Santa Pictures - 1986

Still the same Santa, only this year we add baby Stacey. I grudgingly sat on Santa's lap with Stace. My face would lead you to believe I'm a little constipated.

Santa Pictures - 1985

Ahh, 1985. I wasn't so scared that I needed mom, but there was no way I was going to sit on his lap.

Santa Pictures - 1984

1984, and the closest I ever got to one of those infamous "crying with Santa photos." The first time Mom appears in the photo, and the start of "the good Santa." Looking back on all the photos, we realized we had this same Santa half a dozen times. He's a very jolly looking man, and would be perfect, if not for the fake beard.

Christmas ornament from 1984. I was into Disney from the very beginning.

Santa Pictures - 1983

Taking santa pictures is a yearly tradition. Kids and parents head to their local department stores to get that coveted picture with the big man.

I was inducted into the Santa Picture Club in 1983, at the ripe age of 4 months. I guess I'm proud to say that I didn't cry. I was clearly not that excited about the situation, evidenced by my wandering eyes. But all in all, not a bad first shot.

What separates me from most other children, is that I continued to take photos with Santa until I was 24. And it was literally the forces of nature that stopped it from happening. There was so much snow last Christmas, Stace and I were physically unable to get to the mall. I think mom's ok with it, and to be honest, it really wasn't that bad. After about middle school, we really didn't care anymore. And each Christmas Mom would put ALL of them up. So it's actually really fun to see the progression. The next few posts will be the highlights of the past 24 years of Santa pictures.

And just for good measure, I'm throwing in my "Baby's first Christmas" ornament. I don't remember this Christmas at all, but I bet it was awesome.

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 :-)