Shortcuts through rice fields: mochi... and a little about snow huts.

I just wanted to share a video of the making of one of my favorite Japanese foods: mochi. Mochi are rice cakes and they are delicious. They can be prepared in a variety of ways including just coating the mochi in flavor powder, pour soy sauce over the mochi, grilling the mochi with nori, or putting mochi in soup. All are delicious. Mochi can be sweet or not sweet, depending on your preference. Today, I grilled mochi in my frying pan and then coated it with chocolate frosting. I am sure that has never been done before, but it sure was delicious!

In the video, mochi is being made! They literally started with freshly made rice (it was still steaming when the put it into the wooden thing... clearly I am informed here as far as terminology), and then just pounded it until it was more doughy. Then they made small mochi and coated them in either kinako powder (soybean flour... slightly sweet) or goma (I think black sesame seeds? sorta sweet and salty at the same time). This time I did not get to try swinging the hammer, but back in December at a different event, I did get to give it a go. It is harder than it looks! better than being the lady who has to readjust the dough after each hit, though. Abunai, yo!

here is the finished product! The black one is goma, and the other is kinako. Both were delicious, and still warm!

Oh, these pictures are from the kamakura summit! A kamakura is a snow hut (see picture below)! There will be a kamakura festival on Feb 13-14 so I will report back then probably with more pictures. The summit was to celebrate the fact that there is a festival, so while we did get to make some snow huts and go inside them, that was not really the focus of the day. We (Alaina, Kim, and I) did manage to get some free food out of the day, however. mochi, soup, onigiri and a butadon (pork and rice bowl) so it was certainly worth going. I also got scolded by cops for being on my cellphone while driving, too. Oops. I was lost and Alaina was talking me through where to go. Me being my somewhat snide self thought about telling them to worry less about the gaijin and more about the native bad driving, but instead I bowed and said "I am so sorry, it won't happen again."