Some recent-ish pictures

I've been neglecting this blog lately (poor blog), so here's some stuff I've been up to since my last post.

I've made a lot of delicious stuff at my cooking class. I cannot remember for the life of me what these things below were called, but they were kind of like ice cream, and we made chocolate and passion fruit flavored ones.


This is dorayaki. It's kind of like two pancakes, sandwiched around sweet bean paste filling. You can buy them at all the conbinis.


And this is the banana coconut tart I made just this Tuesday. It's delicious.


The only downside to my cooking class is that I end up bringing home a ton of dessert that I have to eat all by myself. :/

I've gotten pretty bad at remembering to take pictures of my ikebana arrangements, but here's some I don't think I've posted yet.



The weather is starting to cool down over here, so pretty soon flower prices are going to start to go up. :(

And I also took a couple trips last month, which I'll be posting photos of soon. Promise!

Cooking Class

Recently, a lady in my office invited me to join a cooking class with her. Normally that isn't something I'd be interested in, but I'm trying to be open to new things while in Japan, so I said sure, and it's been a lot of fun. Our first class was last month, and we made chox a la creme, a French pastry that's popular over here. Yesterday was our second class, and we made a more traditional Japanese dessert.

This is mizuyoukan. I had always seen it at grocery and convenience stores, but never knew what it was called. This is a pretty common occurrence for me in Japan; I eat a lot of things without knowing what they're called or what they're made of.

Mizuyoukan, as it turns out, is made mostly of water, sugar, and red bean paste. You boil it all in a pan, ice it down, and then freeze it like jello. It's a nice summer sweet, and the red bean paste makes a very unique flavor--at least, I'd never eaten anything like it before coming to Japan.

The sensei owns a bakery in town, and we'll be going there next month to make ice cream.