This is Kanten with Brown Sugar Syrup and Kinako. Kanten is originally made from seaweed. We often eat them in the form of jelly like this especially in summer. It has full of fibre, makes us feel full when you eat it, but it is said to be no calories. If you are careful enough how much syrup you will pour on Kanten, it can be no guilty sweets.

Kinako is made from soy beans. A few people made Kinako from Soy beans by themselves. It is very popular ingredients so you can find it in supermarket in Japan. We use Kinako not only on our traditional sweets also on muffins and biscuits. I love its nutty taste. My daughter loves Kinako Milk, literally mixture of Kinako and milk.

Kanten can be Agar, which I suppose is easy to find outside Japan. Agar is also made from seaweed, some says finished jelly is a little softer than Kanten, though.

Here is how to make Brown Sugar Syrup (Kuromitsu);
Originally came from 手作り黒みつ！ by kanaism [クックパッド] 簡単おいしいみんなのレシピが50万品.

Ingredients;

• Bworn Sugar 80g
• White Sugar 40g
• Water 100cc

1. Put all ingreadients into small source pan and simmer.
2. When brown scum appear, scoop it up. If you leave it, it will be hard lump when you store in the fridge.
3. When all sugar is melt, it’s done!

This is another recipe for Kuromitsu;
Taste of Zen / Kuromitsu.

As she had a violin lesson in the morning before school starts, I dropped her at school earlier than usual. But around the time when the school starts, my phone rung and the receptionist said she is sick so that come to school and pick her up.

I did. I found she was pale and it was crystal clear that she had struck by tummy bug.

I don’t know what it was but she told me that almost half of her classmate complained they didn’t feel well on Monday, and four of them were ascent from school yesterday.

Anyway, she looked sick for a few hours but started saying “I’m thirsty.” , which became “I’m hungry.” before lunch time, so it seems she is OK now. She had rice porridge for her lunch.

And this is what she looks after .

I made 6 Cream Caramel the day before yesterday and this photo was taken Yesterday, I only have got one left.

Who will eat the last one???

Because I am not a trained designer or painter myself, it took a long time to figure out what kind of style might suit to this software.

I think I have started to find something. But I found someone who is very good at using new software.

After I showed her some of my drawings, Little Miss Chatty drew this. Sitting down beside her, it was interesting to watch which kind of function she would use or how she drew. Does children have a kind of instinct for buttons or icons that might do fun trick to their pictures? I will let her more go, if we have a time to learn more from her.

Hangi at Clandon Park
Originally uploaded by apricot_says

The estate of Clandon Park was built by 2nd Lord Onslow and 4th Earl of Onslow was the Governor of New Zealand. He brought back the meeting house of Maori and rebuilt it on his garden. Yesterday, singers and dancers of Te Kohanga Reo O Ranana, who teaches their traditional songs, dance and tradition at London came to the Park and were having Hangi (Earth Oven) gathering. Hangi is;

an ancient New Zealand Māori method of cooking food using super heated rocks buried in the ground in a pit oven

Unfortunately, “Hangi” part of even needs a ticket so that I couldn’t see those food, but we enjoyed their songs and dance. It was really nice to listen to their lively songs under the summery sky.

Haka
Originally uploaded by apricot_says

And also we could watch that famous Haka. Little Miss Chatty enjoyed happy sound of songs sung mostly by female singers, but it seemed that those fierce Maori warriors’ performance was a bit too scary to her .

Tea
Originally uploaded by apricot_says

And we had delicious scones at the tearoom.

Dutch Garden at Clandon Park
Originally uploaded by apricot_says

We walked around the park and LMC had a greeting from a dragon fry on her hat at Dutch Garden.

Lotus flower at Dutch Garden
Originally uploaded by apricot_says

Dutch Garden
Originally uploaded by apricot_says

I didn’t what to do on Fathers day. But when I was looking for ink-jet printer iron on papers in High Street, I found ink-jet shrink plastics. They reminded me that I bought normal one before, so I asked Little Miss Chatty to draw something for her Daddy.

As this was the first time to use shrink plastic myself, I couldn’t imagine how it’s going to look like. It seems that coloured pencils for kids’ drawing are not suitable, and LMC said that the colour didn’t come out very well. So we used artistic coloured pencils. Baked on 175ºC oven(Gas mark 3). Wait until it became flat, take it out and hold it flat with something. I used the flat bottom of baking mould.

It became a bit wonky but her drawings turned out to be bright deep colours.

Do I need varnish to keep the colour? Anyway it’s going to be this year’s Fathers day present.

Tonight, I would like to cook curry. Japanese style curry. Curry is our national meal, as same as in UK. But English first introduced it, not Indian, so it was said to be English (British?) dish. Then Japanese cooks arranged it into something that suits to Japanese taste.

On India’s honour, I have to say Indians also contributed to Japanese curry culture. During Indian Independence movement, Rash Behari Bose, who was said too be the leader of Delhi conspiracy case, fled to Japan. Japan and Britain at that time had the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Treaty, so Japanese government was furious that Rash Behari Bose was in Japan, but there were some sympathizers, and one of them was Aizo Soma, the founder of Nakamura-ya, the restaurant that is famous for its curry rice. Bose hid himself at Nakamura-ya’s premises and even got married with his daughter. When Nakamura-ya opened its tearoom, Bose helped to introduce Indian style curry. We can eat that curry even now at Nakamura-ya restaurant. And the way how to cook this version had huge influence on development of Japanese style curry, as well.

That is the brief history of Curry in Japan.

If I was in Japan, I can use easy the curry roux shapes like a bar of chocolate. But they are expensive in Japanese super market thanks to weak starling pound and actually, I can make it with ingredients I can find in my kitchen. So I cooked this from scratch. It doesn’t taste fancy as the one cooked with commercial curry roux bar, but it’s nice with less fat, I think.

Here is the translation of the recipe I used;

Ingredients
½ Onion thinly sliced
Diced meat that you like (Pork, Beef, and Chicken are popular choice in Japan) 300ｇ
1 Carrot chopped into small chunks
2 to 3 Potatoes chopped into small chunks
1 tsp of chopped Garlic and gingers each
1 tbls vegetable oil

■Curry roux
30ｇButter
50ｇ Plain flour
1 tbls Curry powder
800cc Soup stock (You can make it with soup powder)
2 tbls Tomato ketchup
2 tbls Worcestershire source (Japanese one is a bit different but British one will do, too.)
1 Apple grated
½ tbls Soy source
1 tsp Salt
1 Bay leaf
Garam Masala

How to cook the roux

• Put butter and plain flour into a small pan; cook them over the low flame until it become brown, currish colour about 15 minutes, not to burn it. The colour of this mixture will determine the colour of finished curry.
• When the roux become curry colour, turn off the flame and mix curry powder, leave it cool.

That’s it for the roux. You can experiment with curry powder but you can use normal curry powders you can find in the supermarket. If you luckily have Curry Roux Bar, just skip this part, and start from the next step. When meat and vegetable were well cooked, just add the roux bar into the pan.

• Fry chopped garlic and ginger, together with onion again with low flame until they become light brown colour.
• Add diced meat and carrot. When the mead it lightly cooked, add soup stock, bay leaf and simmer.
• Pour some soup from the pan we cook vegetables and meat into the small pan of the curry roux; dissolve the roux in the soup. When thoroughly dissolved, you can add this into vegetable/meat pan and mix it.
• Add ketchup, Worcestershire source, soy source, salt, Garam masala and grated apple.
• After simmer it for 10 minutes, add potatoes and simmer 20 minutes more. When potatoes are cooked well, finish cooking.

Related readings

• The recipe is from 子供も食べれる☆ルゥから手作りカレー by あゆなな [クックパッド] 簡単おいしいみんなのレシピが50万品
• カレーライス – Wikipedia (Japanese)
• Shinjuku Nakamura-ya – The birth of Nakamura-ya curry (Japanese)
• Go Go Curry Brings Japan’s Authentic Comfort Food to NYC | Underwire | Wired.com

This is the one that spins my head turn around yesterday. I made/download Actual Size Graph Paper, and thought how to put flower motif on the bottom of cardie, which I somehow figured out from the original jumper pattern.

I placed an order for 6mm buttons at eBay.

So practically it’s still in progress but almost finished.

I don’t know this red suits her, as this is cute red as Hello Kitty’s, isn’t it?

Anyway, I am really satisfied with the outcome.

Anyway, I finished morning chore and very light lunch, I am about to start some colouring in order to realize one of my idea that obsessed me since I woke up this morning.

Unfortunately it will be the school pick up time soon, though.

I have got blood shot eyes this morning, as I was working on this tiny jumper, knit, frog, knit, frog continuously. This is from;

Basic Top Down Raglan Sweater : no circular knitting required, minimum sewing

Oh, I didn’t realise that it doesn’t need circular knitting, but I did it ;p.

It was interesting project for me not only this is my first attempt of knitting anything this tiny, but also this is my first raglan top down jumper that I have been thinking of trying so a while. So starting from small garment was a good thing and probably I would like to knit for human beings for the next winter?

I’m also amazed how Blythe look nice with very simple jumper like this. I love it.