Christmas dinner

A Merry Christmas to all of you!

The TV news predicted it would snow on Christmas Eve, but it didn't. It was very warm day instead. BBQ roast chicken and vegetables are now our traditional Christmas dinner. We bought a huge chicken from a farmer's market. The price was a bit expensive than the supermarket, but the taste was great. The chicken was juicy and tender.

My husband was in charge of cooking the roast chicken. I only cut the vegetables and made marinades. Oh, I forgot to tell you. I made foundant chocolate too.

Piano

Playing piano is one of my hobbies.
I started playing piano when I was 4. I suddenly decided to visit my old piano teacher. My teacher is 76 years old now. She is very well and still teaching some students. She used to have 2 Yamaha grand pianos, but she swapped one of them for a Bosendorfer grand piano which is very good quality. 　

She values the auditory training method very much. During the lesson, she would play chords. We had to name the notes and write them down quickly. It was really good aural training.

I usually play the same pieces, but I decided to try to learn some new pieces. I like Chopin, Beethoven and Morzart. Now, I am trying to play "Piano Sonata #8 In C Minor, Op. 13, "Pathétique" - 2. Adagio Cantabile". It is very difficult, but is wonderful piece.

Autumn

Here it is!!! Autumn season has come. I didn't expect the autumn colours to be nice this year. There is a drought around here. Many trees have died. However, we saw some trees like this picture and it reminds me of autumn in Japan.

There are many places famous for beautiful coloured leaves in Japan such as Nikko and Jingu mae. If you have a chance to go to Japan, I recommend to go in autumn. You would enjoy great autumn food such as matsutake mushroom and chestnut.

The leaves have been changing colours later than previous years because the climate is warming.

Madonna

I watched Madonna's concert on TV.
The concert was called "Confession on a dance floor" and was held at Wembley Stadium in 2006.
I was amazed that she wore a purple leotard and danced with young backing dancers. she didn't look like she was 49 years old. She was very sexy and had a lot of energy. I think no one can make an excuse that I am too old to be like that.... It was a good concert!

It's Carrboro

Click the title!!! You will learn all about Carrboro. I laughed when I saw it because Carrboro is a small town and I have seen some of the people in the video around town! Anyway, it is pretty funny if you have been Carrboro.
If you didn't catch all the lyrics, they are here.

ACME

I went to a restaurant called ACME with my Japanese students. It was the last lesson so we celebrated the end of term. They will go to Japan for 3 weeks! I was really lucky to have enthusiastic students and enjoyed teaching them a lot. Luckily, a new beginner group will start from next Wednesday. There are 5 students.

This restaurant, ACME, is very close to the weaver market. I ordered "Grilled ACME Kobe Burger Deluxe". The waitress asked me how well I wanted my burger cooked. Here it is!!! The hamburger was very tasty and medium rare, just the way I ordered it. There were many various items on the menu so I would like to take my husband next time and try something new.

ACME
110 E. Main St., Carrboro, NC 27510
TEL: (919)929-2263

Wonderful world

It is very cool!
Please click the title and you can see it!!!

Dumpling

I am very lazy to update my blog because nothing happened recently!
I like cooking so I would like to write about cooking.
I made dumpling today! Dumpling is called "Gyoza" in Japanese.
My mum makes １００ pcs Gyoza at a time then freezes them so it is very convenient.

You can eat either bake ( like a photo) or casserole. In winter, casserole style makes you warm!

Reunion

I used to live in London and worked as a Japanese teacher. I had an appointment to meet my friend who is also Japanese teacher in this holiday. She is still working in London. When I met her, she suggested to me to come to a sup rise party which was held by the students. My friend didn't know which students would come to the party. When we met in Piccadilly Circus and I met 2 ex students. One of my student who is sitting next to me in the photo is working in Tokyo now. He came back to London for a holiday. The parson sitting in front left in the picture was my first student. I didn't expect to meet any of my ex students during this holiday so it was quite exciting. We hadn't seen each other for few years, but we are still good friends.

Homework

I started teaching Japanese 2 months ago. My students have learnt Hiragana and they can write some sentences. They are very keen on studying Japanese so it is very easy for me to teaching them. Even if one of the students can't make a lesson because of a business trip or work, the rest of students try to explain what they learnt before the next class. They also pass on handout and homework.

Even if a student doesn't make it to the previous lesson, they try to do homework. I am very impressed that the students help each other very well so that nobody drops out.

I will take a month's holiday in July. My school asked them if they want to keep studying with another teacher while I am away, but they decided to wait and take next term when I come back.

Farmer's Market

A farmer 's Market is held every Wednesday & Saturday near my house. Today I went and bought some fresh vegetables and eggs. I bought some fresh garlic too. I discovered that garlic is now in season.

My mum makes garlic soy source. She often told me that if I make it, I should buy garlic grown in Tago, Aomori prefecture which is very expensive. ( It costs about $4 a head. ) When I was in Japan, my mum gave me some of her garlic soy source.... :-)

Anyway, I found a big, fresh head of garlic at a very reasonable price at the Farmer's Market and made my own garlic soy source. It is very useful to use for chinese, BBQ and stir fry.

I got some fresh apricots from the supermarket!!! Fresh apricots are quite difficult to find in Japan. Dried apricots are more common.
I also like fresh figs. I could get them in London, but I can't find them here.

Friendship Quilt

There is a quilt meeting on the second Monday of every month. Normally, we make something in the meeting, but this meeting was a bit different.

One of the members had an idea to make a friendship quilt for the lady in the photo above. I heard she had chemo therapy when I first joined the group. We decided that each person would make two 12 inch blocks using pink and white material.
One of my blocks called " friendship star" is on the top left corner and the other one is called "ohio star"(which is one of my favorite patterns) on the bottom right corner.

This is a rural area and people here have quite a strong sense of religion. When we have a meeting, we always pray before dinner. Even a 13 year old girl can say grace at the meal. I am surprised that such young person has learnt to pray. Japanese people don't have such strong feelings about religion - young people especially have other interests than religion.

We made a name label with a quotation from the Bible which is her favorite verse.

Big surprise

I received a beautiful flower arrangement, a box of chocolates and a message from someone. I asked the delivery man who sent it to me.
He said you should open the message!

It was from my husband's manager & his team.
"Thanks for your continued support of Tim and the late nights spent working on this customer escalation." From the team.

Anyway, the flowers are very beautiful and the chocolates look yummy... Flowers make me smile!

Japanese Teacher

I will start teaching again from tomorrow!!!
I found a language school and submitted my resume. The owner contacted me and I had an interview. She told me that the school didn't have any students at present. Anyway, she offered to let me observe a level 1 Spanish class.

It was great! The teacher spoke Spanish all the time. Of course,the students didn't understand so she translated into English a little for the first half (45min).
However, they practiced introducing themselves, reading numbers and role played. The role playing was a really good activity. The teacher gave them a paper which had 10 telephone numbers. Each student read their numbers out and the other students had to write them down.
The students concentrated on speaking and writing. I enjoyed observing and learnt a lot from the lesson. When I was in the lesson, I could see the lesson from the student's side. I have been studying Spanish by myself for a long time so the lesson was very enjoyable to me.

After that, the owner e-mailed me to say she had 4 students. She asked me if I can teach on Thursday nights. Normally, I have a Pilates lesson, but I accepted. I will teach them once a week for 6 weeks. Yes, I am always nervous before teaching a lesson.

I will teach them Japanese by direct method and I want to make the lessons enjoyable
Also, I will try to make the students speak for 80% of the lesson. ( This is quite tough, but it is possible!)

Quilt Festival

Nancy took me to the Quilt Festival near our community centre.
She told me to bring my projects so I did.
When we arrived there, there were many quilters and most projects were very big and some of them were very beautiful. I was a bit hesitant to display my baby quilt which is grand mother flower garden pattern, but I did.

This pattern is called "Bear's paw" and the bear is in the centre. It is pretty, isn't it?









They held some workshops during festival. At one of the workshops, the quilters sat around a large quilt project and were quilting it together.
They were moving their needles and talking at the same time!!! It looked fun.
The scene reminds me of the film "American Quilt". I want to be able to do that one day!

Magnolia Grill

The weather has been quite good the last few weekends.
We went to our favorite garden today. It was very crowded and many more flowers had bloomed than last time.
Everyone seemed to want to spend time in the garden :-)






We wanted to explore new restaurants and we found Magnolia Grill. It was voted one of America's top 50 restaurants and is quite close to our house.
We arrived around 6pm and the parking space was already full. We didn't reserve so we worried that we might not get in, but we were lucky. We had to sit at the bar.
The restaurant was very cozy. We could see the open kitchen and the service was quick and responsive. Many of customers looked quite fashionable.




We ordered 2 appetizers, 1 main & 2 desserts.
I ordered octopus salad with roast almond, okura, paprika.
It was well balanced and pleasing to the eye.









My husband ordered spice rubbed tuna on a rissoto salad.
The tuna was tender and lightly grilled so that the inside was still rare.





Our main was grilled Black Angus N.Y Strip in blue cheese sauce with roasted potato. It was also tender and very juicy. The sauce married perfectly with steak!!!
They served garlic focaccia and sourdough breads. I prefered to eat the garlic focaccia with the blue cheese sauce!!! It was marvellous.

Finally, we ordered desserts.
My husband ordered the double chocolate tart with roast almond and vanilla ice cream.
The double chocolate filling was very soft and not too sweet. I ordered coconut cake with pineapple compote. I like coconut, but am not a big fan of sponge cake. I prefered the chocolate tart. My husband prefers my fondant chocolate. Yes… he is very sweet. :-)
Anyway, we really enjoyed the food and this restaurant is now the best in our repertory. We like their main dishes especially and we would like to go back again sooooon !!!

Magnolia Grill
1002 Ninth Street
Durham, NC 27705
TEL 919-286-3609 (for dinner reservations)

open for dinner
1800 -- 2130 Tue - Thu
1730 -- 2200 Fri - Sat

Gardens

There is a lot of nature in NC.
We found the North Carolina Botanical Garden which is in UNC and we finally visited. It takes about 10 minutes to drive there from our house. We saw a bagpipe concert because it was St. Patrick's Day. It has a comprehensive herb garden which has 33 varieties of rosemary.



The weather was good, but very cold so I wore gloves and a hat. It has been quite warm for the last few days so the cherry trees bloomed. When the cherry blossom season comes, I feel spring has arrived.


We also went to The Sarah P. Duke Gardens which is in Duke University and takes about 30 minutes to drive to. The tulips were in bloom and there was a large variety of flowers. They had many different varieties of magnolia trees. Also, It has a Japanese garden. We really enjoyed walking through Duke garden. We want to go to these gardens once a month from now on! When I was in Tokyo, it was quite difficult to visit nature preserves.

Fondant Chocolate

Our favourite dessert is called Fondant Chocolate.
It means melting in French.

*** recipe ***
5 cup servings

• chocolate (preferably 70% cocoa) 110g
  
• unsalted butter 75g
  
• granulated sugar 80g
  
• 2 eggs
• all purpose flour 40g

1. Preheat oven to 400 deg F (200 deg C).
2. Grease 5 large muffin cups; paper muffin bake cups can also be used. Grease cups with butter sprinkle lightly with flour.　Leave them in the fridge.
3. Break the chocolate into small pieces and melt it with butter over hot water.
4. Beat the eggs with sugar and mix in the flour until white.
   
5. Gently pour the melted chocolate butter into the bowl and mix.
6. Fill each cup to 3/4.
   
7. Bake at 350 degrees for only 15 minutes; the outer part should be cooked and the inner part liquid.

Heat eacg fondant chocolate for 20 seconds in the microwave to melt centre before serving.
The Fondant Chocolate may be served hot on its own or with ice cream, custard or whipped cream.

Coconut Macaron

I made Coconut Macaron.
It is very easy cooking!!! Let's try.

*** recipe ***

• 2 egg whites
• coconut 140g
• granulated sugar 140g

1. Preheat oven to 320 deg F (160 deg C).
2. beat 2 egg whites.
3. Put the coconut and suger into the 2 and melt them over hot water.
4. Drop by teasopoonfuls onto lightly greased baking sheets.
5. Bake at 320 deg F for 20 minutes or until edges are brown. If the edge are brown, cover with foil.

• 
  

North Carolina BBQ

My friend, Nancy, took me to lunch and shopping at Costco! We went to Bullock's Bar-B-Que
which is a very famous BBQ restaurant around here. I ordered North Carolina BBQ and it was very different from normal BBQ. It is very difficult to explain, but North Carolina BBQ is eaten with special sauce. Nancy told me each district has its own sauce.



Nancy ate vegetable and bean soup.
It had a very simple taste.
People in NC like beans and corn very much.







This restaurant looks very famous.... There are many photos and I found Billy Joel's autograph on one of the pictures!!!

A Southern Season

I found nice shop by chance. The shop name is A Southern Season.
Look! they are beautiful flowers, aren't they?

I really enjoyed spending time there.
There were very nice displays of products. Also, many varieties of nice food are sold.








There was a big wine section at the back of the shop.
I don't know about wine, but it would be easy to find nice wine here. We saw some Australian wine as well.








Here is the chocolate area... You can find chocolate from all over the world. I also went to the cafe and they have a nice cappuccino.
The frothy milk was really smooth and I love it!

Scraps

My quilt friend, Nancy, told me about getting free scraps from a fabric marketing company. When she went there with her friends last time, she got 120 boxes….
So we called the company and they had 12 boxes available.
We went there at 9 am and got back around 10 am. I carried all the boxes into her house because she has back and hip problems.



When we started opening the boxes, our faces had big smiles. We seemed to be opening treasure boxes.
Of course, some scraps were very stiff or not 100% cotton, but I think we've got a lot of goodies.
We choose a lot of nice scraps and the rest of the boxes Nancy will give to her cousins and friends. Scraps make everybody happy… :-)

Recently, I have been making a scrap quilt. This pattern is called "postage stamps".
I used floral fabric which I got from Nancy's friends. I cut 2.5 cm squares and sew them together. I will quilt a design in the white boxes.
This project is going to be a big tapestry. Anyway, I've got a lot of scraps so I have make more scrap quilts !!!!

Valentine's Day

I made Fondant Chocolat for Valentine's day!
" Fondant" means "melting" in French.
I ate it at Lantern a long time ago and I really liked it so I wanted to try to make it.

Unfortunately, when I opened it, it wasn't melted . But it was good.
I want to try to make it again.

I cooked "lemon herb chicken" for dinner. I marinated the chicken with lemon, thyme, garlic and rosemary for 2 hours.
It was very delicious.

My husband bought raspberries and chocolate for me. We ate them with fandant chocolat and ice cream.

Yam Wun Sen

It was my husband birthday on 10th February. We had planned to go to our favourite restaurant "Lantern", but when we got there, it was already full and the wait was about 90 minutes so we gave up! It seems we have to book on Saturdays. Anyway, we went to "Thai Palace" instead.

It was also crowded, but we waited a bit and we finally got a table. We ordered "yam wun sen" , "curry puff" and "Bangkok duck". "Bangkok duck" was similar to "Peking duck", but "Bangkok duck" has a red curry sauce and all dishes were good. We didn't order deserts because I made cheesecake!! It was the best cheesecake I have made. We ate it with ice cream.... ummmm yummy

Coasters

公開
These coasters are hand made. My friend made the round coasters for me.
The pattern on the middle coaster is called "lemoynestar". The pattern on the two upper coasters is called "drunkard's path".

Lemon

I have a question... How many lemons do you eat a month?
We like lemons a lot. I think we eat at least 3 lemons a week so we eat a dozon lemons a month.
We use lemon with chicken, fish and salad.

I made hot lemon with honey. It is very easy to make.

*** recipe ***

• lemon 3 pcs
• honey
  

1. Wash lemons and slice.
   
2. Put lemon into a bottle.
3. Put in enough honey to cover the lemon slices.
4. Rest the mixture for a day in the fridge.
5. To make a drink, place 2 slices of lemon and 2 spoons of syrup in a glass with boiling water.
   

The egg farm

I went to the egg farm with my naighbor, Nancy. I didn't buy any eggs because I already had enough. The owner gave us 2 special eggs which were double yolkers.

The eggs were very big. I cooked cabbage soup and poured in one beaten double yolkers.

It's like spring

It has been very warm this weekend. It's about 20 degrees during the day. Many people enjoy ed lunch outdoors. Some people wore sleeveless tops making feel like summer. Also some plants are in flower. I like this weather, but I worry about global warming.

Today is a holiday called Martin Luther King Jr Day. I joined a quilt lesson from 8 to 15 and my husband worked on some house chores.

Apple cider vinegar

my skin has become very dry. I have to put on body lotion after my bath. I don't know what is wrong. Is it winter or another reason? I checked the web and it seems that the water here is different from Japan. The local water is much harder meaning it has too much calcium which dries out my skin.
Anyway, the web suggested taking "apple cider vinegar baths". So I put 200 cc into my hot bath. This made the water feel very soft and gentle. My skin is getting better. I think this works very well.