Learning to cook a New Year's dinner

Gabby and I were invited to Maya's house to celebrate the New Year with she and her family. Maya is one of the teachers from Sanwa high school and she is a wonderful cook. She is always bringing new and wonderful creations to school to share with the teachers here. I am very happy I was able to accept her invitation because it was a wonderfully fun night with so much food and my very own cooking lesson.

When we arrived, Gabby and I met Maya's family and enjoyed some Japanese rice crackers and fresh oranges and apples. I have always been impressed by Maya's English and I was just as impressed with her family and how well they new English and tried to speak to Gabby and I. We saw pictures from Switzerland and Guam (Maya's family loves to travel the world!).

After our snack, Gabby and I went to help Maya prepare the New Year's meal. Because Maya is such a worldly person, our New Year's meal consisted of Spanish Paella, Japanese gyoza, Italian pizza, and an American cake recipe. There were some other traditional Japanese appetizer foods of which I cannot remember the name, but they each represented a different thing for the new year. There were fish eggs and radishes, coagulated egg and black beans, among other things.

There is visual proof that I was cooking, so I would like to encourage everyone to take a look at those pictures because otherwise I doubt you will believe me! I was even wearing an apron! In the beginning Maya had me chopping everything from ginger to garlic to onions to boiled cabbage. I have never really been too great at chopping, so this was good practice. Maya's daughter Mayu helped out so much too and I can just tell she is going to inherit Maya's gift of cooking. After all the chopping, we had to make the gyoza by putting the mixture of vegetables and meat into a small round dumpling to be folded and then fried later. I have discovered that I really enjoy cooking as long as I am not alone in the kitchen and I have a recipe or directions to follow. It is kind of fun thinking that the food people are eating is a creation by you!

After the meal was prepared we sat around the heated table and just laughed and joked with Maya's family. Gabby and I looked at so many photo albums of Maya's travels over the years. She has been all over the world to Barcelona, Turkey, Brussels, Australia, Hong Kong, Guam, Greece - just to name a very few. I asked her what made her want to travel the world so much, and she said that because she is a world history teacher, she thinks it is her duty to see the world to make her a better teacher. The way Maya is a wonderful teacher and has such a happy and beautiful family who love to travel the world together, she is truly an inspiration to me! It was such a lovely family experience, and I am very happy to have gotten once since spending Christmas without my own parents and siblings.