The Beer Exchange

The Loper family has a pretty awesome Christmas gift giving tradition. The Beer Exchange. Each guy brings 12 random beers. Then NBA draft style, they each choose their winning "team" of 12 beers. The game has changed a bit over time. In early years, it started as a 12 beer, 3-way, gift giving extravaganza. Uncle Steve gives a dozen beers to Uncle John and other Uncle Steve. Then the Loper boys turned 21 and they realized it was going to be FAR too expensive to give 4 guys a dozen beers. Thus the new format.

Here is a picture from Beer Exchange 2007. Note the number of 12oz bottles.

In 2008, there were even fewer 12 oz bottles.

And in 2009, almost none. And trust me, they all went during the last round.

Uncle John and Uncle Steve are doing the ol' "rock, paper, scissor" to see who goes first. I actually think Uncle John has gone first for the past 3 years, but I can't say for sure. As you can see, he had luck (Mochi) on his side.

And then Mochi got drunk off the fumes.

Nijiya

Let's revisit the New Year's feast. I failed to mention that you can't buy very many of the ingredients at your neighborhood Safeway. In Seattle, we have a couple local Japanese grocery stores that sell the required amenities - Uwajimaya (lovingly called "waji's" by locals) and Maruta. You can pretty much get anything you need from these 2 places.

Unfortunately, Livermore is not an overflowing pot of rainbow soup - not a lot of Asians. Therefore, it does not behoove the city or any smart business man, to bring a Japanese supermarket to town. As a result, we drive to San Francisco. Yes, there are probably closer stores, but someone else was driving, so I wasn't going to complain.

Nijiya is located in Japantown. It has all the food you need for a proper New Year's Day feast and the world's smallest aisles. Think of a time you felt decently crowded, then add a shopping cart and quadruple the number of people....that's what it was like. And a Japanese grandma on New Year's Eve is typically on a mission....and you don't want to get in her way.

Every Asian person in a 15 miles radius was shopping there on Thursday. And there was no sort of line control either - willy nilly. Drove me nuts, but we got out with everything we needed. So if you need something from a Japanese market, and you live in Livermore....tough luck for you.

Mochi's Namesake

New Years seems like a perfect time talk about Mochi. Mochi happens to be our dog's name and whenever I tell people his name they say, "Oh, like the ice cream." Since I don't really want to go into a long explanation of why they are technically wrong, I say, "Yeah, pretty much." I guess I'm contributing to the ignorance of mankind, but it really doesn't seem like a big deal. And I guess I'm also pleased that they even know what Mochi Ice Cream is in the first place.

Ok, so what is Mochi Ice Cream? Well, you can get it at Trader Joes and it's basically ice cream inside of mochi. It comes in different flavors like vanilla, green tea, strawberry and azuki bean (the azuki bean may be the subject of another post, so for now, just go with it).

But what is mochi? It's a Japanese rice cake. In it's simplest form, it doesn't really taste like much - plain white rice. In the olden days, you made it by pounding glutinous rice into a paste/dough and then molded it into little balls with a flat bottom. Thanks to the genius of modern technology, you can now load up your mochi machine with rice and it comes out in a lovely lump of goo. Sounds delicious, I know.

Then you dump it out on a Mochiko sprinkled surface. Mochiko is like flour. It's like when you make cookies and sprinkle flour on the surface to keep the dough from sticking.

Then someone breaks off mini pieces of mochi and everyone crowds around and shapes the mini pieces into little round lumps. You have to go very fast because it's super hot and gets a little crusty as it cools.

The fruits of our labor - batch #1.

It's so good warm and right out of the machine. It's literally just a big ball of carbs. We made mochi at my aunts house last Monday in preparation for New Years. Which leads me to part 2 of this blog post.

New Years is to the Japanese like Super Bowl is to America. You make a ton of food and sit around all day and eat it. The difference, is that the Japanese food recipes are way more involved - in my opinion - and a little less heavy - no twice baked potatoes or pigs in a blanket at New Years.

The quintessential new years dish - at least it was while I was growing up - was Ozoni (pronounced OZONE-Y). It's basically soup with a piece of baked mochi in it.

I've missed New Years - Japanese style - for the past couple of years because I've always been in California. But this year, my neighbors and I decided to make a "traditional" new years spread. Which meant that I was going to make ozoni.

The soup is chicken based so I asked my aunt "can I just use chicken broth" - to which she responded with a look that said something like "not if you want it to taste any good." Ok, so off I went to make chicken broth from scratch. Then you mix in all sorts of random Japanese sauces - sake, mirin, memmi, shoyu (Japanese for Soy Sauce) and dashi. Then you add kamaboko (bright pink rimmed stuff, Japanese fish cake), daikon (radish), carrots, chicken and mizuna (Japanese parsley/spinach) to the the mix, bake a piece of mochi in the oven and you're set.

And here it is, all finished. DId I mention you are suppose to cut the daikon and carrots into little flowers? Seriously part of the recipe.

Made some for Nick and I new years and he ate it and said it was good. Either way, it's good luck. So all you suckers that didn't have any ozoni, I sure hope you keep a rabbits foot or something else in your pocket :-)

We spent the rest of the day at our neighbors, gorging ourselves with sushi, Char Siu, fried chicken - asian style, tofu, soba noodles, chawan mushi....and the list goes on.

Here, Zoe is beating up uncle Nick. He seems to be taking it well.

So there you have it. A little background on mochi and ozoni. I bet you didn't realize how much random Japanese stuff I knew. But then again, I guess it makes sense. You know, me being Japanese and all :-)

The Year in Review

What a crazy year. A quick review of the year before the end of 2009....and in no particular order....

Nick and Chris visit Argentina and Brazil to ski and visit Steve. Did I mention they were skiing in August?

Stace graduates from college, gets an internship where she actually uses her degree and then decides to go around the world for 6 months starting next Tuesday. Crazy girl.

Doing things you've never done before! Like hiking up half dome in the middle of the night and skiing double black diamonds because Chris wants to "explore."

Disney World with the Ronan sisters. Where I became addicted to pin collecting and was hit on by a 16 year old pin collector who led with the line "so, what do you collect." And a visit to Disneyland for Mom's birthday!

Nick and I complete our first half marathons - separately. Because everyone needs a cheering section.

SPORTS! Griffey's return to the M's - including a trip to spring training, Yankee Stadium and Fenway - all M's victories! Top it off with the huskies winning a few games, including a glorious victory over USC! Mochi was so excited he couldn't watch.

WEDDINGS! And the infamous green dress.

Friends coming to visit - Beth and Erik in September and Kelly in December. A typical Erik shot....if he gets a hold of your camera, you'll get at least a dozen self portraits.

And Nick proposes on our 10 year anniversary in Cabo, much to my complete surprise. So maybe I lied, I saved the best for last.

Here's to a great 2009 and a better 2010.

Sonoma and Cookies

Spent Friday in Sonoma at the Renaissance. Last year we tried out the Macarthur and I'd say that Macarthur has it - although the Renaissance was very nice, and I'm always up for some Marriott points. Nevertheless, we had a great time and enjoyed some delicious food at Cafe le Haye and some dessert at...get ready....Top That. Not to be confused with the Dublin Yogurt Store - Top This.

We had breakfast at - what appeared to be - a super divey diner. It ended up being somewhat not-so-divey, but still very delicious. Thank You Yelp! I took the opportunity to snap a few pics including a Mater truck - Cars anyone?

Then it was time for the cookie baking extravaganza of 2009. We ended up with 5 different kinds of cookies, including families of large sugar cookies. Lisa made mine...Nick already ate his.

Lamebook

You can kill some time reading this site. Some are much better than others. This was a particular favorite.

In case it's too small to read, it says:

Dayna: What does IDK mean?

Jesse: I don't know

Dayna: ...ugh! no one knows!

You can't make this stuff up.

Weekend in review

What a weekend! Nick headed back to Seattle for a roommate reunion and a little Husky football. AND Kelly Ronan made her way across the country to come and visit me and Mochi!

Needless to say, it was awesome having her here, and I encourage more of you to come and visit. I order up great weather for all visits (I've probably jinxed it now...but whatev).

We ate lots of free chocolate, did a lot of walking and even saw the Golden Gate Bridge. See, no fog and a lot of sun!

Then we visited the Walt Disney Family Museum. The man was a genius. Hands down.

So we are on our way back to BART from the museum and this was the conversation:

B: When did the game start?

K: I dunno, let me check.

K: Holy shit, we're winning!

B: What? Nick must be lovin' life.

K: We have to find a bar to watch the game at

We then proceed to visit no less than 3 bars before finding a tv showing the game. Hello?! We're in Northern California, less than 20 minutes from the Cal campus. Bears fans gave up just as early as their players. It was awesome. And the guy at the bar checking IDs asked me what I was taking to look so young. Um, last time I checked, 26 wasn't that old. But I have good genes. Better than looking 15....different story. Ask me about it sometime.

Kelly asks, "Can I marry Jake Locker." Yes, yes you can. As long as I'm invited to the wedding.

Sunday was Lander RA reunion! Nayiry is going to dental school at USF and Jenna is working at Apple being hip and cool. Glad everyone is doing well!

And FINALLY! It SNOWED in Livermore. I walk out the front door this morning to take Mochi out...and there was some weird stuff on the grill...weird.....wait....there's more of this stuff on the neighbors grill. Holy shit, it's snow. ALL over the cars and on the bushes. I went online and it said that the last appreciable snow was recorded in 1950. Yikes! Suppose to freeze tonight....

I didn't take this photo, but it shows how little snow was actually on the ground (there was a little more at my house).

Currently listening to downloaded tunes from GLEE. Love it.