I've been living in Tokushima for five years now and I'm embarassed to admit that just yesterday I finally participated in my first Kamiyama Artist in Residence Cooking Party. I'm always busy cooking for my family every day and thanks to the cooking party I was able to re-discover the joy of cooking. I'm sure there will be an article in English soon outlining the basics of the event, so this is going to be my "one more side of the cooking party" report.

The beautiful bouquets of rosemary and sage were not only used in cooking, but they filled the kitchen itself with a wonderful fresh aroma. Mr. Nakahara used some of the flowers in his fruit arrangement as well! This is the kind of luxury item you can't get from a supermarket but which Kamiyama has plenty of. Thank you so much!!

It was great to see the guys wearing these frilly aprons.

These three very seriously studied how to make crepes from Andrea. Her secret is to use soda water in place of baking soda! Very interesting! Could this be the start of a Kamiyama crepe fad??

I took over a hundred pictures myself, so with everyone's photos added together, there must be a thousand pictures of this event!

Mr. Ominami is always thinking of others. He poured some coffee for the guests who arrived early.

Pat's special surprise dessert was roast bananas with amaretto liqueur and whipped cream. His rule of "three people to each banana" gave me an excuse to chat with some young people who had come all the way from Tokushima City.

This time, Sofie's contribution is this photo she took of Andrea's bee pendant. The wings move! Isn't that neat?

Just like any big event, the drive home was marked by a convoy of cars all driving into the city from Kamiyama at the same time. Thanks to everyone for a greatly successful event with more than one hundred participants!