Kura Cooking in September 2025

Many guests came to Kura Cooking this month.

The welcome drink was homemade ume juice with apple vinegar because the weather was still hot. Ume is good for health in hot day.

Thank you very much to the students who come every month.

For the Japanese meal, we made menu with medicinal herbs that we liked to eat during the change of seasons.

We had fried shrimp with plenty of green onion, wolfberries and walnuts, pumpkin and nori, rice flour okonomiyaki, rice cooked with white ear mushrooms and baby sardines, winter melon and dried shiitake mushroom soup, and rice flour chestnuts cake with candied chestnuts with skin as seasonal sweets.

Afternoon tea class was all chestnuts recipes-bread stuffed with a paste made of chestnut and white sweet beans, chestnut scones, and rice flour chestnuts cake.

We also had 5 new students who live in Iwakura or near Iwakura. We hope they will continue to come. One group made Nagoya meshi (tenmusu shrimp rice balls), sweet and spicy chicken wings, tofu paste, miso soup, and uiro), and the other group made baked tonkatsu, ball-shaped sushi, miso soup, tofu paste, and uiro.

From overseas, a Syrian woman who works in Japan and her colleague made Nagoya-meshi.

Four active elderly ladies who came from Australia on a luxury cruise ship. They love cooking and playing golf every week, so they were very good with their hands, ate a lot, and talked a lot. They made tempura, okonomiyaki, ball shaped sushi, miso soup, and uiro, which they had requested. On the way to the ship, they also stopped by 100-yen store to buy some kitchen goods.

An American family who came to attend their son’s graduation ceremony enjoyed making ramen and gyoza.

Thirty guests from Ireland learned how to make Japanese dishes and also learned about Japanese hospitality. We hope they noticed the Japanese hospitality at Kura cooking.

Kura Cooking in this month was really lively in both the Kura and the main house.

Kura Cooking is growing under your support. I am truly filled with gratitude.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all my dear friends who always support me.

I look forward to seeing a lot of guests in October.