Origami Mommy

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!

Gyoza (dumpling) party

Have you ever eaten homemade dumplings? When I was growing up, dumplings (called mandoo in Korean or gyoza in Japanese) were one of our favorite things to make and eat. In college and during my single years friends and relatives would often gather to make and eat fresh hot dumplings. There's nothing quite like the taste of homemade dumplings, especially when you make the wrappers yourself too.

I made dumplings with my two boys a few times when we had no toddlers underfoot, and after seeing a post on Babette Feasts, decided it was time to make them again now that our youngest has grown up a bit. Check out Babette's recipe. If you want more details on making your own homemade skins, here's a great link at La Fuji Mama (although in our house, the wrappers definitely do not turn out this uniform! Part of the fun of making these with children is letting them have fun with the dough and experiment). This makes for a great Saturday night at-home family party. The only tip I'd have is to make sure there's another adult around if you have a young child to help. My husband was out of commission with jet lag, and I got a little flustered between all the supervising and frying up, especially after I noticed that my daughter had stopped filling the wrappers and was just making little mounds of dough and piling the filling on top.  We also ran out of dough halfway through, so I'd make sure to make plenty in advance - any leftovers can just be fried as is or mixed with scallions to make scallion pancakes.

I love making homemade dumplings because you can throw just about any ingredient in the filling that you want to. This time I used nira, which is a Japanese green similar to chives, shiitake mushrooms, (dried deliver more potent flavor than fresh, but I had no dried ones on hand), grated carrots, and of course, plenty of garlic and ginger. I also added in a generous amount of chopped Chinese cabbage - you need to salt it first and squeeze it out or else it will leach water out into your dumplings when you're cooking (ugh, soggy dumplings). For flavoring I just added dashes of soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine, white pepper, and then mixed it together with the vegetables, ground meat, and corn starch.

Mix up a batch of dough (basically just flour, water and salt - knead and keep adding flour until it feels supple enough to roll out without being too sticky), set out placemats sprinkled with flour and a bunch of rolling pins, and let your children loose!

Fry in a fry pan with some oil till browned, then add a splash of water, cover quickly so they steam-cook, and then take the cover off after a minute or two so the water can evaporate.  Part of the charm of children's gyoza parties is the variety of shapes and sizes you get. Serve with salad or pickles on the side (these are simple cucumber pickles made the same way as my radish salad, with salt, rice vinegar, and sugar).

It's always fun to liven up a family meal by turning it into a party like this where the children participate in making their own creations - other things that we've done are burritos, homemade pizza, fondue, Korean barbecue, sukiyaki, yakisoba (Japanese stir-fried noodles), and ice cream sundaes. Do you and your children have any favorite dishes that you make together at the table?

Drawing inspiration from crafty tutorials

We had our last round of summer visitors, and the boys are now back in school, so I hope to be able to be more productive for the few weeks remaining in my pregnancy, but in the meantime, here are a few fun things I've made recently. Most of these were inspired by tutorials on the web and so they required very little brainpower from me (big plus). My only criteria when scouring blogland for tutorials were that they be fast, easy, and teach me a new crafting skill. I'm really in awe of all the crafty bloggers out there - so much talent and so much generosity! 

First of all, I made a tiny hairpin out of traditional Japanese fabric, chirimen.

The lovely tutorial for this can be found here at Miscellany of Me. It's very simple, really similar to the pincushion I made a few weeks ago, and could be made with just about any fabric and literally takes just a few minutes. Satisfying!

Next, I decided to tackle purses again, because I was disappointed by my last attempt at making bags without interfacing (way too floppy).  It took me this long to figure out how to find interfacing in Japan but I finally succeeded! I decided to try this tutorial for a pleated purse and it was really wonderful. I feel like I learned a lot about bagmaking from making this.

So, once I got past my fear of fusible interfacing, I decided I could apply it to other bags, and so I made a tote bag, 

and then two little pouches which stand up nicely on their own thanks to fusible interfacing on the lining.

These bags could all use a nice pressing to look polished enough for photos. I don't have time to do it right now, but I did find a nice link which tells you how to press small, fiddly pouches and bags on Nicole Millelieu's (highly addictive) bagmaking blog. I see more bagmaking in my future!

I've also tried making a few tiny toys. I tried this Calico Kitty pattern and made a small cat, along with a bag to go along with it. I didn't do a great job but it was fun to design the clothing and my daughter liked it a lot. I hope to move on to other stuffed animals after this.

And for this kitty or any of my children's dolls, I made a small pillow

which was super simple to make and based on this sweet tutorial at p.s. i quilt.

I've also been rediscovering knitting. I used to knit all the time, but stopped after I had children who kept getting tangled in all my yarn. I'm loving it again. I like the rhythm of having a knitting project handy - actually not just one, but several. One or two small ones, easily and quickly completed, another more ambitious or complicated one, all in separate bags or baskets around the house, and I can pick each one up depending on the circumstance (for instance, a simple, mindless one is perfect to work on while helping my son with his homework). This is perhaps not the most efficient way to knit (or to do any sort of crafting) but I get bored if I have only one project on my needles and then it never gets finished at all!

I completed the baby knitted slippers I was working on and also made a tiny newborn hat, which I'll also embellish with a flower if baby turns out to be a girl.

I posted the link to these slippers in my last post. There are a few nice tutorials out there for crocheting flowers to use as embellishment. Here's a particularly helpful one, at The Handmade Dress. I was making mine smaller so I used fewer triple stitches - once you learn how to make one it's easy to modify.

The hat is just a basic hat I memorized a long time ago. I kind of winged it with the measurement - I totally forget how big a newborn head is. At least knit is somewhat stretchy! I'm embarking on a few teeny sweaters next. I usually knit baby sweaters big so they'll fit for awhile, but I think there's something precious about a sweater that just fits a newborn and I think that's all I'll have time to knit, anyway.

Speaking of tiny and small, I had bits of felting yarn leftover from previous projects so I decided to try making a tiny tester bag to see what kind of gauge I'd get after felting. I might use the rest of this yarn to make more slippers, or to make more bags to carry little figures around. My children love having small bags to slip just one or two little toys in and I love encouraging them to combine handmade things with their store-bought toy play. The handle is i-cord which is amazingly simple to do.  This was fun and so fast!

I actually made one of these small bunnies, which are not only darling but also incredibly speedy, but, again, I wasn't happy with how mine turned out (hence no picture). Clearly, stuffed animals aren't my forte. But if they appeal to you, definitely check out the link on Little Cotton Rabbit!

Finally, we had a few scrapes and mishaps last week, so I made an ice pack holder as well as a lavender rice bag for aching muscles. I think these would make a nice gift for a child, or for a parent along with this beautiful little first aid kit bag I spotted at Maya Made  (and hope to make someday). I made mine very small - the rice bag is about 3 inches by 3 inches, perfect size for a child. It would be easy to make several of these in different fabric patterns and keep them handy in a basket.

I hope you enjoy checking out some of these links - I know these projects were a lot of fun for me to do. If you know of any other tutorials for fast, quick, whimsical and fun projects, do let me know!