Today I learned how to make and appreciate homemade crackers

Back at the beginning of the year, I read a slave narrative published in 1861, entitled “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” It is an amazing true account of the lengths this woman went to simply to have the right to own her life. It should be on the required reading list of every high school.

The main character’s grandmother, a freed woman, was an important character in the story and she mastered many trades to help support her family and earn the respect of her community. To quote a passage:

“She became an indispensable personage in the household, officiating in all capacities, from cook and wet nurse to seamstress. She was praised for her cooking; and her nice crackers became so famous in the neighborhood that many people were desirous of obtaining them. In consequence of numerous requests of this kind, she asked her mistress to bake crackers at night after all the household work was done...”

- "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" - Page 12

This woman would work herself bone-tired all day and then made crackers into the night, using the earnings to buy clothes for her children and saved back the extra with hopes to buy her children. Wow. How humbling! This woman worked so hard. I read that and thought about how much I take for granted. My freedom, my children, my right to choose what I want to do. I toss my clothes in the washing machine and press a few buttons. I place my dishes in the dishwasher and press a few buttons. I set my food in the microwave and press a few buttons. We take it for granted how easy things are for us in this country, in this generation.

The crackers were really what kind of clicked with me. I’ve never made crackers before in my life. Why would I when I can just pick them up at the store, all tidy and prepackaged in a box? But reading that passage made me think about the fact that back in the 1800s, if people wanted crackers they had to roll up their sleeves and make some. Over a fire.

I admire all those who came before us, to make things easier for us, who dared to singe off their arm hair snatching out soon-to-be-too-done batches from the toasty ovens. And today as I learn to make crackers I will do my best to appreciate the fine electric stove I will put them in, and the handy mitten-shaped potholders that will protect my tender fingers.

INGREDIENTS FOR HOMEMADE CRACKERS:

2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

2/3 cup water

1 Tbsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1 stick of butter (works better than margarine)

Step #1 - Mix ingredients

First, mix the dry ingredients.

Waybums has been particularly excited about this lesson.

My little "cracker attacker" loves everything
from Grahams to Goldfish crackers.

After the dry ingredients are mixed, add 1/3 of a cup of melted butter
and the 2/3 cup of water.

(Save back the extra from the stick butter.)

Mix these ingredients together until it forms a smooth dough...

...like this.

Now, divide the dough into two sections and cover for ten minutes

I don't know why.

In my research I read something about the flour absorbing the moisture.

Step #2 - Form the crackers

Now, put half of the dough in a square on a 17x9 cookie sheet and roll it out.

Trim the edges straight and cut into squares.

A pizza cutter works great.

Well, as great as your aim, anyway.

I did end up with a few crooked crackers, but that was operator error.

Now, poke a bunch of holes into the crackers.

This is so they don't bubble up.

It also helps when you've had a frustrating day.

Take it out on the cracker.

Go ahead, they won't judge.

Now, bake in your preheated oven for 8-14 minutes . . .

OH, WAIT!

I FORGOT AN IMPORTANT STEP!!!

Melt your remaining butter and brush it over the crackers
and then add table salt or coarse salt to taste.

Yeah. I remembered about halfway into the cooking time.
Oops.

But like I said, the crackers are pretty forgiving.

NOW put them in the oven 8-14 minutes, or until they are golden.

Not only are they way less expensive than store crackers,

they are also tastier. MoRe Tastier. Or is it MoRe TasTieST?

:)

A couple tips...

No, those aren't multigrain.

They're just the reason why you want to cook them

in the middle of the middle rack.

And since you're doing it yourself - you might as well have fun.

Giant cracker anyone?

I already (accidentally) made a giant doughnut

so I thought maybe this could be fun...

Or how about interesting shapes?

I hear Stegosaurus tastes just like chicken...

And don't forget that you can pair your crackers with other things...

Homemade cheese and homemade crackers.

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship...

Stay tuned for tomorrow's lesson...

I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned to make cheese!

I came upon today’s lesson by trying to think outside the box. And I’ve got to say that I even surprised myself a bit at this level of ambition. But that’s kind of the reason why I started this project. I wanted to stretch myself past what I already know. Since I started the blog I’ve been on the look-out for new things to learn and eager to take on challenges.

And I’ve never made cheese before.

Though, I certainly have eaten it. My husband was the one that started introducing me to new cheeses and the interesting ways they compliment various foods. Shredded Colby Jack is the most versatile cheese I use - for casseroles, potato topping, even in chili. I love Provolone and Baby Swiss when I'm making my sandwiches. I enjoy all manner of cheeses, though I prefer mild . . . and mold-free. No blue. No green. No thank you. Not that I would be above trying it, it's just that I'm not adding it to my shopping list anytime soon. And after developing a love for the various personalities of cheese, that processed "cheese product" in a box seems like such a wannabe. I KnoW it melts better than cheddar, but, let's face it -  it's an imposter - the Elvis impersonator of the food world. I also think it's pretty funny that the selling point of this product is its ability to ooze. (And, by the way, cheddar actually melts fine if you know how.) I'm not a cheese snob, but if I'm buying it for myself, those are my standards. Real cheese, no fuzz.

Lately, I’ve been buying those little circular cheeses with red wax around them. You know, the ones with the cow on the label. Waybums loves the soft cheese and begs me to let her have my “circle cheeses” instead of the boring old string cheese. So, I share, even though they are spendy and I don't get them often. I was nibbling around the edges of one last night and began to wonder about the process of making cheese. And so I looked it up, and then all the recipes for homemade soft cheese started popping up. What?? REALLY? And feeling like a domestic conquerer with my tidy-folded fitted sheet, how I could say no to such a challenge?

So here I am today, learning how to make Farmer's Cheese -

aka Fromage Blanc.

INGREDIENTS

2 quarts whole milk (pasteurized)

2 cups buttermilk

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1 1/2 tsp salt

TOOLS:

heavy-bottomed saucepan, rinsed cheesecloth,

large strainer, stockpot

~~~~~

Step #1. Heat the Milk

Turn it on low heat and warm it until it's about 180F degrees. You have to stir constantly, and it's important to have a thick-bottomed pan so that it doesn't burn on the bottom. When it reaches 180F, turn off the heat and go right to step #2.

Step #2. Add the curdling agents

Stir in the buttermilk and the vinegar. Then you just sort of stick your spoon in there and nudge it around because the curdling starts pretty quickly.

The curds are the white parts that will become cheese. The whey is the watery part that is separated from the curds. And in case you ever wondered, a tuffet is a little footstool-type children's chair with a skirt that hides its feet. (I learned that today, too. :)

Now, you let the curds and whey sit like that for ten minutes. While you wait for those minutes to pass you can set up the strainer over the stockpot like so:

Then double-layer the cheesecloth and line the strainer with it.

My own little Miss Muffet wanted to make her own little cheese,

so I let her join in on the fun.

The strainer sits above stockpot so it can catch the whey.

Step #3. You drain the moisture from the cheese

 

After the ten minutes are up, you begin to ladle the curds into the strainer.

A slotted spoon would probably work well, too.

You let the curds drip for another ten minutes like this.

Next, you pull up the edges of the cheesecloth and tie it:

I did a little squeezing to drain the whey.

One recipe I found said to tie it to a spoon

and prop the spoon over the top of the stockpot.

My stockpot had handles, so I did this instead:

Now, you let it hang there for half an hour to drain.

After that half hour is up, you can open your cheesecloth and find...

Homemade Cheese!

 

I tried a morsel of it and was surprised at the cheese texture. It was creamy and mild and a little sweet. A couple of recipes said to stir in salt at this point. I decided that I'm going to make cheese blintzes with my homemade cheese and so I skipped adding the salt. I conditioned the outside of my ball of cheese with a little olive oil and put it is a plastic baggie in the fridge. Waybums planned to simply eat her cheese and I had the notion to use popcorn salt to avoid the grainy feeling of regular salt.

 

She really liked it. :)

She asked if we could make some more.

Farmer's Cheese stores well in the fridge for about five days...

...although I doubt very much ours would ever last that long.

Off to my next learning adventure - I'll keep you posted.

Today I Learned How to Fold a Fitted Sheet

With this winter as bad as it is, I’ve had a couple of fun learning ideas that I’ve had to scrap because the weather messed up the roads or closed places I’d planned to go. (Grumble-grumble-snow-grumble.)

When it gets nicer out, I’d like to have more “field trips” like my outing to the flower shop. I’m dreaming about all the fun things I can learn when it’s warm, like canoeing or building things. And in the meantime, I sit and try to think of things to learn indoors at home. My husband, who is a full-time college student, tried to convince me tonight to learn about his homework. “Hey! You should look up everything there is to know about Teledesic satellites!” He was dashing out the door wearing a tuxedo at the time. I felt a bit like Miss Moneypenny stuck at the office while Bond, James Bond goes off to his next adventure. And just like Moneypenny, how could I say no to a handsome fellow in a tuxedo?

So, I whipped up some Google-Fu and took a gander at this Teledesic satellite system that, much like some of my previous posts, was an example of what not to do. But as I read it I realized it would make for a very dry blog that would probably read something like:

They came up with an idea to blanket the sky with satellites . . . everyone could be connected to everyone else . . . blah-blah-blah . . . really ambitious and costly . . . yadda-yadda-yadda . . . failed . . . techno-babble . . . and now people in the middle of the desert are sad because they can’t have the all-important life-skill of knowing how to Google things.

So after I looked up enough information to familiarize myself with the subject so I could help with the inevitable proofing that would come with this homework assignment, I looked up the real subject of my blog tonight:

-HOW TO FOLD A FITTED SHEET-

I have this theory that fitted sheets were originally invented as a prank to perplex people. Some person got a good chuckle filing those plans at the patent office. How many times have you been trying to fix the bed by yourself and just as you pull the corner up, the one across the way comes undone. We’ve all been there. At least until some clever person invented these.

Of course, I don’t need those because I’ve got my own personal Bond to help straighten those corners into submission. And yes, I admit to going a little more quickly so he’ll get stuck with the last corner. But he was in the military and one of the handy skills he learned in boot camp was how to make a bed. So I don’t feel bad. Except that a military-made bed requires a crowbar to break in. I think I’ll have to make him teach me how to do that. It could come in handy when I’m tucking the kids in…

Anyway, not only are they difficult to put on the bed, they're difficult to tame off the bed, as well. I'll use a fitted crib sheet to demonstrate. This is how my fitted sheets usually look when I pull them out of storage:

And actually, this might be a wee tidier than the typical wadded ball off cotton covers you'd find here. Funny - It looks to me like a penguin on its tummy sliding on a piece of ice. And no, I did not see Jesus on my homemade waffles yesterday morning, although they were heavenly.

You are going to be using your wingspan to your advantage, and so you want to make sure your sheet is horizontal like this, before you start. Shake it around to knock off any dryer fuzz and then fluff it up to loosen the wrinkles. These wrinkles are already set because of the previous couple of weeks they've been wadded into their penguin-shape.

The corners are going to become your ally.

Locate the point of the corner.

Now, poke your hand into the corner, with your finger in the very tip.

Now, nestle that corner into the one above it and repeat the process with the other side.

Now, stretch the sheet out with fingers pointed into the corners, like this:

Shake a bit and it will fall into the first fold.

This helps smooth out the edges and create corners for tidy folding.

Now, rest it on the bed like this:

Fold in the sides and tidy up the edges so they are straight.

Now, just start folding...

...until you have something that looks like this:

Ok, so I have to say this made me feel a little giddy.

I never thought a fitted sheet could look so tidy and orderly.

Something so simple, and yet I feel so accomplished. :)

Tomorrow I am going to learn how to make cheese!

That should be interesting, so . . . I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned about the colorful language of Hawaii.

My older daughter and I love “treasure hunting” at thrift stores. You find things there that you can’t find during your basic Wal-Mart/Target/K-Mart experience. There are quirky things at a thrift store - like a set of ears of corn with little shoes glued on the bottom, little hats glued on the top and big eyeballs glued on the middle. One hat had a bow - I'm assuming it was the girl corn. They were cute. . . in a weird, anthropomorphic food sort of way. Kind of made me wonder if the reason they ended up in Goodwill was because they were overpopulating their previous home with those little baby corns you find in stir-fry. I mean, why else would you give up something so fascinating?

Anyway, during our most recent trip to a second-hand kids' store we found a bright green book entitled “Na Waiho’olu’u” or “The Colors” in the Hawaiian language. My daughter was born in another country, Japan, while my husband was in the Navy and we lived overseas. She has a certain innate desire to learn about the far corners of the world and especially enjoys learning words from other languages. So when she found out what the book was, she excitedly asked if we could get it for part of our “Mommy School” lessons. And I love it when my daughter is excited to learn about the world, so we came home with our bright green book and started learning...

The Hawaiian Colors:

‘Ula’ula – Red
‘Alani-Orange
Melemele – Yellow
‘Oma’oma’o-Green
Polu – Blue
Poni-Purple
Akala-Pink
‘Ele’ele –Black
Keo’oke’o-White
‘Ahinahina-Gray
Maku’e-Brown

(You can highlight the color names with your cursor

if you have problems reading them.)

I googled “Na Waiho’olu’u” and learned there’s a children’s song about colors, that my daughter will no doubt sing on a loop until she has it memorized.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2qX9elO6XU

I think about Hawaii sometimes because it was a path that we didn’t take. My husband had the choice of being stationed in either Hawaii or Japan, and we chose Japan. But there are times when I ponder what it would have been like if we’d have made the other choice. Our home has a lot of Japanese art and influence, our lives and habits have a lot of reflections of our life there. What would be different? What would we have learned about instead? Hula skirts vs. kimonos. Aloha vs. konnichiwa. Pineapple vs. mochi. While we have no regrets whatsoever about our choice, it’s an intriguing thought to entertain the “what-might-have-beens” of those three and a half years. I blame too much Sci-Fi, with their conveniently interesting parallel universe story lines. :)

I would love to visit Hawaii someday, and I suppose you could say it's a goal since a trip to every state in the U.S. is on my Bucket List. We'll see where life takes us...

Hmm....What should I learn tomorrow?
I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned what "learn" means

It's a shorty lesson today since I put a lot of time and fun into yesterday's lesson and I still have catching up to attend to...

I decided that if I am going to have a blog about learning new things every day, I should learn the meaning of the word “learn.” It seems appropriate to know what I’m up against.

According to Merriam-Webster:
Learn (verb): to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience.

So, it would seem there are three basic methods of learning – study, instruction and experience. So . . . you read up on it, you have someone teach you, or you just jump in feet-first. Alrighty! Good to know.

I’ll keep that in mind, and I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned how to make mochi and the principle of "hana yori dango"

It will be apparent to my regular readers that one of the things I learned today was how to upgrade the design on my blog. If you popped on this afternoon you might have seen any number of the backgrounds I tried out. Barn wood with sunflowers. Antique floral. Rococo patterns. And because it’s now my job to learn things, I naturally ended up researching Rococo. It’s a French style of interior design, coming from the words rocaille (stone) and coquilles (shell), since those bits of nature are incorporated in the motif. It's also a little too busy for me.

I found the simplest one available, assembled my new banner and here we are with a new layout. I could have spent hours looking through backgrounds, but when I was looking up my mochi recipe this morning I learned a Japanese saying - “Hana yori dango” - which means, “dumplings over flowers.” It refers to the value of practical things over aesthetics. So, after fidgeting on here for way too long, I got back to rotating the laundry and picking out my mochi recipe.

What is mochi? The most definite answer I have is that mochi is an acquired taste. Or more accurately, it’s an acquired texture. The taste is subtle and sweet. And tasty, in my humble opinion. The main ingredient of mochi is glutinous rice flour, so the texture is unlike anything else I’ve ever eaten. It is somewhere between chewy and gooey. Chooey?

My husband hates mochi. The first time he ate it, he took a honkin' bite and it about glued his mouth shut. After that initial gag-inducing reaction, he hasn’t had much motivation to like it. But my mochi experience was with my dear Japanese friends who warned me to take small bites. Oh, I love it. When we lived in Japan, I’d go down to the Family Mart and buy tasty mochi goodies: Purple mochi with anko paste inside, pink mochi over sliced strawberries and cake, white mochi in little potato-starch dusted balls. *Sigh* :) Since there are no Family Marts handy here in the Midwest, I have been longing for mochi since we moved back. But no longer! I took some initiative and found an Asian food market that sells the glutinous rice flour and decided to learn how to make my beloved and weird little treat.

INGREDIENTS FOR
CHI CHI DANGO MOCHI:

1 lb. mochiko (glutinous rice flour)
2 ½ cups white sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
2 cups water
1 tsp.vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract
1 (13.5 oz.) can coconut milk
¼ tsp. red food coloring

For coating after cooked:
1 cup powdered sugar/½ cups corn starch

The recipe says that the first step is preheating the oven to 350F.

The first step I took was this:

Haha! See – I AM learning things.

After the chocolate-cake-from-scratch incident

I am now prepared.

Oh, and there’s something else I already learned but will pass along to you in an effort to be helpful. For years, I hated aluminum foil and cling wrap because they would jump out of the box at me when I tried to use them. And then last summer I found out there are tabs on the side of the box to keep the rolls in place! I sheepishly thought this was common knowledge until I mentioned it to other people, a lot of other people, who didn’t know either!

So, Internet, here is my helpful tip for the day:

It says to grease your 9x13 pan. Knowing the sticky nature of mochi, I didn't want to take any chances and so I lined it with foil first and then greased the foil. It was easier to take out later when I had to invert it, too.
Now, mix all the dry ingredients together. I learned that rice flour is very dusty, so keep that in mind when you're prepping your area. (Like hiding your camera from the rice cloud, for instance.)


Now mix your wet ingredients together. The recipe said to use red food coloring. I should have listened to the recipe. But NoOoOo. My favorite color is green, and I miss the grass. So I used green. Green is maybe not the best choice. Particularly if you are writing a blog and are trying to get people to think - "Hey, that looks kind of tasty. I might try to make that." Oh dear. When I mixed it all together I took one look and realized with dismay that it had both the color and consistency of the slime that they pour on people on Nickelodeon.

My daughter was concerned.

"Don't worry, mother."

"Maybe it won't look like this after you cook it."

Thanks, Sweetie.
Yeah. And adding more green? Not really helpful.

Anyway, I poured the batter into the pan and watched it cook. The warm, sweet rice smell wafting through the house was SO delightfully reminiscent of my old stomping grounds in Japan. I would catch those smells walking to the train station, mixed in with the jasmine blossoms and ocean air. It's amazing how smells are connected with the memory center of the brain. It completely transported me back to a happy place and time. It's nice that colors don't have a smell. Because after that lovely hour of fragrant baking, I took it out of the oven and suddenly all I could think was:

SoYLeNT GReeN is PEOPLE!!!

:/ Which is not the vibe I was really going for...

-

After I recovered from my laughing at my folly, I inverted it on the powder sugar/cornstarch powder and began slicing it up into pieces. I couldn't help but break off a few nibbles off the edge. Delight! It tastes exactly like the mochi I had in Japan...even if it doesn't look like it.

-THE FINISHED PRODUCT-

~~~~~~

So, coincidentally, I learned the true meaning of "hana yori dango" with my accidental Soylent Mochi experiment. Because although it is somewhat unusual in its appearance, it's exactly what I was hoping to find from the recipe.

~~~~~~

Now, I'm searching for the perfect recipe for my favorite

Japanese hot-out-of-the-vending-machine beverage...

Learned a lot today.

As for tomorrow...

I'll keep you posted.

Today I learned how to move mountains....of LAuNDRy.

I’ll start with this photo that was taken by my Waybums. She wanted to learn something today for the blog, too, so I taught her how to use the camera. And dinosaurs being her favorite thing in the world, I now have about 42 pictures of Momzilla from different angles in different places around the house.

~~~~~

RawR!

And since inquiring minds want to know -

here’s the progress of our “Grow A Dinosaur” project.

You know , it reminds me of a weirdly-formed Cheeto. Like when people see Jesus in their waffles... You think Jesus chuckles at the people who keep their Rorshach waffles? Does he think, "Not only did you miss out on tasty breakfast food, but that picture is actually a sea lion balancing a ball on its nose. See right there...No wait. This way it looks more like a cactus playing a banjo."

~~~~~

Where was I....?

Oh yeah.

~~~~~

Now, on to what I’ve learned today…

There are certain areas of our house that are catch-alls. My breakfast nook. The table. Basically any flat surface in our house. ..Now that I am “un-daycare-ing” the place, there are a lot of sorting projects and attempts at new order surfacing. But this morning when I was looking around, it was apparent that the worst catch-all in the house was our bedroom. Since it's a play-free zone we have a lot of stuff in there that the kids can't play with it - like Jesse's computer, uh, doodad thingies. (I feel a lesson coming on...) And the most common thing the bedroom catches? LauNDRy.

It is a busy time of year for laundry. All these extra layers and long-sleeved and long-legged everything. Just think about that – you have at least twice the laundry that you have in the summer months just because the clothes have to cover more of you, and usually in much thicker fabric. (Well, except that girl I saw in the Wal-Mart tonight. She was wearing a pair of fairly short cut-off sweatpants. They looked pretty out of place with the thick winter coat, hat, scarf, gloves and insulated boots she was wearing. That Sesame Street song popped into my head…”One of these things is not like the other one…”)

Annnyway, I have been working within an imperfect laundry system and so in order to better achieve my goal of a well-oiled laundry machine, I set out with two goals in mind. The first is to study our laundry situation and make an assessment on how to improve it. The second is to take back the bedroom so I can get some kind of system up and running.

Today I learned that our laundry has various stages, in numerous places.

-IN THE DRAWER-

It’s nice to see the clothes where they’re supposed to be stored.

-IN TRANSIT-

We enjoy regular visits at the Grandparents’ house and so we

often have clothes in suitcases, or boxes

that Nana uses to corral our stuff.

-IN A CLEAN PILE- It’s laundered and folded and ready to be put away. But that’s usually after a long evening of laundering, and Hubby has to get up early so let’s hurry up and clear the folded, sorted laundry off the bed. But you know what’s going to happen to this tidy pile at 5 a.m. when Dear Husband needs to find a pair of trousers…in the dark? The same thing that happens when Ava commandeers a blanket from the middle of the pile to construct a makeshift pagoda…they fall over and end up …

-IN A DIRTY PILE-

Here’s a pile of bedding that needs to be washed in one of our most common places to toss used laundry – in front of the closet. Yeah. Hubby shouldn’t have to climb a small mountain of laundry to get to his taekwondo gear in the morning.

-IN LIMBO-

We have far too much laundry in our mix that is too big for Little Kid, too small for Older Kid, or too summer for anyone. We just need to find a good storage place that’s not our room, or just donate the stuff that doesn’t fit anybody right now.

-IN USE-

Hi, my feet! And…

-INDECENT-

Hey! Where is the little kid that was wearing this?? Kodi?? Get back here and put your shirt on. Little streaker…

Well, once I figured out all the places and stages of the laundry I realized it was no wonder that we are constantly overwhelmed at the task. So, now the first step in laundry wrangling – reclaiming the bedroom.

Hmm...I know there’s a dresser under there somewhere.

For now, I just moved the unlaundered laundry and the limbo laundry to our Great Room so I can easily launder it or file it for storage or donation from there. There’s lots of room to sprawl out and work on that project, and I am planning on having it all done by this weekend. With that stuff out of the way, the clean laundry piles went to drawers and closets. So after the bulk of the laundry was taken out of the equation, it was just a matter of tidying things up.

My tidy room. Oh how delightful it will be to not trip over bedding and boxes of too-small clothes in the middle of the night. It’s so nice to see the top of my dresser again. It hasn’t been this tidy for a couple…few…how long ago was Christmas again?

See? The bottom of the mirror!


AND I found some interesting things while I was straighening up.

A picture of me from middle school, the battery cover to one of our remotes that had been missing this past week, deodorant that I bought and then misplaced and already replaced, a humidity meter (oops, looks like I need to refill that humidifier) and $27 in cash. Tidiness is profitable! Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that disorder will cost you. . . at least the price of a new deodorant.

Oh, and another find…
LoL! Some things shold remain lost...

Oh yeah. That’s going in a frame.

And to top it off – Waybums’ makeshift pagoda:

I had a lot of traffic on the blog today, and a few people offering to teach me new things – so thanks! The most intriguing idea that came up today was real power toys, er, tools. Like learning how to use a airnailer and tablesaw. Mwahaha! I am thinking of all the projects I could learn if I had those skills... It’s kind of hard to come up with ideas that will work with the weather right now, so I’m open to suggestions. :) No, really. Suggest away.

Tomorrow I’m going to learn how to make one of my favorite Japanese treats – Mochi! It is unlike anything else I have ever eaten and it’ll be interesting to try and make it!
I’ll keep you posted!