Celebrating New Year's with mochi!

When I was a child, my family would make mochi every year to celebrate new Year's. The tradition is Japanese: In Japan, boiled sticky rice is put into a wooden container and dampened with water by one person while another person pounds it with a big wooden hammer. Here's a YouTube video I found which shows one family's tradition:



My grandfather used to mix it with an electric drill instead; the convenience more than made up for the esthetics of the tradition, I'm sure. He stuck the drill through a hole in a wooden board and down into the pot of boiled rice, and then one of us would move the wooden board around while Grandpa held the drill. We'd all help make the patties.



Next, we carefully drop the rice patties one at a time into a big pot of boiling water. When the patties float to the surface, we dump into another pot and then mix/squish the patties together.

The mixture is very thick and gooey, and this is where the pounding or drill-mixing takes place. When the goop is smooth, then we pour it onto a flat surface covered in rice flour and flatten it into long slabs.

Grandpa's gone now, but my father has taken over annual mochi-making and is teaching the tradition to my nieces.



You can prepare mochi in a wide variety of ways (boiling, frying, etc.) but my favourite is the following:

1. Slice a piece of just-cooked mochi off the still-warm slab.

2. Dip the mochi into a mixture of sugar and shoyu (soy sauce).

3. Let your taste buds rejoice.



I think you have to grow up with the stuff to like it; both Jeff and Kaarel can't stand mochi, but my sister and my nieces love it just as much as I do.

You can get dry mochi in Japanese grocery stores, but it doesn't compare with freshly-cooked homemade mochi.

Yum.

There's something comforting and life-affirming about food rituals that are passed down from one generation to the next, isn't there?

So here's a survey: other than the obvious (e.g. Thanksgiving dinner, etc.), does your family have any food-related traditions?

Thanks to Shane McEwan for sending me Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier! After enjoying Wildwood Dancing and the Sevenwaters books so much, I was drooling over Cybele's Secret, but it's not yet available in North America.

I hadn't realized that Juliet Marillier lives in Australia (she was born in New Zealand). Thanks, Shane!




Thanks also to Ryan Couldrey for the very cool ninja drawing. His comment on the back: "I'll assume there was a decided lack of NINJA over your holidays, so this will remedy that!" Ryan is the co-creator of the new webcomic, Shuriken Diaries .

Technonerdmonster

For those interested, Technonerdmonster is now available as a print. I had originally posted the link yesterday, but deviantART seemed to be having problems with their server and I had to remove the URL.

You can get a 5"x5" print for $1.95, 8x8 for $10.95, 10x10 for $12.50. Mouse pad: $9.95. Magnets: $4.95-$6.95. Coaster: $20.25 for a set of 4.

I've also added some more Menagerie creatures to my Etsy store:






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LAN parties and Technonerdmonsters

Had great fun yesterday at Luisa's and Reid's LAN party. I'm not a gamer, but I went to hang out with Luisa as well as to do other stuff on my laptop. While the others were playing Team Fortress, I worked on:

- A Filk Hall Of Fame Nomination. I vowed that I would send in a nomination every year, after all, and the deadline for the 2008 nominations is Thursday, January 10th.

- Sketch ideas for Waiting For Bilbo.

- A new addition to my Little Nightmare series: Technonerdmonster! Thanks to Scott Murray for the idea. I'll be selling prints of this nerdy guy in my Prints shop soon.

Every so often I'd glance over at Jeff's monitor and see body parts flying about. Ugh. Though while part of me was cringing at all the violence, I had to admit that I was also admiring the cool graphics.

I also played some Guitar Hero 3, thanks to the Kesner family! Way addictive. I'm glad we don't have this at home else I'd never get any work done. :-)

Here are a few photos I took at the party. You can see more pics in my Flickr set.











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Happy holidays!

Just came back from Christmas with my in-laws. Much fun and good food! Jeff and I both came home feeling like Duffy, my mom-in-law's cat:



Wow. Duffy seems to get bigger every time I see him. This visit he spent most of his time hanging out on his favourite armchair, forelegs splayed out as you see above, dozing. He's a pretty happy cat, and his purr reminds of planes taking off at Pearson. Apparently the vet told my mom-in-law that Duffy's purr is the loudest he's ever heard.

It was my first Christmas with a DSLR! I took a ton of photos of lights and decorations and food, of course. Love my Sigma 30/1.4 lens. Here's a photo of my sis-in-law Larkin and her husband Rick:



For Christmas, Rick and Larkin gave us two boxes of gourmet goodies from the shop where Rick works, Broadway Farms. Yum! We'll be feasting on some tonight.



On the way up north, we dropped by Morrissey Magic (where I took the photo above). FANTASTIC store for anyone interested in magic tricks and practical jokes; they accept orders online as well.

Iain came over recently to help Jeff build a game box. Jeff is very happy right now and looking forward to doing some gaming over this coming week. :-)



Yay for technonerdboys! You can see more photos here.



Going to do the last of my wrapping now.

Happy holidays, everyone!





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Gifts, mailing lists, and cuttlefish

Had a great get-together with Allison and Jodi earlier this week. Our table was filled with ribbons and wrapping paper and gift bags as we did our holiday gift exchange. Thanks to Jodi for the snowman ornament and heavenly-smelling Lush products, and to Allison for the canvases, German bookmark calendar and a kalimba instruction book. I've already sightread my first kalimba piece and am looking forward to learning more!

This year I made paintings for both Jodi and Allison as part of their Christmas gifts. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of Jodi's before I gave it to her (I'll have to do that next time we have an Urban Tapestry practice in Newmarket) but you can see the one I did for Allison above and to the right.

Thanks to those who have been helping me test iContact; if you helped but didn't get your free LJ icons, please let me know. While testing, a few people had problems, with blank screens coming up where there should be text. Other than that, most people seemed fine with the interface. I also played around a bit with Mailchimp, but then I heard the news about The Hobbit.



Knowing that I'm going to be doing a Waiting For Bilbo comic has also forced me to rethink what service I'm going to use. I had nearly 1500 people on my notification list for Waiting For Frodo, and I suspect that Waiting For Bilbo might get more. Since both iContact and Mailchimp charge per user, I think the wiser option would be to go for a less expensive service.

Like FREE, maybe. My friend Reid alerted me to the fact that Dreamhost (which currently hosts some of my domains) offers a free announcement mailing list service for its users, so I'm going to check that out. Doesn't come with nearly as many bells and whistles but I think I'll be fine with that for now. :-)

So here's the sign-up form for my Etsy mailing list, if you're interested. Mailing list subscribers will receive special offers, freebies, and info about new items. I expect to send out about one mailing a week at MOST. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the link at the bottom of any mailing.

If you notice any problems, please do let me know!



The two photos above are of new Christmas ornaments I've received this week in the mail. The snowman was made by Kathye and the stained glass ornament was made by Lissa.

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to give more info about the very first piece of pottery that Luisa and I are listing on Etsy, but it sold already. (Thanks, Francine, if you're reading this!) :-)

I'm not shipping until the New Year, but anyone who places an order between now and January 3rd will get a handmade bookmark by yours truly in thanks for waiting. If you'd like a handmade Waiting For Bilbo bookmark, please say so when you check out (in the comments section of the form), else I'll choose another theme.



Most recent addition to my Etsy shop: a cuttlefish! Thanks to Brooke for the suggestion. More info on the Etsy page for this painting.

Photo Of The Day:

Secret Squirrel Training Facility (thanks to Vixy for the link)



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Waiting For Bilbo?

So I came back from my errands to find a bunch of e-mails waiting for me pointing me to this news and asking if I plan to revive Waiting For Frodo.

I had always sworn that I would never start it up again, but now I'm thinking, "But if I call it 'Waiting For Bilbo'" I wouldn't really be starting it up again, would I? A number of people suggested that title back when I shut down WFF, and my friend Dave Weingart just suggested it to me again.

So I've just registered WaitingForBilbo.com.

I must be crazy.

Had a great time with Allison and Jodi yesterday; more later this week. I also received two new Christmas ornaments in the mail today, yay! Pics later this week.

By the way, I just posted Luisa's and my FIRST ETSY POTTERY LISTING ($15 for a mini Kittyblue dish)! More details later this week. (Yes, everything is later this week...)




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