Today is July 7th and in Japan we celebrate 七夕 tanabata. A festival originating in ancient Chinese known as Qixi or Qiqiao festival.

The 7th night of the 7th month is when the Summer Triangle stars are visible nicely around midnight and the mythical celestial couple represented by the stars Vega and Altair cross the Milky Way (the heaven river) on a bridge (represented by the star Deneb in the triangle) to reunite for one night.

If you search Tanabata for the whole story that involves a loom weaving princess, a slave-driver father, stray cows herds, magpies, how rain ruins this party and understand what this obscure emoji is 🎋 ( the answer is at the end)

A few years ago I made a geleé made with foraged saskatoon berries that had a really dark purple night sky look when I scattered some gold leaf “stars” on top.

It tasted amazing and looked ok, but I decided to up the geleé game up this year, for the base I used local Cropthorne farm black beans and made a black bean and vanilla glacé.

I used the liqueur from the beans for the base and layered butterfly pea, local strawberry, and a tiny bit of soy milk geleé along with some 24K gold flakes from @gourmetwarehouse to create my Milky Way Amano-gawa river.

I’m really happy with the end result, it’s hard to see in the photos but I used some extra fine edible glittery dusting powder along with the 24K gold in separate layers for a slight parallax effect.

It looks amazing in difference lighting conditions too, I liked the bright sunlight but also with the back-lit, less light. Regardlss I love yōkan and the black beans were perfect either way.

Other things to do on tanabata, that make sense:
ｰ Eat somen noodles becuase they represent threads
ｰ Eat rope shaped cookies called 索餅 sakubei
- Go raid a bamboo grove for a small stalk of bamboo
- Go find a taro leaf in the evening that has dew on it.
- Make ink made with this magic taro dew water to write a wish granting talisman to hang on bamboo stalk 🎋

Sit out on the engawa deck and enjoy the starry night sky.

Stay sweet, Sen