or after a girls' night out, not because of what was inside (I actually didn't like the pork inside very much) but because of its softness, squishy texture, and warmth. So I'm happy to find a vegan version of this. I found that the taste of this bun was a bit bland, though, so made a soy sauce and sriracha dipping sauce.

There's one with adzuki bean paste too, which I really like. Makes a great snack or a dessert.

Other things on the plate was pickled cucumber salad and grits. Baby had daikon soup that was stored in the freezer over rice, mashed edamame and steamed carrots.

[vegan mofo day 6] Agedashi Tofu

 

Some of you may already know, I grew up in Japan. So our dinner table includes a fair amount of Japanese meals, or something akin to those (due to the limited access to Asian ingredients). Or they may be roughly called Asian style dishes.

Agedashi Tofu, which is fried tofu served in dashi-based broth, is one of my favorite Japanese foods. For this time, however, I made an, um, terrible broth, which kind of ruined the crispy fried tofu. ugh. Should've just dipped it in soy sauce. 

You can make the crispy tofu in agedashi tofu by, first, wrapping the tofu in paper towel and letting it sit for a few hours to get rid of the water in the tofu. Then dust the tofu with cornstarch, and fry them up. You can use either silken, firm or even extra firm tofu but firmer tofu may be easier to cook. I used silken for this, though.

The broth is another story. The main sauce usually used in the broth contains fish so either I have to find one without fish, or I have to be creative. My attempt at the latter was a .... well, unsuccessful one :(

Other foods on the plate: corn on the cob flavored with liquid smoke and soy sauce, and stir fried veggies on rice. Of course a few drops of sriracha sauce are a must.

Baby had diced tofu, kale rice and some steamed zucchini. Yes. My baby loves kale and tofu :)

Summer Events

late June

It was Mr. J's birthday! This is the card I made for him. I basically followed a card I found in the summer issue of Paper Creations magazine, using the materials I had at hand and a little bit more I bought at Jo-Ann. I think it came out fitting to a summer birthday, didn't it?

The original card had a heart charm at the center of the scallop. But I found these charms with inspirational words at Jo-Ann, and thought "knowledge" was appropriate for Mr. J's goal this year, so that's what I chose. He liked it a lot :)

His "birthday pie", vegan coconut and cookies & cream no-bake pie. The coconut cream was so soft and silky, I loved the texture a lot. I thought it tasted better a day or two days later.

July 4th

Happy Birthday America!

We went to my in-laws' to watch fireworks. This was little J's first 4th of July, and a neighbor brought this 4th of July pinwheel for him Isn't that cute?

Check out Mochi, who's peeking in the background lol

At first, he was mesmerized by the twirling pinwheel, but then a few seconds later he got scared :( A lot of new experiences over the 4th of July weekend probably overstimulated him a bit. He enjoyed the fireworks, though. It was too loud to watch it outside, but he enjoyed seeing the colorful lights and booms through the window.

July 7th
On July 7th we celebrate Tanabata in Japan. This is the day when the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi, who are lovers but separated by the Milky Way, are allowed to meet once a year. It represents the day their wishes come true. So we celebrate the day by making wishes.

I made a few pieces of paper that's 2" x 9", and we wrote our wishes on them - one for each of us and one for the family. Then those were hung on our (fake) bamboo tree. A real bamboo branch is used traditionally but we already happen to have this bamboo tree at home, so we use this instead. We could also hang other paper decorations like stars but we were too tired from the 4th of July trip so just made wishes. Maybe next year I can show you more decorations. It's a bit like a Christmas tree, isn't it? In the meantime, I hope our wishes come true! :)