Continuing from Day 1 in Los Angeles, we stayed in and relaxed for most of the day on Day 2. March 3 also happened to be Hinamatsuri, or Girls’ Day in Japan, and Megumi went all out to celebrate this special day!
Hinamatsuri cookies made by Megumi!
Beautiful Hinamatsuri gift basket Megumi put together for Mio for Girls’ Day! So sweet and generous of her. â¤
We woke up to an amazing breakfast prepared by Megumi.
Possibly the best breakfast potatoes I have ever had! It was surprisingly light but really satisfying.
Homemade scones… I love Megumi’s baked creations!
Refreshing fruit salad 🙂
My kind of breakfast! With a tiny hand sneaking in to grab a bite…
Megumi also got Mio this sweet toy cookie set from Melissa & Doug! Mio immediately fell in love with it. It goes perfectly with her cupcake set back home!
Estella stopped by to say goodbye!
It was great hanging out with Estella and Brent, even for a short time!
For lunch, Megumi was preparing a Hinamatsuri feast and invited a bunch of her Japanese American girlfriends, as Hinamatsuri is a celebration of girls everywhere! We were all floored by how much food she prepared, all according to the traditional dishes that are served for Hinamatsuri. Of course, she put a few of us to work to help with the food prep. 😉 I love helping Megumi cook/bake — it’s part of the fun, I learn new tips and techniques, and all the effort is rewarded with good eats!
Making ichigo daifuku with Emily and Stephanie. It was a sticky process!
The finished result! Ichigo daifuku – mochi with strawberries and red bean filling on the inside. 🙂
Chirashizushi
Pretty sakuramochi
My favorite type of mochi! Does anyone know if there’s a place you can buy sakuramochi in the DC area?
Matcha (green tea) cupcakes
Hinamatsuri desserts, including hishimochi (diamond-shaped colored rice cakes)
Nigiri, futomaki, and inarizushi
Ushiojiru, which is soup with clams. Clam shells in food are deemed the symbol of a united and peaceful couple, because a pair of clam shells fits perfectly, and no pair but the original pair can do so.
Shots of shirozake
The ladies at Hinamatsuri lunch. What a feast! Mio was napping for most of it, but there was still plenty of food for her when she woke up.
Cutiepies Mio (23 months old) and Hiroki (16 months old).
Mio dressed in her jinbei for Hinamatsuri. Here she is upon discovering a cat (behind her) by Megumi’s apartment.
We had such a wonderful time in LA! Thank you to Megumi and Daniel for being such amazing hosts and making our stay so memorable and fun.
Our time in Southern California was short but so sweet! The LA portion of our trip was over, but we still had lots of fun times ahead of us up in Northern California. Stay tuned!
I am a huge fan of macarons, and haven’t been able to get enough of them in the past few months! It’s been said that the macaron is the new cupcake, now that the cupcake craze is dying down (even I had started getting a little tired of cupcakes, despite how much I love baking and eating them!) — and I admittedly have caught macaron fever. These delicate French confections are both eye-catching as well as palate-pleasing, and biting into one of those little sandwich cookies transports me to cloud nine! I love the light-as-air shells that yield to the generous dab of ganache — smooth, rich, and creamy — perfectly complimenting each other.
The thing about macarons, though, is that they’re pretty expensive to buy in bakeries (I’ve seen them go for $2-3 each or more), but they are also finicky little devils that are really difficult to make yourself! I asked my friend Stephanie (who is a seasoned macaron-making expert) for some tips before my first attempt at making macarons, and she warned me not to get discouraged the first few times because she says it literally takes most people 4-5 times to get a decent-looking batch! Truth be told, my first few attempts were complete botches — there was always something wrong with them, whether it was a cracked or splotchy surface, lack of pieds (feet), or being flat and sticking to the baking sheet. I grew more and more disheartened with each try and put off making macarons for a while.
I decided to rise to the challenge once again this past weekend, though, especially since my friend Tarrin had bought me a lovely macaron-making book for my birthday! I followed the general directions in the book and tweaked the recipe a little to add my own flavoring, to create these almond vanilla macarons with matcha buttercream filling! I’d say this is definitely my best batch yet — the surface is smooth, domed, and glossy, the feet formed well, and they have that airy crunch that I’d been longing to recreate. I’m feeling a little more confident now, and hope to try out more variations of colors and flavors! Oh capricious macaron, I have finally tamed thee!
We got a couple surprise packages in the mail this past week! The first was from my friend Aya (from Hiroshima, now living in Saitama). We met back in 2003 when we were both in Chicago, and although we haven’t had many chances to see each other again, we still try to keep in touch. She sent us these super sweet gifts for Mio!
Green tea flavored with cherries from Lupicia. The tin was personalized with Mio’s name and birthdate — adorable!
How cute is this jinbei for Mio? It’s still a little big for her, but it may be perfect come late summer… 🙂 I can’t wait for her to wear it!
The pattern is cherry blossoms… perfect for my little Mio. ♥
We also got a package from my cousin Yuko in Arizona! We opened the little package to find these sweet contents…
A personalized bib for Mio! Super cute!!!
I put the bib on Mio to take a picture, and ended up catching her first smile on camera! She’s started showing us some smiles since a couple days ago but they’re still few and far between. So excited that she has finally started smiling for Mommy! 😀
I haven’t had much time for cooking and baking these days because of Mio, but I recently tried making this green tea-ginger marshmallow shortbread that my best friend Debbie sent me the recipe for.
The bottom layer is shortbread and you create the matcha-flavored marshmallow top layer from scratch with egg whites, sugar, honey, and gelatin. I’d never made marshmallow from scratch before so it was an exciting undertaking! I don’t have a candy thermometer like the recipe calls for, so I couldn’t be as precise as I’d hoped to be… I ended up getting a very thin layer of green tea-flavored gelatin in between the marshmallow and shortbread layers, so I may have done something wrong, but it still tasted pretty good! 🙂
The candied ginger on top gives it a nice punch, and goes really well with the green tea flavor of this delectable treat!
Some of the sweetest treats I’ve enjoyed during my pregnancy have come from my wonderful coworker and dear friend Tarrin! Throughout my pregnancy, she’s given me these gifts of various awesome handmade lollipops from mihow on Etsy. Made from real old-fashioned sugar (no corn syrup), they’re high-quality ‘pops that taste absolutely delicious!
Towards the beginning of my second trimester, when I was still feeling really queasy from morning sickness, Tarrin first introduced me to these amazing lollipops with the First Trimester lollipops, which is a mix of lemon and ginger:
These actually really helped with the nausea! I had bought boxes of Preggie Pops beforehand in hopes that they’d soothe my morning sickness, but they weren’t super helpful… so I was really excited to find a remedy that actually worked! 🙂
At the beginning of the third trimester, she got me these yummy matcha lollipops. I pretty much love matcha-flavored anything, so these went really fast!
And now that my due date is fast approaching, Tarrin just gave me these Due Date lollipops yesterday, which are wintergreen-flavored with fennel seeds. (Fennel seeds apparently help with the production of breast milk — I had no idea!) They’ll come in handy during labor, when I likely won’t be able to have any solid foods, as well as afterwards! 🙂
I’ve become a big fan of mihow’s lollipops after having the pleasure of trying all these varieties thanks to Tarrin! Dan has even snuck a couple here and there (even though they were meant for me… :P), and he’s commented on how great they are as well. I may have to order some myself and try some of the other intriguing flavors that are featured in her shop, even after I’m no longer pregnant! I love the variety of unique flavors, and the fact that some of them are geared towards helping with pregnancy woes — they make great gifts for mommies-to-be, or if you’re just a sweet-lover like me. 🙂
A sincere thank you to Tarrin for introducing me to these lollipops and repeatedly gifting them for me over the past few months! These delightful sweets and your thoughtfulness has made the more difficult aspects of pregnancy a little more bearable. ♥ You’re the best!
