02.22.10
Posted in Event, Japanese Gift, shinzi katoh at 3:31 pm by jflairhomestyles
We’re so excited to let you all know that we’ve been accepted to participate in the 50th annual Cherry Blossom Festival in DC this year!! The festival is the biggest Japanese festival on the East Coast and we’re very lucky to be a part of the event! Below is the detailed information about it:
Date: Saturday, 4/10/2010
Time: 11am~6pm
Place: Ginza Market Place section of the festival (Pennsylvania Ave NW between 10th & 13 1/2th Streets, and on 12th street NW, between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC).
We’ve been preparing for this festival, but now we know this is a “go”, we’re speeding up our orders for the event. We cannot offer everything from our store, but we’ll try to bring as many items as possible from our non-craft items.
We’ve found a talented Japanese lady who lives here in NC and makes amazingly beautiful bags! This is a must see!! We’ll introduce some of her items as well as other new items. We ordered new bento boxes and bags from our popular Shinzi Katoh collection from Japan, but not sure if they’ll arrive here on time as they’ll be coming via boat… If not, you can always shop from our website!
Other items are tea pots, kitchenware, home decor items. We suggest that you come early for this event as there will be tons of people! And also, if you see something, just grab them! In the past, we had many people came back to our booth after looking around and asked us “Did you already sell_____?”. Everything is first come first serve!!
See you all there!
Permalink
02.14.10
Posted in drawing at 10:56 am by jflairhomestyles
Hope everyone is having a sweet Valentine’s Day with your loved ones!
At JFlair, we promised to pick a winner from our Facebook fans today and we did! The lucky winner is…..
Vinsensia Devina
Congratulations! The winner needs to contact JFlair and we’ll provide a $25 coupon code to be used on JFlair’s website.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Permalink
02.13.10
Posted in Culture, Japan, Japanese sweets at 4:13 pm by jflairhomestyles
It’s cold, snowy, rainy…. Whatever the winter weather may be in your area, the cold air makes you want to cuddle up in a blanket at home, right? If you can get one thing to complete the coziness, what would it be? For me, it’s Oshiruko! It’s a typical Japanese dessert for winter and it’s sweet azuki (red bean) soup with mochi (rice cake). I know it sounds weird, but it’s very good! I made it again this year, and it brought back some memories from my sweet home, Japan. For mochi, you can either use regular mochi or shiratama-dango. (see “Mochie Feast” from last year’s article for mochi.) Shiratama-dango is a small mochi ball and made out of rice flour – shiratama-ko. I like Shiratama for my Oshiruko experience and here is how I make it.
(You’ll notice when reading below that I don’t provide a recipe with the exact portion of each ingredient. That’s because I’ve never followed recipes so I don’t have them…. I think experimenting with ingredients and flavors are the fun part of cooking. You may get disappointed with a first try like I always have, but I think you’ll improve your sense of curiosity that way. )
Shiratama Dango
It’s very easy to make shiratama dango. The rice flour you need to make this dango is not fine powdery flour. It’s rougher and larger texture and usually in a small 150g bag. A Japanese grocery store should have them.
Just put about a half bag (5-7 servings) of the flour into a bowl and pour water a little by little until you get a “play dough” consistency. The dough cannot be too sticky to your hands like mochi texture. If it gets like this, just add more flour to it. Once you make the dough, make a small 3/4″ ball. Press the middle with your finger to make a “belly” and make it a little flatter.
Put the dango balls into boiled water (medium heat). Once they start to float on the top, they’re ready to get scoped up. You can then eat them with anko, kinako (roasted soy bean powder and sugar mixture from “Mochi Feast”), ice cream or whatever you like.
Oshiruko Soup Base
Cook azuki beans like any other beans until they’re tender – soaking in water overnight helps to cook faster. The only additional step is to drain the water after it’s boiled to remove the bitter taste, and replace with fresh water. Don’t worry about how much water you need right now. The beans will soak up most of the water as you cook and you’ll end up adding more later.
Once the beans are done, add sugar to your liking and a little bit of salt. These are the only ingredients, so play around with your sugar until you get what you want. You cook for an hour or longer at low heat after adding the sugar so that all the water on the top gets dark and azuki color. Some people like more beans and others like more soup. If you like more of the soup part, add water and adjust your sugar. As I like seeing and tasting beans, beans occupy about 2/3 or more of my oshiruko portion.
And finally serve the oshiruko in a small bowl and add shiratamko. A cup of green tea will make your Japanese dessert experience complete!
So, what’s your comforting dessert??
Permalink
02.01.10
Posted in Japanese craft, Japanese rubber stamps, Kodomo No Kao, kawaii rubber stamps at 8:24 pm by jflairhomestyles
Sorry for the long wait!! We’re excited to let you know that our popular Japanese rubber stamps are here! A lot of our stamps got sold out quickly and we couldn’t offer many items for a while. BUT we’ve just received a whole bunch of cute stamps from Japan!! YAY!! We wouldn’t have received them until April, but thanks to the manufacturer in Japan, we got our stamps here much sooner than expected. If things get sold out again, you might have to wait for a while since it usually takes a couple of months to receive orders from Japan. So, if you see something you like, just grab them!!
Permalink
