New Year With Family

Although we missed having the holidays with our children, we loved sharing this special time with my brother, Dennis' family and a friend of my nephew's wife.  Unfortunately although my nephew from California came with his wife and son, my other two nephews had to work.

The supermarket lines on Tuesday were incredibly long.  For many descendents of Japanese ancestry, New Year is very, very important.

There are so many New Year traditions we somehow feel compelled to follow.

One of the New Year traditions is to put out a kadomatsu.

I got this from Wikipedia:

A kadomatsu (literally "gate pine") is a traditional Japanese decoration of the New Year placed in pairs in front of homes to welcome ancestral spirits or kami of the harvest.

Art's high school friend, Morris gave this kadomatsu to us earlier along with some mochi he and his wife had prepared themselves.

New Years Eve had the usual fireworks, but it wasn't quite as loud as previous years because of the ban against certain kinds of explosives.  It's so much more tolerable now.

My life long friend, Diane showed up with this wonderful treat.  She and mom trade food specialties every year.  Mom makes her macaroni salad and Diane gives us her cookies.  But this year she gave these orange slices as well.

Diane is an amazing cook and baker.

These orange slices are quite different from what you'd expect.

 The hollowed out oranges are filled with gelatin and orange juice.  Mom LOVED them!  We all did!

 Mom and I started cooking from early in the morning.

She wanted to be sure to prepare more of her macaroni salad as well as kinpira gobo (burdock root), lemon chicken, kamaboko (fish cake), yokan, kazunoko (fish egg thing), etc.

I was making a soba (buckwheat noodles) salad.  The noodles represent long life.

Our neighbor gave us honeyed kuromame (black beans).  She had to cook it for two days.  The kuromame represents good health for the new year.

Art and I got the table set up.

The flowers from Joan's funeral added so much beauty.

Joan's Japanese name means lily so whenever I looked at those lilies, I thought of her.

After everyone arrived, we dug into the food.  My nephew's wife had prepared nishime and ozoni which is always eaten at New Year.

We had some plum wine that my brother and his wife, Nancy had given mom.  They also brought a lot of sushi that everybody always enjoys.

There was so much dessert!  They were all fabulous.  Nancy made some sinfully delicious fudge.

But you know what mom just couldn't get enough of?  Yup.  Diane's orange jello slices.

It was a lovely New Year celebration.

I'd just like to wish you all a fabulously fun and very, very healthy new year!