Celebrating New Year's with mochi!

When I was a child, my family would make mochi every year to celebrate new Year's. The tradition is Japanese: In Japan, boiled sticky rice is put into a wooden container and dampened with water by one person while another person pounds it with a big wooden hammer. Here's a YouTube video I found which shows one family's tradition:



My grandfather used to mix it with an electric drill instead; the convenience more than made up for the esthetics of the tradition, I'm sure. He stuck the drill through a hole in a wooden board and down into the pot of boiled rice, and then one of us would move the wooden board around while Grandpa held the drill. We'd all help make the patties.



Next, we carefully drop the rice patties one at a time into a big pot of boiling water. When the patties float to the surface, we dump into another pot and then mix/squish the patties together.

The mixture is very thick and gooey, and this is where the pounding or drill-mixing takes place. When the goop is smooth, then we pour it onto a flat surface covered in rice flour and flatten it into long slabs.

Grandpa's gone now, but my father has taken over annual mochi-making and is teaching the tradition to my nieces.



You can prepare mochi in a wide variety of ways (boiling, frying, etc.) but my favourite is the following:

1. Slice a piece of just-cooked mochi off the still-warm slab.

2. Dip the mochi into a mixture of sugar and shoyu (soy sauce).

3. Let your taste buds rejoice.



I think you have to grow up with the stuff to like it; both Jeff and Kaarel can't stand mochi, but my sister and my nieces love it just as much as I do.

You can get dry mochi in Japanese grocery stores, but it doesn't compare with freshly-cooked homemade mochi.

Yum.

There's something comforting and life-affirming about food rituals that are passed down from one generation to the next, isn't there?

So here's a survey: other than the obvious (e.g. Thanksgiving dinner, etc.), does your family have any food-related traditions?

Thanks to Shane McEwan for sending me Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier! After enjoying Wildwood Dancing and the Sevenwaters books so much, I was drooling over Cybele's Secret, but it's not yet available in North America.

I hadn't realized that Juliet Marillier lives in Australia (she was born in New Zealand). Thanks, Shane!




Thanks also to Ryan Couldrey for the very cool ninja drawing. His comment on the back: "I'll assume there was a decided lack of NINJA over your holidays, so this will remedy that!" Ryan is the co-creator of the new webcomic, Shuriken Diaries .

Technonerdmonster

For those interested, Technonerdmonster is now available as a print. I had originally posted the link yesterday, but deviantART seemed to be having problems with their server and I had to remove the URL.

You can get a 5"x5" print for $1.95, 8x8 for $10.95, 10x10 for $12.50. Mouse pad: $9.95. Magnets: $4.95-$6.95. Coaster: $20.25 for a set of 4.

I've also added some more Menagerie creatures to my Etsy store:






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