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!