Holidays in Japan

The flurry of the holidays has simmered back down into the regular routine of life.  Our third year being away from home from the holidays.  We always miss our families and friends during this time even more acutely than usual. 

Our first year away we stayed in Japan for the holidays.  It was Karl’s and my first Christmas as a married couple.  We made lots of cookies, sat under our kotatsu, and watched all the Christmas classics. 

Our second year away, we celebrated the holiday season in India.  That was an incredible experience I will not soon forget. 

Our third year away, we had company.  And not just any company-one of my younger sisters made the journey to Japan to visit us during our holiday vacation.  We were delighted to share our Japanese life with her.  

Also-I got a really cute holiday manicure.  Just for fun.  

Thanksgiving with a Tiny Oven

First, watch this video.

Who doesn’t have a battle ax, chainsaw and bazooka in their kitchen!?

Ok, now watch this one.

Maybe you don’t care for the Muppets…I think they are hilaaaarious. 

Fortunately, I did not have to skewer my own turkey or deal with talking pumpkins this Thanksgiving.  Also, having been in Japan for over a year now, I was able to approach Thanksgiving preparations with much more confidence. 

If you want to prepare a turkey for Thanksgiving and you live in Japan, this is what I recommend:

Step 1: They do sell turkeys at Costco, but unless you have a big enough oven this option is out of the question.  We ordered a tiny 5 lb turkey from a website called “The Meat Guy.”  It’s great. Order about a week in advance.  The website even allows you to choose a specified day and time of delivery.  

The turkey-sitting in an 8x8in pan.

Step 2: Make sure your turkey is thawed out completely 12-24 hours before you want to roast it. 

Step 3: Brine it!  I followed this recipe (I also added an apple, as you can see) for brining our little turkey.  Brining makes a huge difference in the juiciness of the turkey.  We let ours brine for about 16 hours before roasting.

The turkey brining away.  We had to put it into a backing bag and then into our crisper-it was the only way it would fit into our fridge!

Step 4: Stuff and roast.

Stuffed with wild rice cranberry dressing. Yum!

A perfect fit for our tiny oven!

Step 5: Eat!

This is what the rest of our holiday meal looked like:

Kabocha squash with butter and brown sugar.

Mashed potatoes-because you have to!

A made-up wild rice, cranberry shittake stuffing.  Delish!

Sorry, my gravy is out of focus.  If you make gravy, for mercy's sake, make this one!

Pumpkin-one of the best desserts (or, let's be awesome, breakfasts too!) ever.

 Our holiday was delightful in every way.  Flowing with apple cider, champagne, and white wine.  Bountiful, delicious food.

So very much for which to be thankful!

Happy Thanksgiving

May your day be filled with love!

...and lots of pie and turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving!

they just keep getting better

There’s a thing about making bagels…you can make them taste like any season you want.

It’s awesome.  And really fun to come up with delicious flavor combinations.

It's Autumn in Japan.  We just had Halloween.  Leaves are changing into a brilliant matrix of color. The air is crisp and fresh. 

So how do you make bagels taste like autumn? 

Easy.

Pumpkin.

Cinnamon.

Allspice.

Ginger.

Cloves.

Result: the best bagels I have (yet) made.

Ready to be boiled.

 

Autumn Pumpkin Spice Bagels

5/8 cup warm water

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

2 T honey

1 t  salt

2 t  pumpkin pie spice

1 1/2 t cinnamon

3 1/3 cups bread flour

2 t  active dry yeast

1) Mix flour, water, salt, honey and yeast.  Knead, let rise for an hour.

2)  Separate dough into six sections and shapes into bagels. (I knead the dough into a small ball then poke a hole through the middle with your finger to form the hole.)

3)  Allow formed bagels to rise for 20 min.  Prep your pot of boiling water.

4)  Drop the bagels gently into the pot of boiling water for about 1 min per side.

5)  Place on a baking sheet dusted with cornmeal.  

6)  Bake at 400 F for 20-25 min.

It’s the great…kabocha?

So here’s the thing about Halloween in Japan. Well, a few things, actually.

They don’t have orange pumpkins in Japan…but they do have “pumpkins” (kabocha in English-or buttercup squash as we know it in North America.)

They don’t carve pumpkins…but I have seen faces painted or drawn on.

They don’t go trick’r’treating…but Halloween parties are immensely popular.

Basically Halloween in Japan is a “holiday” adopted from North America, similar to the Japanese treatment of Christmas. As far as I can tell, Halloween is a great excuse for marketers to advertise and make money. There is nothing scary about Halloween in Japan either-this is the country of cute, remember?

I am completely aware that marketers do the exact same thing in the U.S.A. But-speaking from my personal experience-Japan is missing the essence of Halloween.

Every year growing up, my siblings and I would think of and create our own costumes. Dad would take us out trick’r’treating while Mom stayed home handing out candy. When we came home, we would sit and go through the candy loot while watching “The Wizard of Oz” or “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”

I stopped trick’r’treating a long time ago, but I still love taking my younger siblings. And who doesn’t love carving pumpkins?!

Even though Japan does Halloween a bit differently, we still have lots of fun. This year we went to a couple great Halloween parties.

Holidays are more about the people you spend them with anyway, right?

I think so.