Monday, November 05, 2007

foodie kind of weekend

On Saturday, we got together with my host family, their children and their children's children. I've written about my host-mom and a little about my host family here. With everyone's busy schedules, we were finally able to get together. Boy was it loud! 4 kids running around, mostly laughing and sometimes crying. My host-mom, who loves to cook, cooked up a storm! We had lots of good food and though it was hard for the adults to sit and chat because of all the running around, we still had a nice time.

Here's a little peek at the goodies we received from my host-brother, host-sister & host-mom.

From my host-brother--A moist cake called kuromame king made by Morinaka. Inside is a whole chestnut and the top are plump sweetened black beans. The cake is similar to a moist pound cake. This cake won the Monde selection for 2007. Monde selection is a Belgian award given to foods and beverages with International quality around the world. The Japanese really line up for stuff like this.

From my host-sister--Assorted cookies from Alsace. These cookies were very crisp and delicious.

From my host-mom--an assortment of sweets from Konigs Krone. These cakes were very moist and not too sweet.

Sunday was spent watching a recently released movie and just hanging out. I also picked some of our strawberries they are a little bit bigger than the first time and still very sweet.

For part of our dinner, I roasted 2 cloves of garlic then whizzed them in the food processor, added about 200g of cream cheese, some parsley and pepper. It tasted really good on Ritz crackers and toasted French bread.

This cup was so cute, it was the utensil and napkin holder at a little cafe we had breakfast at before the movie. When you turned it around it had "Bon Jour, cava?" written on it which I think meant "Good day, how are you?"

Hope you have a nice week.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! It all looks so good.

I enjoyed reading about your host mother. I wish I'd heard about the exchange program when I was at UH. That would have been so much fun. I went on a summer exchange to Japan in high school and also had a wonderful host family and very patient and kind host mom.

I'm curious who the teacher was that discouraged you. I took four years of Japanese and there was one teacher who was so unpleasant.

K and S said...

Thanks Myra. The exchange program was the best year of my life! The teacher was Mrs Yamamoto (I think), she was quite well-known to discourage students. I actually saw her once in Waikiki and was tempted to talk to her, in Japanese of course :)

Take care!
Kat

Rowena said...

Full on yum-o-licious stuff Kat. Even the previous post on the cheese cakes. Pink peppercorn? Very unique, and I give you credit for trying it!

K and S said...

Thanks Rowena!

Take care.
Kat

WendyB said...

That cup is adorable. How have spammers started using word verification? Oh noes! I hadn't heard of that!

K and S said...

Hi WendyB,

The spammers actually logged in and the used the word verification and sent me spam in my comments. I was surprised by this myself.

Take care and thanks for stopping by.
Kat