Japanese tea party?

Yesterday mel bought me the Japanese cook book that I've been eyeing. Yay! (For those who are interested, Borders has it at $20 cos it's soft-cover. The MPH one i hard cover and a whopping $33!!!)

I spent the evening reading the first two chapters. Hee... I LOVE IT! Lots of cool but simple recipes for the basic Japanese meals, like Japanese omelette, carrot-tofu, teriyaki chicken etc... and all the recipes are totally from scratch - so not like you use teriyaki sauce from the supermarket - everything from the raw ground-level ingredients.

i'm looking forward to spending an afternoon at the nearest japanese supermarket (actually, cold storage might do just as well, according to my mum) getting the basic starter stuff, like bonito (seaweed) flakes, mirin, sake, dashi and rapeseed (i've never heard of this!) oil.

maybe when we move into our rental home, i can have a japanese party for some friends and try out the recipes in the book, and be hostess in my pretty purply yukata (summer kimono). =D ooh, that would be fun...



More on yukata:

A yukata is a cooling garment to wear. Like other forms of clothing based on traditional Japanese garments, it is made with straight seams and wide sleeves. Unlike formal kimono, yukata are typically made of cotton rather than silk or synthetic fabric, and they are unlined.

Traditionally yukata were mostly made of indigo-dyed cotton but today a wide variety of colors and designs is available. Like the more formal kimono, the general rule is the younger the person, the brighter the color and bolder the pattern. A child might wear a multicolored print and a young woman, a floral print, while an older woman would confine herself to a traditional dark blue with geometric patterns. Since the late 1990s, yukata have experienced a bit of a revival, and many young women now wear them in summer in personally distinctive ways not limited by tradition.This garment is very traditional.

This is a picture of a young woman in yukata in Kyoto, Japan. My kimono looks a little bit like her's, but darker and purpler.