Kate's fancy new camera

Kate has been taking some really beautiful pictures with her fancy new camera. If you want to see her newest creations, you can always look on the right side of our blog, right under the phrase "recent cool picture." You can also click here, and look to the right (you can click on the picture to enlarge it).

The whole "photo of the day" album can be found here.

Good eats

We have really been eating well recently. Earlier this week Kate made scones au gouda vieux et poires séchées, which were amazing.


Also, on Wednesday I got to visit one of my favorite stores in the whole world, Pacific Food Importers (PFI). This store sells olives, cheeses, and dried foods in bulk, and they also carry many interesting foods from all over the world.

On Wednesday night I used dried porcini mushrooms that I picked up at PFI to make fresh egg pasta with a garlic/olive oil/mushroom sauce (this was the second time I used my new pasta maker).

Yomiuri has the best human interest stories

The title of this story is "Otaria the Sea Lion practices writing new years greetings." As usual, the picture is the key.

The Michigan Report

We’re back from the not-at-all snowy state. Honestly, I found it much less cold than winter visits in previous years – perhaps there really is something to this global climate change whatnot (actually, it really bothers me when people conflate weather and climate as I’ve done above, but, whatever, tolerance is the spirit of the season, right?). Anywaaaaay, here are some photographic highlights from our week.

The latkes

The men

The men-orahs

And the M&Ms

Dr. Farls

Us

Now we’re back in Seattle where we’ll do a little relaxing (and a little work) before school begins next week. Today we took a walk with our friends Scott and Meh.

The 5th Santa Claus Marathon

141 Santa Clauses and 2 dogs run through the Kamogawa district of Kyoto (a story from the Yomiuri Newspaper, with picture).

The Catch-up report

My birthday was really nice – and a bit like a perpetual party.

Last Sunday, we went to Pacific Science Center to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. The exhibit was pretty cool, but very, very crowded. Buy those tickets in advance, and buy them for a weekday. The scrolls themselves were interesting, and I also enjoyed all the other artifacts (coins, clothes, pottery) that were presented along with the scrolls.

After that bit of culture, we walked around the Science Center. Kris checked out the display on camouflage.Nearly invisible, no? Then we hit the IMAX theater for the Egypt movie. The movie had beautiful scenery, and I’m a total sucker for the IMAX films, but it also had a weird sort of explanation-of-the-curse conceit. And Omar Sharif. And not in a good way, either.

Then we headed to dinner at the fondue restaurant. I love fondue! Seriously. I mean, what’s not to love about melted cheese and melted chocolate? So yummy! Here’s a shot of us and then one of the dessert plate (the lighting was a little weird, but we’ll get to that issue below).On my actual birthday, we just played it low-key with a dinner of fried rice at home. Note the flowers on the table (from my mother) and my holiday decorations in the windows (I’ll try to get a daytime shot of those, too).

Saturday night we had a little party at our house, both to celebrate my birthday and to welcome the nomad scholar home. It was a bit of open house, and lots of people came and brought lots of yummy treats. Mike made our traditional birthday cake from this book.
So that’s been the past week, in words and pictures. And about those pictures . . . for my birthday, folks around me pitched in to give me a brand-spanking-new-fancy-dancy camera. So, hopefully, the pictures around here will get a lot better (that is, except for the bad pictures due to operator error). I’d like to do something like the picture of the day, but I’m not sure how that would work with blogger or that I’d truly be able to post a picture every day. Anyway, I’m super-excited about the new camera, but I think there’ll be quite the learning curve with it. I’m planning to study up over break.

Classic

I have pictures and stories to post about Mike's first few days home as well as about my birthday, but that will all have to wait. Instead of a looking-backward post, this is a looking-forward post.

My grandmother no longer has the energy to bake all her traditional holiday cookies. So her four daughters and assorted grandchildren have taken over, each baking one of the types of cookies and then mailing them out to all concerned parties.

This year I’m in for honig kuchen à la Oma, or something that approximates gingerbread.

This is the recipe I was sent:

Heat together one cup each of molasses and honey. Cool. Beat 3 cups of

sugar with 4 eggs. Combine and add 4 teaspoons cinnamon.( mum wrote tbs. but

we all think that she meant teaspoons), 3 teaspoons( same issue_ cloves,

some salt (/) and assorted spices ("depending upon what you have on had and

how you feel"). Add round tsp.( this time she got it right so we all

wondered if maybe she really meant tablespoons before) soda and 1 tsp. cream

of tartar( "if you have some- I rarely do"). Stir in enough flour till your

arm is dead and the stuff won't budge anymore. Cover and wait a few days

till you've recovered since you need all your strength to quasi roll out,

cut into forms, and bake in moderate oven after you have brushed each cookie

with honey water ( made with honey and water) and pressed a piece of almond

in center of each.

Note_ I wrote down 8 cups flour, 3/16 inch think roll out, 350 degrees for

7 minutes after talking to her.

Good luck.

Um, yeah.

So I am unsure if I should just go with this recipe or make some substitutions to a more standard gingerbread cookie recipe, like this one or this one.

Welcome home Mike, or the Diet of Worms

Mike has been back in the U.S. for a few days now.

He just caught the end of the big snow here last week (check out some of the pictures linked to the article, too). I wish I had better pictures of the snow, but during the best picture-taking days, it was either too icy to go outside or I found myself without my camera (you know, like during my 45 block walk home on Monday night. Sweet!). So here are some pictures that I took on Wednesday afternoon when Mike and I were out for a walk.

Also, here’s a bird that hangs out in the tree near our apartment.

We’ve been to a few of our favorite restaurants and coffeeshops and we’ve seen some of our good friends.

Mike has also enjoyed having the use of a full-sized kitchen, stocked with all our fun toys. Tonight, using the pasta machine I got him for his birthday, he made fresh pasta.

Very yummy!