Five minutes.

That’s litterally how much time I had to decide whether I was going to accept the out of the blue New Year’s Eve dinner party invitation from my friends in Stockholm at 12:30 in the afternoon on Dec 31, 2011. That’s all the time I had including packing my socks/curlers/laptop/night cream, locking up my
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The OPENharvest group visited the Hachisu residence in Kodama-gun in Saitama Prefecture. We enjoyed a Japanese farm food meal which included fresh edamame, natto, fall vegetable soup, ohitashi (blanched spinach) and mochi. After the meal, Harigaya-san and his troupe performed a shishimai (lion dance).

I can’t believe I just spent another weekend in a kolonihus (colony house). But that’s how the Scandinavians roll and who can say no to a pumpkin ravioli punch?

My Icelandic friend’s friend has a cute little cottage in Copenhagen which she visits regularly on weekends and slowly tries to repair and build into a fabulous little summer
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Lesbians. What a wonderful and exotic breed.

Much less visible or loud in the public space than gay men, but definitely not dull. Have you talked to your lesbian co-worker today? Maybe you should. Ask her about her cat (she probably just adopted one more), her advice on great kitty litter shopping deals (buy in bulk) or
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I haven’t hosted any house parties for a while, but on a recent weekend, I ended up hosting three parties in a row. Thursday night was a last-minute potluck baby shower, and of course I made a beautiful diaper cake for the mother-to-be.

Friday night, I had Nate’s work people over, and I made bunch of
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Cooking at home in your kitchen is so housewifey. Real men cook in nature.

Especially when it’s summer, and your garden is full of edible food which is the case with my friends C&A. I blogged about our Sunday Forest Lunch last year with them, and a few days ago I took a trip
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All photos by Yoko Kumano and Vanessa Bahmani,

I’ve been running Umamimart for over four years now (since February 2007), bringing together people from all over the world to share their personal experiences through food and drinks. It has gone through several manifestations, and has seen many writers come and go.

Umamimart now consists of ten
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Ok, so this is a post where everything went wrong.

I thought I was going to report on a dinner party with nice pictures of Scandinavian kitchenware, but then the snow storm arrived, people cancelled and the host’s apartment was way too dark to take any real nice photos. But hey, I tried and we had
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A cute way to serve mini pop tarts or filled pastry treats at a party– inside a vintage toaster!

In preparation for his B.A.R. exam, Paystyle hosted cocktail parties, aka Happy Hour (how appropriate), at his place every Thursday for the last month. He invited folks from all over the city to trek to his spacious apartment in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, where he fully stocked the bar for this weekly affair. No
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