I read more about this company and found out they use recycled paper and soy-based inks. I liked it so much I ordered my friend in SoCal a poster of LA for his upcoming birthday. In my last post I ended it with a picture of mochi soup that we eat for good luck every New Years morning. This is a Japanese tradition that we’ve adapted in my family even though my grandmother is the only Japanese person in the family. I like to think the rest of us are Japanese at heart.
Preparation for this meal begins days before when we start soaking the mochi rice and shop for the ingredients. Mochi rice requires 2 days of immersion in water before it is added to the electric mochi-making machine. Traditionally, Japanese families come together for a “mochi pounding” where they perform this process by hand. I have participated in one of these laborious poundings in the past so I can fully appreciate our machine version.
Next comes the Japanese stew called Umani, which translates to “delicious cooking”. Others may know this as nishime and according to my grandma “umani” is a term used locally in Hawaii. I also read that nishime is the same thing but after it has cooked together as a stew, the vegetables are then taken out and served separately. Fun facts about umani- each ingredient represents something in life and should be prepared with an odd number of vegetables for good harmony. Umani may appear daunting due to its interesting assortment of scary-looking vegetables and smells. A fun description of this meal can be found here. I grew up eating this stuff and love it so much that I asked my mom this year to teach me how to make it. Following is my mom’s version of Umani (adapted from Mrs.Kunikyo):
1) Par-boil araimo (Japanese potato) until tender then peel and cut into bite-size pieces.
2) Soak shitake mushrooms and nishime konbu (seaweed).
3) Peel gobo (burdock root) and cut diagonally.
4) Open cans of bamboo shoot and cut into little triangles.
5) Cut up the aburage (tofu).
6) Cut up the konyaku (jelly-like substance from a potato).
7) Open cans of whole mushrooms. Drain and cut into pieces.
8) Peel and cut carrots.
9) Peel and cut hasu (lotus root).
10) Cut and tie konbu (seaweed) in knots. (This represents fertility)
11) Remove shitake stems and cut up. *Save some shitake water
12) Boil shitake water with some konbu and some shitake.
13) Add all the vegetables.
14) Add equal parts of shoyu and sugar.
15) Taste!
*Note- actual amounts vary on how much you want to make and partly because I didn’t realize I should have written that down :/ Also, this is a vegetarian version my mom makes for me. It traditionally is vegetarian but my mom adds chicken breast for the rest of the family which looks good too if that’s your thing.
These are the other things we have for our New Years breakfast besides the umani:
Hello computer. Happy New Year. It’s been a month since we’ve spent time together. Sorry to say, but this make me happy. After a year of being a full-fldged doctorate student I have spent way too much time in front of this screen downloading, organizing, studying, researching. And now that I have only 10 weeks left of school and am equipped with a new smartphone, I hope to look at this screen even less.
Not that this computer hasn’t been good to me. In the finals week of one of my undergrad years my previous laptop decided to die so I frantically ran to the Apple store that had just opened in the mall to get this black MacBook. It’s been updated since then thankfully to my savvy Apple friend and the cute guy working at the Apple store.
My first time to Modesto was to take my computer in during another finals week but this time in grad school. Actually, it wasn’t finals week but every week feels like finals week there. So anyway I left my computer with them for the weekend and proceeded to Yosemite National Park to camp by myself as a sort of meditation retreat. Yosemite is everything they say it is- you have to see it to believe me.
As I drove the 3 hours into the valley on an early October morning I reflected on what the fall season means to me. Being from Hawaii I have never really experienced seasons so I was hoping to catch some fall color in the park (which turned out to be futile since it was a little too early for leaves to change color and Yosemite is full of evergreens). I had rented a tent from my favorite store, REI, and was a proud owner of the “Soloist” stove and burner. I tried to not let the name of my equipment remind me I was a single female alone in the woods but rather I conjured up images of an adventurous John Muir whom I was reading his journals.
The camping trip itself wasn’t hugely successful but I consider surviving a weekend alone in the outdoors pretty good for anyone. The only downfall to camping alone is the cold nights, which is one reason it wasn’t a 5-star trip. The other reason was that I had recently injured my knee so all of the hikes I had planned were out of the question. But, when one door closes, a thousand others open. Because of my knee I was forced to be creative with my weekend plans. I decided to take the drive up the side of the valley to watch the sunset, which only required a 30min hike to the top of a dome. I took my flashlight and warm clothes with me on the casual walk and was rewarded with a 360° view of Yosemite. The air was quiet with a slight breeze among which hundreds of thousands of tiny spiders floated across on their silk and glistening in the descending sun. It was upon this beautiful dome watching the colors change in the sky and the stars come out when I realized that the fall to me doesn’t have to do anything with the weather but being in school and wishing I were somewhere else.
When I drove back into civilization I had several voicemails from Apple asking for authorization for work to be done on my computer. I must’ve been a sight for them as I had spent 2 sleepless nights in the cold and had no clean clothes left. The man working customer service told me that they had been trying to reach me for days so I explained that I was in Yosemite with no reception. He paused his work to look up at me and said, “Oh. You’re one of those.” To this day I don’t know what he meant but from that point on I thought that I should be documenting my adventures for my future grandchildren to read when they wonder about their family history.
Thus, Carlen’s Journal is born again. Writing a blog is something I have done in the past but when Facebook came about I gradually stopped my journal entries. Now that it’s a new year my resolution is to maintain this blog more regularly especially since this year will be full of travels around the country and hopefully many more adventures. I will try not to bore anyone and I do want to improve my writing so any constructive feedback will be appreciated.
Happy New Year.
