Weekly Favorites 1/25

Hi everyone. 

Education
This week I've found these really cute letter and number heart puzzles to do with your preschoolers/kindergarteners. They are perfect for a Valentine's day theme so I'm planning to try them next month with Little Guy. As I linked to their activities many times earlier, Totshooling is a great site to find free educational printable activities for preschoolers and kindergarteners. If you find it useful, make sure to subscribe to their newsletter because there are more free printables for subscribers and I found most of them really good.

Finance

Now that I've sort of started to take control of my time (thanks in part to bullet journaling), I've started to work on our finance. Our financial situation has improved dramatically in the past couple of years, which is good, but it also made us lazy about our financial dicisions. So I've decided to make more conscious decisions with regards to our money. These two articles, How to Make a Spending Plan and Why I'm Tracking Every Single Purchase I Make in 2017 put me on track.

Yum!

Lastly, I have this yummy White Bean and Avocado Baked Burritos recipe for you. I've made this a couple of times before and it's always been a hit. This time, in addition to making brritos as per the recipe, I just baked the fillings to cut down on the amount of wheat I eat. I did cover the fillings by putting a tortilla over the fillings so it won't dry while baking but did not eat it together. It was delicious this way too.

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 wonderful day :)

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

oh-so-sweet Valentine's card, cupcakes and Mochi

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's day, whether you have a partner or not. I used to celebrate the Valentine's day with single friends when I was a single too, hehe. I'd also think cuddling with your furry friends would make a lovely Valentine's day too.

theme: Just like the plants need rains to grow, rainy days actually help one's relationship strong
and of course, chocolate & candy because it's Valentine's day

Mochi trying to steal my Valentine's day tulips lol

I love tulips. I think roses are pretty but I love tulips more.

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!

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 11] how to: super easy and quick lunch "rice bowl with greens"

This is my super easy, inexpensive lunch I usually whip up. It looks simple but, seasoned with soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and garlic, it actually is pretty flavorful and yummy :) If you already have cooked rice and chopped greens at hand (say, you chopped extra veggies at your dinner prep the previous night), it cooks up really fast too, which is a huge plus for a busy lunchtime (or cooks this in the morning to put it in your lunchbox, maybe?).

Since it's so easy, I don't know if I can even call this a "recipe" but I thought of writing down how-to in case somebody's looking for a quick and nutritious lunch. Hope you'll enjoy it :)

Rice Bowl with Greens How to

ingredients

canola oil*

A clove of garlic, sliced

Chopped greens of your choice, e.g. broccoli, kale, cabbage, brussels sprouts are my usual choices

1-2 teaspoons of nutritional yeast

garlic powder

salt and pepper

A bowl of cooked rice (leftovers work perfectly!)

soy sauce

* you can use other types of oil too, but I like the flavor that the combination of canola oil and soy sauce creates. It reminds me of egg rice bowls I used to eat in pre-vegan days. More on that sometime.

1) Heat the oil in the pan at medium-high heat. You might want to use a little bit more oil than you usually use to stir fry vegetables as the extra oil will coat the rice later. Place the slices of garlic and heat until they become fragrant.

2) Put the chopped veggies and turn the heat up. Fry the veggies.

I like crunchier and a bit burned vegetables, but if you like softer stir fried veggies, you might want to keep the heat to medium high.

3) In the meantime, if your rice was sitting in the fridge, warm it in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Don't worry if it's not warmed through. It will be cooked again in the pan later. If you've cooked your rice fresh, skip this process.

4) When the veggies are done, add the nutritional yeast, garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste.

5) Turn off the heat. Add the rice and mix with the veggies in the pan. The remaining heat will cook the rice without frying.

6) Drizzle the soy sauce to your liking.

7) Dig in!

variations

• add beans or diced tofu to make it a more substantial meal. Black beans or chickpeas are my favorites for this. Add them after the vegetables
• add drops of sriracha sauce before you eat to spice it up!
• add pieces of nori sheets after the heat is turned off (just before adding the soy sauce)
• add sesame seeds

Baby food - 7 month old

We've introduced many new foods this month. Some LO loves, some he doesn't :( Here are the summary of the foods he tried this month.

Oatmeal cereal

LO didn't like it at first - probably because it's bland? - but he likes it when it's mixed with fruit. Phew. I really wanted him to like this cause rice cereal seems to have a constipating effect on him. Oatmeal cereal became a staple for his breakfast. We love Earth's Best Organic Oatmeal Cereal!

Tofu

He didn't seem to enjoy it at first :( He should've been used to the taste of soy from soy based formula, though. I thought, perhaps it was the texture he didn't like because I gave him pureed firm tofu (I couldn't find silken tofu at that time), which was drier and less smooth than silken tofu.

And I was right! I found silken tofu at a different store, pureed it and gave it to him, and this time he loved it :) I'm glad because tofu will become one of the important protein foods if I'm going to feed him vegetarian meals.

I usually microwave tofu for a minute or two, and process it in my baby bullet. At the time of this writing - the age of 8 month - I just mash it with a fork instead of making it really smooth.

Carrots, peach, daikon radish

He loves them all :) Daikon radish becomes sweet when steamed for 15-20 minutes, which makes a fun baby food IMHO. It's a staple baby food (and beyond) in Japan.

Spinach

LO liked it at first, but after a few sittings, he started to show dislikes to it. Now he doesn't eat it at all even if mixed with rice or other vegetables :(

Kale

However, he likes kale! I thought kale would taste more bitter and he'd prefer spinach to kale but the reverse was true for him. Maybe because I ate a lot of kale (but not spinach because there were some food poisoning incidents) during my pregnancy?

I was teased that our baby loves tofu and kale - yup, it sounds like my son! lol

By the way, we took him for his first swimming the other day.

Isn't this adorable?

oh and huggies swim diapers are awesome!

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! :)

baby food - 6 months old

Month 2 of starting vegetables and fruits!

This month we started bananas. I thought kids love bananas, but to my surprise, he didn't! He made this sour face like "what on earth are you giving me mama?!" lol Later, I learned that mixing avocado with banana will work when kids don't eat bananas, so I tried. It worked. It had an interesting taste to me, like melon cream? But he liked it. That all matters.

But he got constipated (bananas are known for causing constipation), so I didn't give him bananas any longer. I don't think it's necessary at this stage anyway.

We've also started barley tea (mugicha) this month. At this stage, I was instructed to give him some other fluid than breastmilk or formula. Little J, however, didn't take water as much as I'd like probably because it doesn't have much taste. I don't want to give him juice yet because I think juice contains too much sugar. I was wondering what would be a good alternative to water....

Then I remember. My twitter mommy friends back in Japan give their little ones barley tea! Barley tea does have some flavor (like roasted taste, which I love) and doesn't have sugar or caffeine. That would be perfect. I had a stock of barley tea bags at hand so I made a pot of it. I poured some into his newly introduced straw mug, thinned it down with water (about 1:1) and to my relief, he drank it more than water!

And now that he mastered drinking from a straw, he loves gulping his tea :)

Next month, we're going to try tofu (yay!), carrots, peaches, green beans and potatoes. I hope he'd love his veggies and tofu. He's a tofu loving veggie mom's son, he's gotta love tofu!

ps. Needless to say if you thought barley tea is a good idea too and are thinking about giving it to your little one, please make sure with your pediatrician first :)

Happy Half Birthday!

A few days ago my LO turned 6 months old!

Past 6 months, or actually add 9 months prior to that, has been an incredible journey and I am extremely happy that we celebrated his half birthday happily and in a good health. Every day we discover something new, be it achieving a new milestone like smiling, rolling over, standing with support, or simply finding out a different aspect of his personality. Every day is so precious I don't want to miss anything.

I made this cake using a simple vanilla cake recipe and a vegan custard cream recipe from the Joy of Vegan Baking (my bible!). I made a whole cake, trimmed the top to make it flat, cut it in half then layered them to make a half cake.
The custard cream was made with corn starch, flour, coconut milk and vanilla extract but incredibly creamy and delicious.

The birthday decoration was from a free printable, retro happy birthday set. I glued two toothpicks between the labels to stick it on the cake. It's really cute. Thank you for sharing :)

sorry baby, you gotta wait for a few more months to be able to eat a cake!

Speaking of food, we started on eating vegetables and fruits last month. Luckily I received baby bullet and its steamer as a gift and have been having fun making all the baby food so far. I'm trying to use organic veggies and fruits if I can but our local groceries don't have organic vegetables of all kinds, so sometimes I have to give in. Too bad :(

What he tried last month: yellow squash, sweet potatoes, avocados, peas, pears and apples - all steamed and pureed in my baby bullet.

To my surprise, he enjoyed all but the apple! He made this sour face as if he had eaten lemon or something (the apple was sweet to my taste, though). I'm pleased to see he devoured peas and avocados - perhaps he remembered the taste cause I ate those a lot during my pregnancy lol