Friday is Homemade Pizza Night

It has become a tradition in our family to have homemade pizza for dinner EVERY Friday night. It gives us all something to look forward to at the end of the week and even motivates Dave to try to get home from work before 7 pm! Some of our visitors have liked the pizza so much, they have asked me for the recipe, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to write a post with photos (and I'm trying out my new flash, so bear with the photos- I'm no expert here).

For the crust:

2 cups flour (if you want to use part whole wheat flour, use 1/2 c whole wheat, 1 1/2 c white)
1 TBSP yeast (1 packet)
2/3 cup warm water (90-110')
pinch sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 TBSP oil

To make the dough for the crust, put the yeast in your mixing bowl with the pinch of sugar, the sugar helps activate the yeast. I run the tap water at its hottest setting until it reaches the highest temp, then I measure out my 2/3 cup, the hottest setting here usually comes out around 100'. Add the water to the bowl with the yeast and let it sit about 5 min. (NOTE: IF you are using wheat flour, add the wheat flour to the bowl first, then the yeast, then the sugar, then the water. I read that the wheat flour is less stiff if you let it soak in water for a while). See my photo below of the yeast/flour - you can see it bubbling up, the yeast is activated:



Add in the rest of the flour, the oil, and the salt, mix on low until the flour is mixed in, then turn it to medium and let it knead for about 5-6 min, I once read that is the optimal kneading time. You can tell it's done, it will peel itself off the side of the bowl in a nice ball- see photo below. If it's still sticky, add a touch more flour, or if it's crumbly, a splash of water- but honestly, with this recipe, I've always had it come out perfect everytime.



While the dough is kneading, I cut up one onion and saute it in about 1 TBSP olive oil. I add a pinch of salt and pepper to this, and then I use my Garlic slicer and add about 6 cloves of garlic. I saute it over medium until the onions are translucent, when they are done, we add them to our sauce. Here is what they should look like when finished cooking:



When they are done, you can add them to the sauce, we use Contadina tomato sauce, it's thin and plain, so it's easy to customize it with seasonings to your own taste. I sometimes saute them in the morning while the kids are playing and refrigerate them for later.

Put the dough in a greased bowl, cover it with a cloth and let it rise about 1.5 hours. I usually sit it on the stove top with the oven at 200', the heat helps the dough rise. There is a new yeast by Fleischmann's, especially for pizza crust, where you don't need to let the dough rise, it is very nice, but hard to find in the Northeast of the USA.
This is the dough when it is doubled in size:



Punch down the dough and pick off balls to roll out for your crust, this recipe can make 1 medium and 1 small thin crust or 1 large thick crust pizza. We are used to Massachusetts thin crust, so we opt for the 2 pizzas. Lately, I've been doubling the recipe, making 1 large, and 4 small, so that we have extras for lunch the next day. Also, I got the kids these individual pans so they can make their own pizzas, they love it and it keeps them busy while I'm cooking. Before rolling out the dough, I use a paper towel to rub olive oil around the pizza stone. Roll out the dough, then pinch the edges of the crust for a small crisp crust.



Roll sauce around the dough, leave about 1 inch around the crust.



For cheese, we use some shredded kind that I can't read what type it is, too much kanji for me and we also use shredded mozzerella. Sometimes we add pizza seasoning from Penzey's or salt and pepper. For toppings, we either use cooked crumbled bacon or pepperoni:



Cook the pizza at 400' for about 15 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Mine's a bit burnt below, but I like it crispy.



Here are the little chefs enjoying their creations.

My Homeschooling resources

About this time last year, I sent papers to my son's school disenrolling him (is that a word?). For my own personal reasons, I no longer wanted him to continue at his current school, and with not a lot of other foreign schools in the area, the choice was obvious to homeschool him. I was a bit nervous, what if I screwed up, where would I find all the things he needed to know, etc etc. HELLO, he was only going to be in first grade and coming out of kindergarten, he could read fluently, spell great, and add and subtract, he was already beyond first grade, so I stopped worrying so much about the "things he needed to know" part of it. I was always searching online for first grade montessori information and came up with very little. If I narrowed my search to Montessori, I got a lot of the preschool stuff, but over time and with some help from his prior montessori teacher, I was able to find a wealth of information. It took me until about November or December to really figure it out. Anyways, the first year is always a learning experience, so going into my second year, I have already picked out all my topics and almost ordered all my supplies, we are ready to roll!

Here are some montessori sites that I like to look at for ideas, you can adapt preschool/kindergarten ideas, by adding more challenges to the work.

My Montessori Journey- this woman provides in depth detail and pictures about the work she presents to her class, I love her ideas!

Itty Bitty Love- great pics and ideas here too, although it's not been updated in a while, still a great resource

Montessori for Everyone- she has LOADS of downloadable (some free, some cost money) montessori cards, activities, and if you read her blog, especially in the archives, she has tons of info and articles on how to set up your classroom, montessori folders that are available, training etc.

Montessori materials- this has tons of free downloadable montessori activities and ways to make the materials on your own.

Snails Trail- this mom's blog has some terrific ideas and pictures of activities that she does with her two kids at home

Think- they post weekly challenges of using household objects to complete a building task

Playing by the book- this mom uses topics from books she reads to do activities with her kids, she does some great reviews and comparisons of books on the same topic, I used this to choose some opera books for us for next year.

Teach kids art- she has some great art project ideas

Enchanted Learning- A TON of printable activities on a HUGE amount of topics! It has a $20 annual fee, but it's worth it, I used it a lot.


Okay, so how did I come up with my topics???

First, I had subscribed to weekly reader. I LOVE weekly reader, it's a small 4 page "magazine" for kids, each month you get four issues and at the beginning of the year, they give you a calendar with the topics for each week of the school year, a lot of times, I would try to coordinate what he was reading with some activities (ex: poetry month, apple picking, presidents day). In fact, we like it so much, we're getting subscriptions for preschool, kindergarten, and grade 3 (because N reads so good, we got grade 2 this year).

Second, I found this great site with all the holidays in the year, some are wacky, but we tried to celebrate them all, it was fun, and made each day more interesting, but if you look ahead, it can help you plan what books to read (like we read about Johnny Appleseed on Jonny Appleseed's birthday), and/or to have a fun party. Under each month, there is a link for more holidays for that month, click there, there's almost one for everyday of every month!

Third, I just knew things my son liked, so I knew learning would be easier and more fun studying things he enjoyed.

Here are the topics we chose for next year:

Cars and things that move
Natural Disasters
Human Body
Antarctica
Wars
Animal Kingdom
Ocean Life
Inventions
Space (again)
Opera

Once we choose a topic, we buy a LOT of books on it, mainly non-fiction and find a few hands-on activities to go with it. In the next few days, I'll put a post up showing how we display our topic stuff, we have one shelf for all the books and the top is where we put all the hands-on activities pertaining to it.

For our materials, I mainly use one set of Montessori Manuals that I love that I bought from North American Montessori Center.

This year, I used Math I, Math II, Language Arts, Matter and Astronomy, and Physical Geography. For next year, I ordered Botany, Zoology, Cultural Geography, and the Classroom Guide. These are all from the Lower Elementary selection. I also have the blackline CD, the main thing I like is the mastery checklists because they show you what you should cover in year 1, year 2, year 3. The manuals are designed for age 6-9.

I will put a separate link on the side to the sites I bought our supplies from. I hope this helps anyone if you are ever searching to homeschool or just to have fun educational stuff to do with your kids at your house.

Malaysia trip

With Dave's crazy work hours and me busy at home with the four kids, we decided this spring, a vacation was definately in order. I called United airlines and just kept checking dates and destinations for us to use our frequent flier miles for six tickets. We were lucky to get the tickets to Malaysia because we decided to go during Golden week, which is a week long holiday here in Japan, and one of the only times Japanese people vacation, so flights can be tricky.

I had been interested in Malaysia because a neighbor of ours used to live there for four years and said it was all English speaking. She also had some nice photos and colorful artwork, so I was intrigued. Another co-worker of Dave's went there for Christmas and we took their recommendation on where to stay. It's hard to find a big room in Asia, let alone one that will allow us to stay in a room with four kids. What I envisioned of our stay at the Sheraton resort was a big tall hotel on the beach, what we got were small "villas" with four bedrooms each, spread out over a resort village. There were golf carts driving around continuously taking people to the lobby, the pool, the spa, etc. It was quite remote. While we were looking for remote, we also are used to living in a large city with lots of stuff at our fingertips.

Here we go, the kids dream, riding the Rapit train to the airport:



Here's a picture of our "villa", our room was in the front by the ocean.



Here, if you were in the jacuzzi tub, and opened the porch doors, you would see the ocean.



A picture of the workout center, treadmills overlooking the beach:



Monkeys are like the deer or squirrel of Malaysia, one of our taxi drivers told us that they put about 10,000 to 20,000 to sleep every year. It was a treat for the kids to see them running about so freely, but I was still leary.



Here are some photos of the resort grounds:





This boardwalk took us from our room to the pool/beach:



Here is the pool, complete with swim up bar:



Another view from the pool, looking out to the ocean. The back end of the pool, kind of waterfalled down into a drain, from here, it looks like it flows into the ocean:



This rock had pads you could lay on under these umbrellas for even more seclusion, the kids loved this spot:



We didn't really leave the resort because the point of the trip was to just relax, but we are always on the go, so relaxing wasn't easy. So, we ventured out a few times, once to go to Kuah town, the biggest city on the island (of course to get Starbucks)- but to go shopping and see what interesting things they sell. It was supposed to be a large modern mall and to us, it was a bit disappointing because it was a lot of run down shops, and many duty free shops, the whole island is duty free. There were cigarettes, make-up, and a lot of chocolates. It didn't inspire us enough to go back a second time. In the 7-11, we did find some funny food items:

I remember eating Cottage fries as a kid, do they even still sell them in America:





They changed the name of the japanese snack pocky to rocky, and it's even made by the same company:



Our donuts for breakfast, more like "cupcakes":



Malaysia is just north of the equator, so it's quite tropical. I have never felt such warm inviting ocean water. We chose not to go snorkeling this trip because I got nervous since the area they take you has lots of sharks, and I know they're not great white, but I knew the kids might never want to go in the ocean again if they saw sharks. We saw plenty of little fish and crabs on the tiny beach by the hotel. Here's one of the crabs, they were green, kind of strange:



Enjoying the beach:





We decided to leave the resort again to do some sight seeing and went to the Oriental Village, where there is a cable car that takes you over 700 m up. Now, I already don't really like heights or being on a ski lift, but after seeing my friend's pictures of her trip on the cable car (and her panic attack), I decided not to go on the cable car with Dave and the three boys. On the way up, a woman in the car with them panicked and she had to get out at the halfway point to go back down. Here are some photos from their trip:

In the cable car:



The cable car system:



A suspension bridge at the top to get more views, (NO THANKS!):



The view looking down from the bridge:



For our final adventure, we went to a Wildlife reserve, where we saw lots of tropical birds and some monkeys that we could feed. Here, Addison got bit by this ostrich:



And Nathaniel got attacked by this peacock, so the day was quite thrilling for the kids.



When we got in the taxi at the hotel, the driver informed us it was cheaper to pay him for four hours than to get him to drop us off and then get another taxi back, so we hired him and he essentially gave us a tour of the island and provided us with lots of information about the island. It ended up being a nice day and then he took us to another area of the island called Cenang. We had read about it and the abundance of bars and restaurants that were supposed to be on its main strip, but after our Kuah town disappointment, we were reluctant to go. He assured us it was nice, we went there and it was great!! So many restaurants to choose from, we ate at an italian one, and it was sooo good. Unfortunately, my camera was in the trunk of the cab, so I have no photos of this. All in all, that cab driver really enhanced our experience, and for the five hours he drove us around and talked to us, it only cost us a mere $45.00!!!! He told us in a year, he only sees a handful of people from the US, which I guess makes sense, since the Caribbean is much closer to get to from US. So, I thought that was neat, if we weren't living in Japan, we probably never would have vacationed in Malaysia.

On the last night of our stay, Addison touched this caterpillar on the porch and ended up with two huge welts on his arms. They are gone now, but it made me realize that next time, we should bring benadryl and bug repellent.



And yes, I did manage to get one family picture. Here we are happy and relaxed from our nice vacation:

Where do you call home?

Currently, we are on vacation in Malaysia. Who would have thought that I would ever go on a vacation to Malaysia, let alone live in Japan? Dave took three days to tell me about the job offer in Japan, and when he did, I felt nervous. When we moved here everyone kept asking us where we wanted to go on vacation and telling us where they'd been, and honestly, I was just afraid of Asia, and the only place I wanted to vacation was the US. Now, look at me, I'm in Malaysia, and even adding Thailand and Vietnam to my wishlist of vacations before we leave Japan, and I have already been to Australia, northern Japan, southern Japan, Germany, Italy, and France since moving to Japan. Oh, and now, I don't want to move from Japan, even though I came very hesitantly.

So, here we are on our vacation at a 4.5 star beach resort, even ordering room service, and I am slightly homesick for Japan. Then, I began wondering is it right to say "homesick" since when I'm in Japan, I have moments when I'm very "homesick" for America, and where is my home in America? We sold our house in NC, Dave won't get a job in MA, and we don't want to go back to IL. We are kind of like nomads, our kids lately have been saying to me that we need to pack up our house before we leave so we can keep all of our stuff. We have no intention of moving anytime soon, I guess it just comes up a lot because we know we can't live in Japan forever and we talk about where we would want to move next. It's weird to not have a sense of permanency in where we are living and I never really thought about it until recently.

There are a lot of things about Japan that make it totally frustrating for me on a daily basis, but all in all, when you go somewhere else, that is not Japan, all those little things seem to move to the back burner and you realize some important things that make it all worth it. The people in Japan are very polite and service oriented- that is something that I don't know if any other place will ever be able to top. You also never feel pressure to buy something in a shop or feel nervous when out alone. There are vending machines on every corner and convenience stores all over the place. Living in a city of over a million, almost 2 million people, with one of the world's best public transportation systems, you have so many options at your fingertips. Here, we took a cab from the airport to the resort and are limited to the resort's options. I was thinking even though we were in a hotel, we'd have others around us or at least a bunch of shops to walk to, but no, they are all cabrides away. Granted, the cab rides are not expensive, but you still have to be at the mercy of the concierge desk and where they recommend you to go.

We tried to find a grocery store yesterday, unsuccessfully, but we did find a 7-11, we must have bought 20 juice boxes, gatorades, and yogurt drinks, the guy thought we were crazy, but with resort prices for a coke falling at almost $5 a pop, we needed to have other sources for drinks for the 4 kids. We miss all the bread shops, the Mcdonald's (yes even Mcd's in Japan is good), Mr. Donut, even Pizza Hut. Here we are on vacation and all I keep thinking about is what am I going to cook when I get home? Even cooking can be a challenge in Japan because of trying to find all the ingredients, but hey being able to cook is better than not being able to cook at all. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being on vacation and not having to do dishes or laundry, but I really am homesick for Japan- probably because I've lived there long enough to know my way around and where all the things are we need to feel less homesick for our "home country".

Blueberry scones

I have a secret! My husband loves to bake! He loves to bake scones in particular. For Valentine's Day, I got him a cookbook, The America's Test Kitchen, Family Baking Book. We had some very expensive blueberries that were about to go bad ($12 for the pint) and I certainly didn't want to waste them, so I found a recipe in the cookbook for berry scones.

Here's the recipe with the adaptations that he made:

Preheat oven to 425'

8 TBSP (1 stick) butter
1 cup blueberries (their recipe called for 1 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup heavy cream (you can use whole milk)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp lemon zest
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda

1) If possible, freeze the butter before making the scones, then grate it with your cheese grater. At this point, you can stick the blueberries in the freezer until you need them, we skipped this step and used them right out of the fridge, but you can buy frozen ones at the store and use them straight out of the freezer when necessary.

2) Whisk the heavy cream (in cook's illustrated, it called for whole milk- we only had cream) and sour cream together and refrigerate until needed. Dave likes to beat them until foamy with the mixers.

3) Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, lemon zest, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. Add the grated butter and use your fingers to toss the mixture until fully coated.

4) Fold in the chilled milk mixture with a spatula until just combined and do not overmix.

5) Turn the dough out onto the counter. Knead it gently about six to eight times, until it just holds together (like a ragged ball- direct quote from the cookbook). If it is sticky, add a bit more flour.

6) Roll the dough into a 12 inch square. Fold the top towards the center, then the bottom up to meet it, then fold the sides in towards the center, so you have about a 4 inch square. Chill in the freezer for about 5 minutes.

7) Transfer the dough to a lightly floured counter and form a 12 inch square again. Sprinkle the berries on top and press them lightly into the dough with your hand. Carefully loosen the dough from the countertop and roll into a tight log. Press the seams closed.

8) Press down firmly on the log so it forms a rectangle approximately 12" by 4". Using a knife, cut the dough, using a floured knife, into 4 rectangles, and then cut each rectangle into 2 triangles.

9) Place the scones onto the cookie sheet or in your scone pan, Bake until they are light golden brown, approximately 18-25 minutes



These scones are a tie for the best ones he's ever made! I've never been disappointed with a cook's illustrated recipe! One thing he didn't do, which they recommended in the recipe was before baking, brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle on a little sugar, we felt they tasted superb even without this.

Well, that's all for about a week now, we'll be on vacation, but I'm sure I'll have some good updates when we return from our trip next week! If all goes well, I'll have read the manual on how to use my new flash and my pictures won't be so dark anymore.

Fruit and juice

A few weeks ago, Nathaniel came up with the idea to make our own orange juice. I am not sure how he came up with it, but I started laughing, because I think he thought it was revolutionary that no one had thought to make juice from an orange, but just to buy it from the store in a container.

We had a bag of 7 mikans (japanese clementines) in the fridge, next thing I know, he's got my citrus juicer (small one for cooking) and a whole mikan trying to get juice. I informed him you have to cut the orange first and that I had a bigger juicer for squeezing your own juice. See below for a repeat performance of non-cutting the orange, even when I brought out the juice press:



The next day, we set to work making the juice, with our 6 remaining mikans, we got one glass of juice that all four kids shared. They were absolutely delighted and then wanted to try making more, but experimenting with adding sugar, etc. Of course, we had no more oranges, so we didn't try that yet. This reminded me of being a kid at my nana's house with her gigantic steel juicer making orange juice. I remember we used to add sugar and some lemon juice at times and I thought "oh this is so good we could sell it and make up our own name". I even remember the name I came up with, Lemonge.

Here are some photos of us making the juice, the only thing I helped with was cutting the mikans.





Here's our glass of juice:



They then asked can we make orange grape juice? But, of course, orange juice and lemonade are about it for me as far as what I know how to make. If you go to a grocery store here in Japan, you will not find the large variety of fruit juice you find in the US, nor the quantity. Because of the small size of the refrigerators here, the containers are 1 Liter cartons. You will find your basic orange, apple, grape, and grapefruit juice. Usually there is a fruit punch, and sometimes peach, mango, banana, and blueberry juice. Let me tell you , the juice here is excellent, it tastes like you are actually eating the fruit and what you would expect, it's not too artificial. You know, there's not a large aisle here of non-refrigerated juice, there are a lot of bottles of tea and lemon-ade type drinks in the non-refrigerated section, but nothing too familiar for us.

Here is the juice aisle at our grocery store:



The reason that I think the juice is so good is because the fruit is DELICIOUS here. You will pay dearly for the fruit, but it is always good. Very rarely will we buy fruit that didn't taste good or was bad. It is handled with care and packaged with care too, check out the displays at our grocery store:

Each apple is in it's own cup:



The mangos and papayas are in there own foam cushions, you'll see apples like that too occasionally:



The sign in front is 78 yen per kiwi (80 cents each) and the one under the apple is 298 yen (roughly $3):



Yes, the watermelon is almost $30:



The strawberries are the best we've ever eaten, all carefully placed inside the container, not thrown in:



The fruit is usually only sold in season and if it's out of season, it can get extremely pricey. One time I paid $10 for 10 strawberries- you may think that is crazy, but it was the first time I'd see them in 5 months and the kids gobbled them right up. If they'll eat fruit, I'll buy it (to a certain extent). I also once paid $4 for a peach, it was the first time we'd ever seen them here and they are mouth watering. We only see peaches here for about 2 or 3 months. Here is an example of one of the most expensive pieces of fruit I've ever seen here:



I have actually seen one for $100, but didn't have my camera with me. You know you've got a true friend if they give you a melon as a gift.

Baby girl's got clothes

The baby girl is really learning how to strike a pose with all the clothes I've been making her and photographing her in. She's getting good, don't you think, she bends forward, leans to the side, puts her hands on her hips, tries to do the Japanese "V" sign, but isn't quite coordinated yet.

For these two outfits, I used my own design for the pants, basically traced her current pants, but made them much wider and added a ruffle on the bottom. Then for the top, I used the Portabellopixie Claire pattern (the bodice and sleeves of the round apron dress only), then I measured out my own skirt to make it tunic-like and added a casing on the outside for the elastic to make it more fashionable. Of course, we added a kitty patch to the front of the first top because there are patches everywhere here, I'll bring my camera along next time I go to Yuzawaya, they have hundreds of patches.





Here is the second one, same design, different fabric. I used the Snorkel Fabric by Cosmo Cricket. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this fabric!



Ready for the runway:



By the way, I know that an owl apparel for April is due, I actually have all the fabric cut out and ready to go, but of course, the dress I am making is VERY difficult and it is a European pattern, so I didn't buy enough fabric. Now, I have to wait a week for it to get here, the frustrating thing about sewing here is you can't just run to the nearest store and get the stuff you ran out of. Luckily we will be on vacation, so I won't be here biting my nails waiting for it to arrive. Here is a sneak preview of the owl fabric, hopefully the dress will be done in about 2 weeks.