Counting down from today, we have just 10 days until Christmas eve. That will be a special day here (partly because Christmas day is a working day in Japan, unfortunately). It seems most of what I cook these days looks like the Christmas decorations. Tonight's salad, for example, was dark green leafy stuff with baby tomatoes and red and green peppers and white Mozarella. The dessert was fresh strawberries with yogurt and honey. So, to keep a sense of balance not to look like Italian nationalists or Santa's workshop, I made chicken-vegetable stew and garlic toast--which is a great way to recycle old French bread.
Yesterday, I made ginger bread, using a great-grandmother recipe out of Germany, which includes applesauce, but modified with my sense of Asia, using fresh-grated ginger root and, instead of allspice, cardamom, cloves and more cinnamon. And instead of dark molasses, I used kuro mitsu. That's a kind of black molasses, and the flavor....well, the result was pretty good, by my standard. I will get a second opinion from my special friend and let you know. And if she likes it, I will post the recipe. If not..... well, let's see how it goes.
