Motchitsuki

Every New Year, Oliver's Montessori lets the kids experience eating & making mochi. Mochi is the traditional food for the Japanese New Year & is made of Japanese rice cakes pounded into paste & then molded into shape. In Japan, the ceremony when it is traditionally made is called Motchitsuki. Mochi is available year round & lots of restaurants or grocery stores have it, but I guess at the New Year it is especially popular so I was really looking forward to Oliver doing this.

Here's how he described it to me:
First my teacher mixed it all together. It was kinda like cookie dough, it smelled like cookie dough. She put it in a bowl so we could make what the gramma told us to make. (He said someones gramma came who 'really knew how to make it' & she helped them). She told us to make it into a little ball that looked like soap. Then they gave us a leaf & we put it on the leaf, then we patted it & folded it.

He was given two wrapped in leaves (what kind of leaves I don't know) & he told me 'teacher' said they were supposed to eat one & then hang the other one by the window bc it will make you strong. Now this last part I think is a complete fabrication bc it sounds pretty ridiculous. I mean, I could be wrong, but I googled it & found nothing about hanging the mochi by the window which only leaves me to believe it was a little embellishment on Oliver's part. But that's his story & he's sticking to it...

Once we got it home we were eager to try it. I have had mochi bf in restaurants but it is usually sweetened, colored & covered in some powder bc it is so ridiculously sticky you just about can't pick it up. Plus, hey, it wasn't made by my own kid! Another word on Japanese sweets, apparently they aren't as sweet as we are used to bc (as my friend Courtney relayed to me, thanks Court!) sugar was an imported commodity & hard to come by so the people were used to less sugary sweets. I have yet to google this little tidbit, so if you think I'm wrong, let me know!
The first thing I noticed about the mochi was the smell. I think it was the damp leaves it was wrapped in bc the smell was hideous. I almost had to roll the car windows down when I'd turn my head toward it. It could just be the hormones, but it was very strong. Once we got it home, Oliver peeled it out of the leaf & it looked just like a tongue! When I said this, Oliver told me his classmate had said the same thing. It was super sticky & almost impossible to peel away from the leaf. I decided it was better to leave it on there than try & pick it off completely. I must say, I was a little worried w the smell, but actually the mochi didn't smell at all. And really, it didn't taste like anything either. It was slightly sweetened but not enough to really be a sweet. And the consistency is so gooey that you really can't just dig into it. Or at least I couldn't. The best way I could describe it to all you mochi neophytes would be, it very much resembled a sticky, gummy candy that wasn't very sweet. Ha!
Anyway, here is some more mochi info or mochinfo (hehe) for you in case you wanted to know more, or hey, celebrate the Japanese New Year & make your own!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mochiwikipedia.org/wiki/Mochi

Oliver gives it a try but isn't quite sure how he feels about it. This made me laugh bc he has eaten it before, as I said, out at a restaurant. This just didn't look as appetizing. Usually it is brightly colored & covered in powder.



Mimi couldn't wait to taste it till she saw it. Then she looked like she was about to cry if I made her eat it. Of course I had a little taste too.


Also, as a side note... Tuesday thru Thursday Oliver's school provides lunch for him & every day I can't wait to ask him what he had. Most days he tells me it was something 'gross' but he isn't really complaining, more just letting me know. Some days he is very happy w the lunch but I'm always interested to hear his account of what he was given. We have taught Oliver he is not allowed to say, when he is actually eating it, that something is gross, especially if we are at a restaurant or someones house. He is to say, It's not for me. Which is both nicer & also doesn't hurt the feelings of the person who made the meal. I don't mind if he says how gross it is after we have left a place, I mean we do that, but it isn't allowed while we are there. Sometimes he'll whisper he doesn't like it or that it tastes bad, but for the most part he remembers to say, It's not for me. Today when I asked what he had for lunch, he told me he ate TONS of seaweed. I wasn't sure if he meant like, a seaweed salad, or the seaweed paper you have for like, sushi. After a few questions I figured out it was the Nori, or paper seaweed which he said he ate w just rice. When I asked what else they'd had he said, Yucky egg I didn't eat & sausage that was gross. Haha... So it sounded like a pretty typical day.