The Menu

It's about all I can do to not write about the old place. The Sunday paper's magazine section had an article about the poor punk waif who escaped the old place to find fame, fortune, and a fake British accent. And I can spend the rest of my life describing our 7 1/2 years in the old place to an astonished audience, so there's plenty of time there. I'm moving on to food.

Today, we went to an open house of a designer-built gorgeous place with a view. Then we scaled back our shopping plans after realizing that nobody is open on Sunday around here. But the Japanese market and the Japanese dollar store and the regular old American grocery store were open, so pumpkins and dashi and mirin and umeshu and gobo and the National Enquirer were all procured. Thus our dinner. After owning my Japanese cookbook for 20 years, I cooked from it:

• Tiny plum tomatoes in a rice wine shiso vinaigrette
• Kinpira Gobo (braised burdock root and carrots)
• Homemade miso soup
• Baby turnips and their leaves
• Kabocha Nimono (simmered squash)

Boy was that tasty. Next year, I'm growing shiso. In Koriyama I was served maki containing squash, maguro and shiso. I still dream of the flavor.