Mochi at Caroline’s School

I had a really great opportunity today to make mochi at Caroline’s school. My boss let me come in late today so I could attend. They make mochi every year around this time because its apparently a New Years food. So its a tradition. Normally the dad’s club takes care of making the mochi, but this year a lot of the dads couldn’t attend so they sent out an open invitation to all the dads. I responded and got the opportunity to do it.

It was a pretty cumbersome process honestly. We boiled water over open flames, made the special rice, and hammered it. It felt like I was in feudal Japan for a moment. Then we let all the kids in the school come up and hammer it. When you do it right, it ends up looking like a ball of mozzarella cheese. Its even stretchy like mozzarella too.

The video below kind of shows the process we went through today. Unfortunately I couldn’t video myself doing it, but I was able to do all the tasks. They had a professional videographer there so maybe I’ll get a video of myself later.

It was also nice to finally get to see Caroline interact with all the kids at school and see how the school worked. I was really impressed with the teachers and everything in the school. It was super lively and fun, but not out of control. It was like a well oiled machine. Caroline took her turn to hammer the rice. She did it so gently. It was a great experience for the both of us.