"It’s a Good Thing."

Today’s post is dedicated to a phrase made famous by one of my “Homemaking Heroes”, Martha Stewart. As I’m sure many of you already know, Martha recommends tools and techniques with the phrase “It’s a Good Thing.” So, on with the show!

This Week’s GTs (aka “Good Things”)

GT #1 — アイスクリーム or “aisu kurimu”: That’s ice cream written as the Japanese would pronounce it phonetically (and as they would write it when using their phonetic Katakana alphabet). In this case I’m talking about chocolate ice cream! Coolish, an enormously popular ice cream that is manufactured by Lotte, has a new flavor out called “Sweet Chocolat”. Coolish has revolutionized the packaging in the ice cream industry. It has a perfectly soft texture (not too hard) and is packaged in a pouch with a small tube that you put into your mouth and then squeeze the ice cream out into your mouth. I love Coolish which comes in all kinds of flavors, such as vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, grapefruit sorbet, etc. So when I saw the new flavor in the little market near my house, I couldn’t resist. I grabbed two–one for Hubby and one for me and we sat down for a taste test. Results? Excellent! This little pouch containing 120 ml of ice cream will set you back 164 calories and 3.2 grams of fat, but it is worth every extra sit up or minute on the treadmill that you will have to do to make up for consuming it! Hubby and I both agree that it is the best Coolish yet, which is saying a lot! It was very chocolaty and smooth and extremely addictive. Luckily it comes in a pouch and not a big tub, otherwise I think I would have been sneaking out to the freezer in the middle of the night with a spoon . . . .

(1) Coolish head shot.

(3) Fuji Mama already thinking about when she will have time to go and buy more Coolish (even before this one is gone).

GT #2 — 白醤油 (“shiro shō-yu”), or white soy sauce: I did not know that white soy sauce even existed until last Friday when Hubby and I went out with friends and were given some in a small dipping dish at dinner! It was so delicious that after thinking about it all week I finally went and bought a bottle today. Apparently mostly wheat and very little soybean is used in the making of this particular form of soy sauce, which gives it its light color and much sweeter taste. Mmmm!

GT #3 — “An Unoriginal Hat”: For those of you unfamiliar with the knitting world, Stephanie Pearl McPhee is a very famous knitter who is also known as the “The Yarn Harlot” (because of her blog name which bears this title). A recent post of hers really made me smile. The post tells the story of the creation of an “unoriginal hat”. For those of you who are knitters, the pattern to said hat is provided.

GT #4 — Modern Day Vermeer: My youngest brother is an art major at UCLA. Let me just briefly brag that he is disgustingly talented. He has a blog that he occasionally posts stuff to. The more recent stuff that he has been posting has been photography. His most recent post cracked me up and I have to share. When I saw this photo I could not help but think of the works of the great Jan Vermeer. If you want to see one of my all-time favorites of his pieces though, you must look at this.

GT #5 — Wannabe Modern Day Vermeer: The aforementioned photo posted by my brother inspired me to start teaching myself to use Photoshop. Up to this point I have been doing all of my “creative editing” of pictures for my blog in, don’t laugh . . . MS Paint. I was also motivated by the fact that I was wholly unsatisfied with the picture quality of the new header I had designed on Paint for this blog. So I set out this morning to see if I could figure out how to do the same header, but this time using Photoshop. After googling some questions I had on basic techniques I went about haphazardly throwing together my header. The following pictures represent “Before” (aka, a product of Paint) and “After” (aka, a product of Photoshop). Photoshop–it’s a Good Thing!

“Before”

“After”