Back to the daily stuff

As promised, I'll limit the really heavy stuff to once in a while. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't love any comments you might post on those pages.

From the time of the last post through now, my time has been spent doing not much of anything. Taka is completely back to normal. Almost weird, but she really was back to 100% by yesterday morning.

Last night's dinner was: pan-fried potatoes with rosemary (from my garden), hijiki salad (a kind of black seaweed, sauteed in a little vegetable oil with carrots, lotus root and konyaku [all cut really thin and small], a bit of powdered dashi, and finished off with soybeans, soy sauce and mirin), a tossed salad with home-made dressing, green beans with enoki (a kind of mushroom), and a vegetarian version of an Okinawan dish (goya, onions, red peppers, and a scrambled egg substitute I learned elsewhere). Yum, Yum!

Goya is a strange one. An acquired taste if ever there was one. The main version around here looks like a very very deeply textured (kind of pebbly) cukecumber. It's very bitter. It's also very good for you and is supposed to greatly strengthen your tolerance to the heat of summer. It's higher in vitamin C than orange juice. I've seen it translated as "Bitter Mellon" and recently saw another translation of "Balsam Peach" (?!)


Tonight's dinner can be a bit more simple. Taka doesn't need a bento (lunch box) tomorrow. Taka usually makes her own bento (I just don't seem to make them beautiful enough), but I usually prepare all of the food that goes in it. A bento (Taka style) has rice (brown rice, of course...with or without other added grains) and four other dishes. Those four dishes should be decided not just by their food content, but by color as well. A good bento will have the rice as well as dishes of four different predominant colors. I'll take a picture of one sometime and add it here.

The less of a real life I have, the more I'll wax on about random nothingness here. As always, read at your own risk!