Origami Mommy

Sweet Korean pancakes

I'm always in the mood to bake, especially when it's as cold as it has been lately. I love welcoming the older children back home after school to a kitchen full of sweet-smelling warmth. It's a special treat when I get to introduce them to food that brings back lots of memories for me. This treat, hoddeok, reminds me of my year abroad in Korea when I was in college. It's pan-fried bread filled with a syrupy mixture of walnuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon, and it's often sold by street vendors in the middle of winter. It's sublime hot off the griddle.

 

There are mixes and even frozen hoddeok in Korean markets, but I found this recipe online which is pretty good. I followed it the first time I made this and it was pretty successful. I've tweaked it whenever making it afterwards, which means that I don't really follow a recipe at all and just wing it - it's easier to make things like this spontaneously when I don't have to be getting out measuring cups and whatnot. 

Start by making some sort of bread dough (mix yeast, 1/4 cup of warm water, and a bit of sugar in a bowl till the yeast bubbles, then add enough flour and liquid until it feels like a moist bread dough. For liquid, use milk in addition to water, and add a touch more sugar so it's slightly sweet. I also substituted whole wheat flour for about half of the white). Knead lightly, cover, and then set aside to rise in a warm place for about an hour or so.

After it rises, you get to enjoy the fun of assembly. This is a lot of fun to do with little children.

Mix together brown sugar with liberal amounts of cinnamon. Add chopped walnuts if you like. Raisins are good too. Put these in a bowl with lots of little spoons for your little helpers.

Next, pinch off little balls of dough and shape them so that you have a little well in the middle.

 

Fill the well with the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture.

 

Using your fingers, continue to stretch and shape the ball so that the brown sugar mixture is now on the inside, fully enclosed.

 

Now flatten it out. The children and I did this by patting and stretching out the dough with our hands but of course you can use a rolling pin too. Make sure you filled your ball with enough brown sugar mixture that it gets well-distributed on the inside. See the dark lump in the middle? That's a walnut, unchopped - I'm always wearing the baby when I'm in the kitchen so I do as little chopping as I can get away with. 

 

This is really basically all there is to it, except for the frying. Pan fry in a bit of oil and then flip like a regular pancake and serve while hot.

I serve it with yuja cha - Korean yuzu tea, sprinkled with pine nuts. This golden, sweet citrusy tea is the perfect match for these pancakes and warms us up on these cold afternoons.

What snacks do you like to eat in the winter?

Pine cone tree craft

The boys came home from school the other day with these sweet little pine cone trees. They seem really easy to make. The teachers had painted the pine cones green beforehand (it looks like they dipped them in paint), and then handed them out to the kids along with glue, cardboard, cotton balls, sequins and beads, and bottle caps. Each child glued a pine cone onto a bottle cap, then glued that onto a cardboard circle. After that they garnished them with the sequins and beads and then surrounded the cap with cotton ball "snow."  The cardboard circle makes a nice little platform for displaying these trees.

I like this craft because it's simple and quick (and relatively mess-free), but the end result is very pretty! 

 

Nostalgia

I'm sorry I haven't posted in awhile. There's been so much going on in my life, so much more than the average newborn mom probably goes through. Anna is now 6 weeks old, and I can't believe where the time has gone.

 

 

 

(Anna's beautiful white hat was knitted for her by my wonderful friend Laura!)

I'm already nostalgic for her first few days. Having a new baby is a visceral reminder of how quickly time passes, and how quickly children grow. For some reason her babyhood seems to be going by lightning fast. That may seem laughable, as she is still so very little, but perhaps it feels even more fleeting to me because all her three siblings seem to be growing unfathomably older every day. So, it feels heartbreaking - at the same time that I am so excited to see who she will be and become and see more of her first smiles and hear her first words and witness her first steps, it is bittersweet to see what we leave behind. 

This feeling of nostalgia is even stronger because we are preparing for a partial move back to the US. In less than a month, we will leave Japan, where we have lived for nearly 4 years and where two of my babies were born. I came here with just two little energetic joyful boys, and leave now with four children, daughters I never had before, and an older son who is mature and on the cusp of adolescence.  

 

 

 

This is not a full move. We will be returning here for long summers during which our children will attend the school they've been going to (school runs until late July in Japan), and we may move back again year-round, but to leave our home here even for just a few months will be a big change for us. Every day, when I walk outside with the children, or pick them up from school, I soak in every bit I can of our lives here, so I can remember it all. The tiny jam factory near their school with its compelling strawberry smells wafting out into the street. The sight of cheerful children running along narrow roads with their yellow and blue school hats and square leather backpacks. The ginko leaves, bright yellow, under our feet in the fall. Buying sweet-bean and sweet-rice treats at the corner store. Wandering around our favorite park, remembering looking for crayfish in the summer, and visiting the miniature waterfall which so delighted my boys when they were small. 

There will be more sights, more memories, in our new home. Of that I am completely sure. But there is something about leaving a home where you raised your children when they were so small, that makes goodbye feel especially hard. 

Welcoming Anna

Our newest little one arrived on October 28th. 

We feel very blessed. She is like a gift for each one of us. Things have gone a lot smoother than I anticipated, mostly because our children are so spread out in age. 

I'll keep this post short for now, as I'm still perfecting the art of finding online time with so many demands on my time, but here is a quick photo of Anna in wool legwarmers I knitted up for her. I made the blanket she is lying on too, out of wool jersey, doubled over and sewn together, and trimmed in a simple blanket stitch.

 

The legwarmers were made with a plain merino wool I found here in Japan. The gauge is 6 stitches to the inch and I cast on 36 stitches. Very simple.

 

Each sibling is very much in love with our little Anna, and I'm beginning to think this four-child thing is going to be a great adventure.

 

Nesting

It feels like life has slowed down to a crawl during these last few weeks of waiting for the baby. For awhile, I was keeping myself busy by searching out and completing the quickest knitting projects I could find out there. There's something really satisfying about knitting up something tiny. It feels like such an extravagance, because a baby can only wear something this small in the first few months, but it's testament to the love and anticipation that surrounds its arrival. The last time I did a lot of knitting was before my first baby was born 9 years ago, and it was a meditative experience for me - into each stitch of baby clothing was knitted all the dreams and hopes that a soon-to-be first-time mother feels. In all the years since then, it's just been too difficult to keep on knitting - little toddler feet getting tangled up with skeins of yarn, so much of life to be lived as another and then yet another child was added to our family. But I recently discovered Ravelry and found myself feeling completely reinspired to take up  my needles. 

 

The knitting world has really evolved in the decade since I was last actively knitting. Knitting feels fresh and new for me. There are so many free - free! - patterns out there by generous and talented knitters. The baby dress above is called the Kaia Babydoll. I knitted the newborn size so it went really quickly, in Debbie Bliss's luscious Baby Cashmerino yarn.

I dream of someday spinning and dyeing my own yarn as well. In the meantime I can order handspun and/or hand dyed yarn from Etsy. This delightful skein of yarn practically danced in my hands as I knitted it up and the entire sweater took about 2 days to make.

 

The yarn was made by Sunrise Lodge Fiber Studio. It feels so good to use yarn that is handcrafted with personal care in this way. 

I've made a few things from commercial patterns as well, and been really happy with the results. These wee hats are from the book One Skein, by Leigh Radford.

 

I've also been enjoying knitting top-down seamless sweaters.  Both the dress and sweater above are seamless and so are the ones below. Until I started knitting these I didn't realize how much I hated the process of sewing up afterwards. I don't think I will ever make another sweater again that isn't knitted in the round.

The pattern for the sweaters above is available here for free.

And then this pattern, below, is Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous Baby Sweater on Two Needles from her Knitter's Almanac. It's the same pattern I used for the green sweater above.

 

Finally, every new baby needs booties and hats. There are many, many free baby bootie patterns on the web, and I just kind of combined various ones and experimented. Here's a link to a bunch of baby sock and bootie patterns.

 

I couldn't resist purchasing the pattern for this pilot cap because pilot caps just look so darling on little baby faces.

 

I have been trying to keep up with knitting projects for the older ones too. They are happy with socks and hats as long as they can pick the yarn and designs, and Mia is still small enough to knit quick shrugs and sweaters for. Some things remain works in progress but the children really seem to enjoy knowing that something special is being made just for them. 

Wool and cotton receiving blankets have been made, tiny clothing folded and put away. So now.....we just wait, while cherishing our last special days together as a family of five. 

Giveaway winner!

The winner of the bento accessories giveaway is Samantha. Thank you so much everyone for your great comments. It was fascinating for me to hear all the different things families pack for lunch! Cheese, crackers, fruit, sandwiches, wraps, pasta, leftovers......be sure to scroll through all the comments if you are stuck for ideas for lunch. 

Tutorial - Jeweled shrink curls

I have a new, quick tutorial that is great for children. Like so many of the crafts we do, my sons taught me this one. They learned it at school. I'm not really sure what to call these but children see lots of possibility in them - they're just little treasures.  I'm going to call them "jeweled shrink curls" for lack of a more inspiring term.

They're made from plastic bottles - all you need is a plastic bottle, scissors, permanent markers, foil, and a toaster oven. 

 

Cut pieces out of the plastic bottle at random and give them to your children.

 

Have them scribble away and draw whatever they want on the plastic.

Then put the plastic pieces on a piece of foil and pop in a toaster oven. Watch them carefully. If the oven is preheated, they will start to curl up in about 30 seconds! Maybe even sooner - so keep an eye on them. Children love watching them transform.

Take them out and let them cool. Your children can play with them, string them like beads, or simply collect them like little jewels. I like this project because it is so fast and easy, yet really satisfying. 

Japanese Sweet Potato Cakes

It's fall harvest season in Japan.

We've been eating persimmons, chestnuts, apples, and of course, sweet potatoes.

We could eat these all day long. Field trips in the fall to harvest sweet potatoes (oimo hori) are a common activity in kindergarten, and I still remember our children getting on a bus, and coming back hours later, covered in dirt and proudly carrying their bags full of sweet potatoes fresh from the earth. I miss apple picking back home in New England terribly - it's something we did every fall with the boys before we moved here - but I am so glad they get to have this sort of experience while living here.

One spring, they even got to plant sweet potatoes at our homestay family in Gifu-ken, and they have also planted them on the garden in their kindergarten, along with many other vegetables.

The other day our homestay family sent us a wonderful package of freshly harvested sweet potatoes and chestnuts and lotus root. Plain, roasted sweet potato, or yaki imo, is the best. It is less sweet than the sweet potatoes, or yams, I grew up with. It's a beautiful golden color (you can also get purple ones these days) and the taste is reminiscent of chestnut. You can roast it at home in an oven at 400 degrees for a wonderful plain after-school snack, or, if you live here, you can purchase it from the "yaki imo" vendor who makes his rounds in the neighborhood in the fall.  I will never forget lying with my newborn daughter the day she was born and hearing the distinctive sound of the potato man in our neighborhood. Such a Japanese fall sound for me, forever linked now with the lovely memory of a peaceful birth.

In addition to plain roasted sweet potato, I like to cook it in a vegetable braise, dice it and roast it with olive oil and herbs, make caramelized sweet potato (daigaku imo), and bake sweet potato cakes. Sweet potato cakes are a wonderful way to enhance the sweetness without going overboard. Here's a photo. A recipe follows, and I'll try to post a recipe for daigaku imo too sometime in the next few days.

Japanese Sweet Potato Cakes

Sweet potatoes, about 2 medium or 400 grams 

40 grams butter (about 2-3 tablespoons), softened

70 grams sugar (about 1/3 of a cup)

One egg yolk

2 T cream

Flour

For flavoring - a splash of rum, or a generous teaspoon of vanilla essence, or cinnamon. We love vanilla.

One more egg yolk for brushing on top of the cakes before baking.

*Note: All measurements are approximate and leave much room for flexibility! I'm not much of a measurer. A few potatoes, a dollop of butter, a splash of cream - this is how I bake these and it turns out fine. These are more forgiving than other baked goods. So don't worry about this part too much and definitely don't feel you need to race out to buy a cooking scale! I happen to own one because Japanese recipes call for them. 

Directions:

Roast your sweet potatoes in the oven until they are soft, then cut in half and scoop out the insides into a bowl. If you mix in the butter right away there is no need to wait for it to soften, as the heat of the potatoes will do it for you. Mix in the egg yolk, cream, sugar, and flavoring of your choice, and mash all together with a wooden spoon until creamy. Kids love doing this part! Now add enough flour to bind it all together so that you can mold it without it losing its shape. Add flour only a little at a time, because you want the dough to remain creamy and soft. Some recipes don't even call for any flour at all but I think it is helpful. I probably added about 1/2 a cup in the end altogether.

Put your cakes on a greased cookie sheet (I usually use parchment paper instead of grease) and then brush the tops with egg yolk. Pop them in the oven at 350 for about 15-20 minutes, and enjoy! 

If you can't get Japanese sweet potato where you live, perhaps this would be good with butternut squash, pumpkin, or yams. 

What are your favorite ways to cook with fall harvest vegetables and fruits? I'd love to hear. 

Bento lunches and a giveaway

I read an article in the New York Times recently about the growing popularity of bento boxes for packing lunch. My boys had bento lunches for 3 years while they attended Japanese kindergarten. I was daunted at first but started to enjoy the process after awhile. A few rice balls (onigiri), some vegetables (sometimes frozen edamame just tucked into the lunch box and perfectly thawed by lunchtime), a small portion of fish, meat, egg or tofu (sometimes using leftovers from dinner the night before, sometimes using frozen food sold for this purpose), and then a bit of fruit for dessert. Once I got into a rhythm it wasn't all that overwhelming. Japanese mothers sometimes put a lot of effort into making bento lunches attractive for their children, but I don't think that it really involves that much more time than making a sandwich.

There are a lot of quick and easy ways to make food appealing-looking to children. Keeping portions small and having some variety and balance is important. One trick is to have small cookie cutters on hand. I have tiny flower-shaped cutters which can cut carrots into flowery shapes, and I also have these contraptions that are like paper punches, which cut nori (seaweed) into shapes to sprinkle on top of rice. However, most days call for simple and fast preparation.

We usually have rice every day for dinner, so there is often quite a bit leftover for lunch. Fried rice is really easy to make - best made with cold leftover rice - and you can throw just about anything in there that you like. In Japan it's common to flavor fried rice with ketchup, but I usually use garlic and a bit of soy sauce and sesame oil for something that tastes more Korean.

My children's kindergarten asked parents to provide a little lunch mat (preferably handmade), and then the children stacked their utensil sets and their little bento boxes on top. They also brought their own little cups to school.

Our babysitter and my dear friend often helped me out by making bento lunch for my sons, especially when Mia was a baby and mornings were hectic. Here's an adorable one she made, much to my son's delight.

Another thing that is really useful are these little picks:

We still use them all the time when serving cut fruit, etc. One or two can be easily tucked into a bento box and make lunchtime a little more fun for your little one.

One more thing that is pretty neat are rice ball molds. These help you form rice into cute little shapes that you can then decorate (if so inclined) to make little faces. I confess I didn't do this that often, but when I did have the time the kids were delighted.

The molds come in two parts. Take it apart, fill the canister with rice about halfway up:

and fit the two parts back together again to smush the rice down into the canister.

Then, take it apart again and turn the canister over. On the bottom there's a little flap you can press on to gently nudge the rice out. It should be formed in the shape of a little bear's face.

So.....big moment for me, I am going to do a giveaway of these picks and molds! I am so appreciative of all of you who come by and visit, read, subscribe, and comment, and I'd love the chance to send these out to one of you. 

All you have to do to enter this giveaway is comment on this post down below and mention what is your child's (or your) favorite thing to pack for lunch. The giveaway will last 2 weeks and end on October 11th at midnight EST, and then I will send these items to the lucky winner.  The one caveat is, that is so close to my due date, that there may be a delay in sending - but I won't forget. :-)  Good luck.

Flowery greeting card tutorial

We have a few weddings coming up, and I was prowling the web for handmade wedding congratulation card tutorials, but didn't come up with anything that particularly appealed to me. I've made cards using origami flowers before, but wanted to incorporate some sort of fabric or yarn in these cards if I could. So I came up with my own.

This is so simple to make, it hardly warrants a tutorial, but if you are interested, here's the step-by-step.

First, either purchase crocheted flowers (they are usually sold with scrapbooking supplies), or make your own. It takes about a minute or two to make them and they can be used in so many ways so it's really worth teaching yourself how to make them. A few weeks ago I posted a link to a great tutorial for crocheted flowers. Here's the link again. I made my flowers out of cotton yarn, and used a small crochet needle, so the flowers would be tight and defined.

Gather your materials - crocheted flowers, craft paper in various colors including green, craft scissors (to cut wavy or scalloped edges), blank cards, and glue.

Use the craft scissors to cut a piece of paper to use as the background.

Then cut small leaf shapes out of your green paper. 

Arrange on your background paper, and glue everything down. I find it nice for the leaves to be laid down in a somewhat random manner, and for a bit of the leaf to stick out beyond the background - but it's all up to you, of course.

That's it - a simple, but heartfelt, handmade greeting card!