Happy New Year!

Here is the Osechi, Japanese New Year food. This year I used Shingen Bento container which has three stacking layers and looks like a cocoon. 今年のおせちは信玄弁当の入れ物に詰めました。3重にかさなって繭のようにも見えます。
The first layer has small fish+walnuts, konbu seaweed rolled stewed herring, layered radish and smoke salmon, herring cod, and miso marinated egg yolk.　一番目は田づくりとくるみ、にしんの昆布巻き、かぶとサーモンの重ね酢の物、数の子、黄身の味噌漬け。

The second layer has mashed sweet potato (green part has some macha green tea), fish cake, shrimp, miso marinated snapper, burdock+sesame. 2番目は芋金とん（緑の部分は抹茶入り）、なると巻き、海老、鯛の味噌漬け、たたきごぼう。

The Third layer has bonita broth soup with lotus root, shrimp, shiitake mushroom, carrot, snapper, mochi(rice cake), Mizuna green. 3番目はお雑煮。蓮根、海老、椎茸、にんじん、鯛、おもち、水菜がはいっています。

Made another box, stewed chicken and veggie. The one in a small bowl is called Namasu which is daikon and carrot marinated in vinegar. Japanese recipe has dried persimmon in this but I didn't have any so used Allyson's fig jam instead because these two fruits has similar taste and it worked!
お重箱にはがめ煮と柿なますならぬ、干しイチジクなます。干し柿がなかったのでAllysonのイチジクジャムを使いました。おいしかった。きっと干し柿と干しいちじくに共通の甘さがあるからね。

It was a lot of work to make these but was fun to do it. Steven loves Osechi and it is chance to try my cooking ability :) so I will do next year as long as we are home.
時間がかかったけど、作るのは楽しい。それにStevenがおせち大好きだし、自分がどれだけ作れるか試すためにも来年も作りますよ。家にいればね。

By the way....The dinner Steven made last night was Chicken w/Madeira wine sauce an green beans. The meat was soft and juicy and the bacon added smoky flavor to the green beans. Delicious! Thank you, hooney!
ところで昨日、Stevenが作ってくれたのはマデイラ酒ソースのチキンとグリーンビーンズ。チキンはやわらかくジューシー、グリーンビーンズのベーコンがスモーキーでおいしかった。ありがとう!


Celebrated the new year with the cheese cake I had frozen since Christmas.
年越しそばならぬ、年越しチーズケーキ。クリスマスに冷凍したものにフルーツをかざりました。