Earthquake Weather

It's warm and windy.

Earthquake weather.

Jello weather.

Gobo Frenzy

I ate gobo (burdock root) for the first time in Koriyama with av-san.

We asked the restaurant owner what it was, and he brought the long long root out of the kitchen to show us.

I found gobo and a recipe at home, and now I make kimpira gobo pretty regularly.

Last year I found some burdock plant starts at a market back home.

Mrguy did the growing, and we harvested this mad tangle of roots last week:


From which I made pickled gobo:


And our very own kimpira gobo:


Couldn't let the harvest pass without celebrating it.

I'm Not Hard of Hearing

I'm hard of listening.

Today I was swaddled in comforting languages I can't comprehend.

First I sang in Hawaiian.

People were speaking Japanese (and listening to classic 1970's funk) at the fish market.

At Los New Friends, all of the music was in Spanish.

And when I started cooking, I found a radio dj spinning Chinese music, bird songs and Conjunto.

The next dj was playing two hours of bluegrass songs about coal mining. I sauteed while playing along on my uke, and was reminded of the time when I first moved to the college town, heard independent radio, and fell in love with a set of bluegrass songs about black lung disease. I bought the black lung song album but almost immediately went back to listening to Gang of Four.

Tonight's a mish-mash: pickled lotus root, beet and carrot pasta, kabocha squash simmered in dashi, and Li Hing Mui marshmallows. A personal creation conceived of on the drive back home from civilization. 

While I was writing this the pasta boiled over...oh well.

Treasured Family Recipes

Looming large in the culinary mythos of the guy family is the story of eggplant and clam casserole. 

Decades after it made its only appearance at our table, middleguysis is still talking about how awful it was. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found the recipe in the grand mamoo's recipe file this week. She isn't ready to agree that the recipe has no merit. I have no means to judge, since I wasn't born at the time that the offending casserole was served. 

I have half a mind to make this recipe myself, just to test the theory that no good can come of these ingredients prepared in this manner.

Enjoy.