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 Sun Jan 01, 2006 « recent »
* Inkygirl *
Filk FAQ
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 Happy New Year, everyone! Jeff and I spent New Year's Eve with my sister and her family. This afternoon I'm going back over for mochi-making. Mochi are sticky rice cakes and are a traditional Japanese New Year's food. I still remember helping with the mochi-making when I was a small child. In the Japanese mochi-pounding ceremony in Japan (mochitsuki), polished glutinous rice is soaked overnight and then cooked. The cooked rice is then pounded with wooden mallets and then formed into various shapes. In our family, my grandfather used to make patties from rice flour and water, cook the patties in a big pot filled with boiling water, then pound the cooked mixture with a wooden mallet. After a few years, he switched to a more convenient method: A wooden cutting board with a hole drilled in the centre was placed on top of the pot, then Grandpa would stick an electric drill through the hole. The drill had a paint mixer attachment on the end (it was ONLY used for mochi-making) for stirring the heavy rice mixture.
Because the heavy mixture would cause the drill to move around, it was the job of us kids to hold the wooden board in place. My mom and my grandmother would spread the smooth rice paste in steaming rectangular slabs on wax paper. After it cooled, the slab was cut up into squares. The mochi could be eaten in a variety of ways. Sometimes bits of mochi were thrown into a boiling Japanese, other people deep-fry it. My favourite was when Mom toasted the mochi in a frying pan until it puffed up, crunchy-brown at the edges...then we'd dip the hot pieces into a mixture of sugar and soy sauce before eating it. Sometimes we'd wrap it in toasted nori first.
Mmmm...can't wait to have some later today! My grandparents and my mom are no longer around, but my father has continued the tradition. You can get wrapped pre-made mochi squares in specialty Japanese food stores, but I like the fresh stuff much better. Not particularly low-fat, as you might guess, which is another reason I try to limit my mochi-binging to only a few times a year. The photos today are from my first experiments with fabric paint on the weekend. I bought a bunch of colours at the Loomis Art Store Boxing Day sale and tried them out on a denim square and a t-shirt. After the paint was dry on the square, I ironed the fabric on the reverse side for five minutes to set the paint, then machine-washed the square in cold water. Looks like the paints survived my test, so I added a few beads to add interest and I'll donate it to the GAfilk Interfilk quilt; Margaret Middleton has kindly offered to help me add the finishing touches (cutting it to the right size, adding cotton batting and backing, etc.) at the convention. The t-shirt (see top photo) was my second experiment with fabric paints; I still haven't decided what to put on the back. I'll probably add some beads to this as well. "Will Write For Chocolate", of course, refers to my new comic strip. One year ago, I asked people where they were at midnight. Three years ago, I reminisced about New Year's traditions. Four years ago, I was sick. Jeff and Parki kept me company on New Year's Eve. Six years ago, I talked about what I did on the last day of the millennium. Seven years ago, I was going to be interviewed by Sympatico Netlife magazine and a radio show called Moneyroom. Eight years ago, I wanted to see Titanic. 
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