Do you think that you have a superpower?   I do.  It’s not amazing: I can’t shoot fireballs from my hands, or turn invisible, but I believe that I can carry anything I can lift.  I’ve never really comprehended that lifting is different than carrying.  If I can lift something off the ground how much harder could walking with it be?  Yesterday I decided that I could travel across Tokyo with a suitcase, a grip, and my hand luggage.  In total they weighed just over 40 kilograms (88 pounds; 6 stone 4).

Now you may be reading this and thinking, “I could easily carry that”.  But I’m just under 5 foot 2, female, and not a weight lifter.  Of course I also thought that I could carry it, though it would be a stretch to say that I thought I could carry it easily.  I know that I can lift a suitcase that weighs up to 23 kilograms in one hand and I know that I can carry my hand luggage along with that.  How hard could it be to add an extra bag?

My delusions concerning carrying things started when I was a small child helping my Dad with his pigeon baskets. I have no idea how heavy a basket full of pigeons is, but I remember that it was tiring carrying those baskets from our house to my grandfather’s house.  But I also remember how pleased I was when the task was finished and the pride I felt because I’d been able to do it.

This continued throughout my childhood with superhuman feats of carrying things to and from school.  I didn’t live that close to school (google maps shows me that it was a mile away) and I always had too much stuff.  I can still remember walking home from school during a snow storm.  I was carrying my guitar, clarinet, school bag, and gym bag.  I didn’t have a spare hand to brush the snow away so I arrived home looking like a snowman as the snow clung to the wool of my duffel coat.  But I did manage to make it home.

I was very glad that it wasn’t snowing yesterday.  It was a bit warm, but I took my time with the luggage.  I still arrived home ready to collapse in a heap.  The problem though, and this is always the problem, is that I did succeed in getting the bags home.  Do you think that next time I’ll remember that it left me tired and sore?  Do you think I’ll remember the bruises from almost knocking myself over as I lifted the awkward shaped things onto the train?  No, I’ll just remember that I was successful.

It shows ingratitude and a lack of imagination to spend the life we’ve been given stamping, literally or metaphorically, on the lives of others, or sneering contemptuously at how they have chosen to make sense of theirs.  It is a harsh world, indescribably cruel.  It is an gentle world, unbelievably beautiful.  It is a world that can make us bitter, hateful, rabid, destroyers of joy.  It is a world that can draw forth tenderness from us, as we lean towards one another over broken gates.  It is a world of monsters and saints, a mutilated world, but it is the only one have been given.  We should let it shock us not into hatred or anxiety, but into unconditional love.

– Richard Holloway, Between the Monster and the Saint

I really want to get all the cupcakes baked before I go to bed.  I’m not looking forward to decorating them tomorrow morning, but I’m hoping that Marty is better at decorating than I am.

5:30pm:

I’m sure that I had a plan to take a break.  But instead I decided to make the ginger cupcakes.  After that I will have to stop as I don’t have all the ingredients for the final three flavours.  We’ve ordered dinner from the local Chinese restaurant as the thought of cooking makes me went to go to bed now.

10pm:

Carrot cake cupcake attempt two is a failure.  I used the correct type of flour but the fruit was too heavy and has made them sink.  I used fresh pineapple tonight, as I can’t get the American tinned variety, and I drained the excess liquid.  But still the buns are a sticky mess.  I will name them Titanic Cupcakes and throw them in the bin. Let’s hope the apple cupcakes currently in the oven don’t share their fate.

11:58pm

Finished the apple, tiramisu, and chocolate strawberry cupcakes.  The final set, the cheesecake cupcakes, are now in the oven.  Soon I’ll go to bed.

Cupcake count: 117

I survived the morning and I am still in a good mood.  The afternoon may change that, but I’m going to try to keep this baking experience as stress-free as possible.

1pm:

Grating vegetables is boring.  Marty is making it more interesting by occasionally throwing carrot across the room.  He claims this is accidental.  Actually he’s decided that after grating just one carrot and two aubergines that there must be a way to get the food processor to do this for him.

2pm:

Marty found a way to get the food processor to finely grate the carrots.  Well, he says finely grated but really it’s mush.  And since mush is not the texture I require for all my cakes he’s still having to do some grating by hand.  He’s happy enough as he gets to eat the parts of the carrot that won’t grate.

Tested the strawberry cupcakes and so far so good.  The jam in them works well and you can’t taste the aubergine.  (I’m still concerned that my desserts will come out tasting like dinner.)

3pm:

Amused that the orange flavoured cupcakes are also orange coloured as they are made with Japanese eggs, that tend to have dark orangey yokes, and carrots. Marty won’t let me test the chocolate chip cupcakes. I suppose he has a point, I made these during the week and know that they taste good, but surely it’s better to be safe than sorry?

4pm:

Getting tired.  I managed to push the eject button on my electric whisk while whisking eggs.  I now have cupcake batter in my hair.

A chocolate chip cupcake escaped from the muffin tin and landed on the floor, but I’m still not allowed to try these.  We did try one of the fairy cakes.  Marty complained that they were heavy, but I pointed out that they need to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes when they come out of the fridge.  He agreed that was the problem and then continued to eat the rest of the cake.

5pm:

Losing my will to bake.  I’m going to take a break for a couple of hours.

Cupcake count: 77

Most of the baking needs to be completed today, as tomorrow we decorate.

8am:

Starting to clean up the utensils used yesterday evening.  There’s going to be lots of dishes to do today as I only have one set of most things, so will have to clean while each batch of cupcakes is baking.

10am:

Got completely distracted by my email and computer.  I was supposed to be looking up the Sticky Toffee cupcake recipe.  Marty is still sleeping.  Now that the shops are open I need to go and buy eggs.  I’ve managed to run out of the one ingredient that appears to be in every cupcake.

Noon:

Marty is finally awake.  He appeared bleary-eyed about 30 minutes ago wondering why I hadn’t woken him.  I thought it was better for him to sleep as a sleep-deprived husband doesn’t handle a stressed-out wife very well.

Cupcake count: 18

Sticky Toffee Pudding Cupcake

It’s the weekend of my cupcake party.  I’m scared.  I was insane to think that we could bake 100 cupcakes and decorate them all before 4pm on Sunday.  But, armed with an oven that can hold up to 12 cupcakes and a spreadsheet to manage the ingredients required to make 10 different flavours of cupcakes, I’m going to give it a go.

7pm:

The carrot cake cupcakes have failed.  I was using an American recipe and mistakenly used the wrong type of flour.  They taste like soda carrot cakes.  They are also a bit damp.  It could be that my cup of pineapple contained more liquid than was imagined in the recipe.  (I hate using cups as a measure.)

8pm:

Marty has arrived home from work and has declared that the carrot cake cupcakes make his top three list.  He doesn’t care that they taste like soda bread, he thinks that’s a bonus.  I’m still not going to use them for the party.  I’ll make another batch tomorrow using the correct flour.

9pm:

I’ve started to put together the dry ingredients needed for the chocolate chip cupcakes.  I must remember to label these as I plan to make cake mixes for more than one type of cupcake.

11pm:

The vanilla cupcakes have risen into little mountains.  They are supposed to be for fairy cakes, but Marty has declared them troll cakes.  Actually one looks awfully like that mashed potato sculpture from Close Encounters of a Third Kind.

1am:

I need to go to bed.  Marty is dyeing marzipan red to make apples to put on top of the toffee apple cupcakes.  The food colouring looks like blood and it’s dripping. I need to breathe deeply.

I like to bake but I need to be careful not to eat too much.  I have been trying to find ways to make cakes that are both healthy and tasty.  I have discovered that some low-fat or low-calorie recipes rely on bad food substitutions that I want to avoid.  I wouldn’t consider replacing butter with margarine – but I will replace it with apples or even aubergines.

Baking with fruit and vegetables is time consuming.  There is a lot more grating, beating, and whisking than I would like.  So far though the results have been worth the extra effort.  This week I have been experimenting with recipes from “Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache“.

I made “Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cupcakes” with carrots and ground almonds.  I also used rice flour for the first time.  I will admit that the cake mixture looked all wrong in the bowl.  It was gloopier than I expected and I was worried that it was too heavy.  But the cakes were beautiful.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

At the minute the room smells of toasted coconut as I am making coconut cupcakes. This time I have used aubergine instead of butter. I didn’t like the consistency of the cake mixture and I thought that grated aubergine looked quite yucky, but I suppose the proof with be in the eating.

Coconut Cupcake with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

The cupcakes are good. Marty is now eating his third one. I can’t taste the aubergine and I’m impressed with how moist the cake is. The frosting was based on a Jamie Oliver recipe for lime cream cheese frosting, I simply replaced the zest with coconut and the lime juice with coconut milk.

There is no doubt that discussing the weather is an important part of Japanese culture.  Every summer conversation starts with, “It’s hot today, isn’t it?”.  Even email conversations start with the weather and then move on.

But it is incredibly hard to ignore.  I was born in Northern Ireland. I’m used to the weather being mildly annoying.  The sort of weather than means you don’t really want to plan a picnic in summer because it could be a bit damp or a bit cold.  But you make the plan anyway because, as my grandmother would say, a drop of rain won’t kill you.

Then we have Japan where weather is not mildly annoying, in say the way that an insect can be, but is much more like the giant stomping monsters that the Japanese love dearly.  My lunch plans today were cancelled because it might rain.  The airlines are also cancelling flights for the same reason but then this isn’t Northern Irish style rain.  This is due to the arrival of  Typhoon Ma-on which is expected to cause flooding and damage to areas of the city at some point today.  This is weather so powerfully destructive that it gets to have its own name.

And it’s not just the storms that kill.  So far this summer 26 people have died because of the heat and 54,000 people have been treated in hospital.  I no longer just glance out the window to see what the weather is doing.  Now I plan in advance.  I read the extreme high temperature forecast and the weather warnings and advisories.  Today I get to hope that the worst thing said about the weather is, “It’s wet today, isn’t it?”.

I saw a man walking a ferret today.  Marty tells me that this isn’t a strange thing, but it seemed strange to me.  Mind you I live in a country full of strange things.  I still have difficulty identifying everything I see in the grocery store.  There are whole aisles of food that I have no idea about and I don’t know if I’ll ever work out the difference between the 10 different types of fish flakes.

My local grocery store sometimes has stalls set up in the grocery packing area.  This week there has been a women selling green goo.  It can’t really be a green goo or slime, but I don’t want to get overly close to it.  I was terrified that she’d approach me and offer a free sample of the goo while I was packing my groceries.  I’m not really sure how to politely decline.  I know how to behave if I am given a sample.  I smile, say thanks, eat the goo, say something like “so delicious”, and then try to escape without buying any.  At least, that’s what everyone else was doing.  Sometimes it’s good to be a scary foreigner.

I saw a new item in the store today.  It took me a while to work out what it was but I can now buy probiotic straws. I think that I’ll continue to eat yoghurt to get friendly bacteria and avoid the straws.

I didn’t feel like going to the gym today.  It’s wet outside and going to the gym requires preparation I don’t need if I’m going to exercise by myself at home.  I thought I would try the new exercise DVD I bought, Banish Fat Boost Metabolism.  I’m writing this blog post because the only part of me that still seems to move is my fingers.  Going to the gym now feels like the easy option.