Over the vacation, since I couldn’t go back to America to spend the holidays with my family, I was feeling rather homesick for Western food (which is a rather unusual state of affairs for me; I generally prefer east Asian food to Western food). As a result, I learned some new recipes to bring the West to me!

The easiest recipe to learn was Irish soda bread.

It’s not called “soda” bread because it uses, like, cola or other such soda. The “soda” is instead “baking soda”. Unlike yeast, when you leaven with soda, you don’t need to leave your dough to proof somewhere warm for four hours. Instead, you just pop it in the oven, and the heat of the oven in combination with acidic ingredients in the recipe (buttermilk, in this case) produces carbon dioxide bubbles that escape, puffing up the dough and leaving behind many small bubbles for maximum fluff. I usually make peasant bread, with is leavened with yeast. Peasant bread is the easiest, most basic bread on earth. It only has five ingredients. However, because the leavening agent is yeast, you’re left sitting around for several hours while the yeast feast and produce CO2. With soda bread, there is no wait! Granted, it uses a lot more ingredients, but because there’s no proofing stage, it’s way quicker.

Both breads have their pros and cons. However, I’ve been making lots of peasant bread in Japan anyways, so the novelty of Irish soda bread was really refreshing.

Next, I needed something to enjoy my bread with. Keeping with the Irish theme, I decided to learn a potato soup recipe.

I’ve made a variety of soups in the past, but none that required turning any of the ingredients into mush to work haha. That was definitely a new experience. Aside from the inconvenience of cooking the potatoes and then having to wait awhile for them to cool off, creaming the potatoes wasn’t difficult at all with my little blender. I shudder to think of making a larger portion of soup, but for just me my little blender sufficed. After that it was smooth sailing. Add cream, mix, warm up, and serve with a couple slices of bread!

Unfortunately, in the time between making the soda bread and making the soup, I ate all the soda bread. So pictured above is the potato soup paired with peasant bread, instead! I highly recommend both options, personally. They’re great for dipping.

雪が降り景色が変わった外へ散歩へ出かけました。

２０代の頃、長野県の白馬村という場所に一冬滞在したことがありました。

そこは冬を通して雪が無くならないまさに雪国です。

雪景色の中を散歩に出かけることがよくあったので、雪道を歩くとその時の感覚を思い出したりします。

特によく晴れた日は雪に反射した光が眩しすぎてサングラス無しでは歩けないほどでした。

普段の散歩より筋力を使うのでいい運動になるし心もリフレッシュするので、雪の散歩が大好きです。

寒い冬をしっかり乗り越えられるように体を温めしっかり勉強に身を入れていきましょう！！

今日は囲炉裏の日です。

むかし、白川郷に行ったとき泊まったお宿に大きな囲炉裏がありました。

貫禄のあるおじいさんが、たばこをかっこよく吸ってかっこよく捨てていたのが

印象的でした。その周りでこきりこ節をきいたり、ご飯を食べたりしたのですが、

親戚の家を訪ねた時のような暖かさがあったのを覚えています。

今は、非常事態宣言が出て、より人との距離が気になるところですが、早く

以前のようにみんなで楽しい時を過ごしたいものですね。

１１６のゴロでもう一つ、今日はヒーローの日でもあるようです。

コロナをやっつけてくれるヒーローが現れてくれますように！

The pandemic has taken a lot of things away from us over the past year, but live music has been the thing I personally miss the most.  Not being able to go out to eat isn’t so bad because I’ve enjoyed cooking more.  Not being able to go shopping isn’t a big deal thanks to the convenience of online stores.  Live music, however, can’t be replaced.  I know that streaming events have become popular over the past year, and while they’re great, they’re still nothing like the experience of live music in-person. 

Concerts have been a major part of my life since high school.  When I was a college student I would go to a few live events every month.  Some of my favorite memories are from shows and they’re where I met some of my best friends.  In Japan, local live houses are hands down my favorite places.  So not being able to go has been the hardest thing for me over the past year.  

Here’s a photo I took at the end of January 2020, when one of my favorite American bands (from Austin, Texas) toured Japan.  I hope that I can get back to concerts sooner rather than later.

いよいよ今週末共通テストですね。ある程度の緊張感は、いい方向に持って行ってくれるはずです。

自分の持っている力を信じて頑張ってください！　応援してます！！