First and foremost, WE WON A CRAB!!!!!!! Yes, a crab, that you eat. And we did. Win it and eat it. Hokkaido is well known for it`s delicious shellfishes, they all seem to be sweeter from those icy cold waters. And long long ago (last fall) we took a trip out to Ikeda Chou with our friends Nat, Kelly, Manabu and Sanae. We stayed in a guest house there with an unbelievable crab feast - 4 kinds of crab (all from right off the Hokkaido coast) served 4 ways, including sashimi style. At that guest house there was a drawing. As far as I can remember Kelly won some cantaloupes, Sanae won a box of little Japanese pumpkins, and I won some soft serve ice cream. Everything was from Ikeda area, everything was beautiful and delicious. We also filled out some kind of post card for another drawing in which the winner was to get a crab. Now, I can believe in drawing slips out of a hat and winning a prize. There are witnesses. But I always kind of thought that any mail in drawing was a sham. "One lucky winner will get...." nothing right? Nobody ever wins those things. But then - we DID! We won a crab! Last Monday this box came in the mail.
And on Tuesday we feasted on this crab with Nat and Kelly. A crab feast on a Tuesday night? Surreal. As you can see, this is no blue crab. This is Tarabagani! King crab. And he was tasty. I still kind of can`t believe our luck. I highly recommend winning yourself a crab sometime.
Also, long longer ago (last summer) we grew a big garden for the first time ever. And we lined the edges of all the beds in marigolds and calendula. Both are edible flowers, both sequester nematodes in their roots, and both have lovely yellow to orange flowers. But calendula also has healing properties that you can read about with a quick google. Basically, if you`ve got a minor skin abrasion, calendula`s your bird. And one of the best ways to get that skin-healing-goodness on to your minorly abraded skin is to make a balm or salve with it. That`s just what I did and I wrote up my recipe for the Ajet Connect expat magazine and you can take a peek at it here. My article is on page 66.
When I wrote the article, I hadn`t actually made the balm yet because my petals were still infusing. So I had to skimp on the images and even pilfer a finished balm photo from the annals of the internet (the other photos on the link though are mine). But now, I can give you these, right from our kitchen.
The left two images are of the dried flower petals. Top right is chunk organic beeswax. On the bottom right is the calendula infused olive oil after 3 weeks of infusion. Directly above are all of the ingredients I used. And directly below is the finished product.
Brian is currently learning web page design, and when he`s done we`ll post a full blown tutorial with these and more photos, but for now if you`re itching to get started, check out the recipe in the Ajet connect link above. PS - I ended up putting more like 20 drops of cedar oil and 10 drops of orange oil in the mix to be able to smell them over the beeswax.
And in the much more recent past - yesterday we went back country snowboarding again, this time at Naopori, which is located on the back side of Teine mountain. It was probably the hardest climb we`ve done so far, and the most fun descent. We started out with beautiful, glowing blue skies and ended with a cold beer in a hot bath tub.
