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Hop Hop Ju~mp, 

Hop Hop, Ju~mp,

The grasshoppers are jumping everywhere on my walking path these days.

 

They are great athletes!

 

 

How fun it would be if I could jump like them !

 

 In this bush of grasses, I wonder how many grass hoppers are hiding.

 

The first thing I do after returning home from my morning walk is to open the sliding shutters and windows.

What often greets me there is a praying mantis !

 

The praying mantises do not try to escape from me like grasshoppers do, they keep staying there and change the angles of their faces and antennas towards me, and look at me as if they are trying to understand what I am saying.

 

When the summer is ending and a cool breeze is felt on the skin, they often come into my home, and we become like a family.

I think we have a kind of connection that rooted in us.

 

Another insect staying at my home is the spiders.

Oh, No !? 

You may be imagining the long legged big ones.

But the spiders staying at my home are all tiny, cute ones.

It seems that they have their favorite places or their territories, I see each of them in the designated same spot.  

They also seem to like my voice.

Those insects add the colors into my life during summer, though some of the insects such as cock roaches, centipedes and mosquitoes are not welcome, and they are taken out to the outside. 

However even those insects except centipedes can stay at my home when the summer ended.

When I see their movements are slow, I reckon their lives are towards the end. 

I feel like being kind to them.

Every year one mosque survives somehow until the early winter.
She cannot fly quickly anymore and flies slowly within my eye site.  

Then, I want to cheer her up, and prepare a slice of apple or the tiny portion of syrup on a plate.  

Then she perches on the edges of the plate and starts sipping them slowly.

 

The same kind of thing happened with some of the cockroaches before.

When it happened for the first time, it was really an unexpected heartwarming experience for me, so I made a nonfiction Kamishibai story based on these incidents.

I recorded videos and took some photos of them and of me and them together, but I do not dare to show those photos here as I know most of the people do not want to see them.

(In fact I was one of them until I had these incidents happened to me one day.) 

Insects are also one of the creatures on this planet.

They are also living in this world just like we are.

We need to live with them in harmony.

We should never look down on them.

 

Now I move to the recipe of this month.

It’s been extremely hot here in Japan.

So this month recipe must be something that can relieve this crazy heat.

 

That is Ice cream!

Vegan Blueberry Ice Cream !!

 

Here you go !

 

Vegan Blueberry Ice Cream

There are quite a few methods to prepare vegan ice cream.

Depending on the flavors, the weathers and the preferences, I use soy milk, tofu, soy yogurt, coconut milk, nuts and fruit to enhance the creaminess.  

Today’s ice cream is genuine macrobio-vegan, so I used only local and seasonal ingredients.

If you follow exactly the ingredients listed, it could be macrobio-vegan or just vegan depending on where you live.

If you also want to make the macrobiotic style vegan ice cream, replace the ingredients with the items that are local and seasonal of your places. 

Ingredients

 

300~350g soft tofu – *need 200g of drained tofu out of this.

600g water

18g salt – *3% of water

100g blueberries

50g unrefined beet root sugar

1~2 tsp lemon juice

For topping

10~20 blueberries

Mint leaves

Procedure

1.    Place tofu, water and salt in the pot, heat up, reduce the heat to low before reaching boiling point, and cook for five minutes.  Let tofu sit in it until cool down.

2.    Take tofu out, wrap with the kitchen paper, place on the colander and top with the weight on it to drain the excess water.

*My regular soft tofu reduces the wight from 350g to 250g after drainage, and I use only 200g out of it.

 

3.    Place drained tofu into the food processor and blend until creamy.

 

4.    Add the blueberries, beet root sugar and lemon juice.  Blend until uniformed.

5.    Transfer to the freezer resistant container and freeze it.

*Stainless steel is recommended for quicker freezing. 

6.    Take the container out when the cream got frozen 80%.

*If it is already frozen hard, let it stay in the room temperature for some time. 

7.    Place the frozen mixture in the blender and churn until smooth soft cream.

 

*You can eat at this stage.  But the cream cannot shape into a ball with the ice cream dasher as it is too soft.

8.    Transfer back to the container and keep it in the freezer until serving. 

9.    Take the container out 5~20 minutes before serving depending on the weather. 

10.Dish the ice cream into the bowl, and top with the fresh blueberries and mint leaves.

 

 

 

Enjoy the other flavor of vegan ice creams with your eyes.
I’ll introduce them someday on a separate occasion.

 

Strawberry ice cream made with soy milk.

 

Chocolate and Banana Ice Cream made with tofu yogurt

 

Mint Ice Cream made with soy milk and lots of mint leaves

 

Pineapple Ice Cream made with coconut cream

  

 You might want sherbet rather than ice cream under the unbearable heat.

Then try them.

Watermelon Sherbet

 

Happy Cooking！