torakris

Tuesday dinner: nothing, absolutely nothing! Tuesday was a holiday in Japan and we spent the morning burning incense and pouring water over my husband's ancestor's graves followed by a bed, very bad Chinese buffet lunch at the New Sanno Hotel (American Airforce hotel). This was American-Chinese food of the worst kind yet we all managed to eat enough to fill ourselves up for the rest of the day. The evening found me at the police station trying to calm a hysterical "friend" (I really hestitate to use that word for her) while translating between her and the police.........

word for 9/24: わらび warabi Referred to as bracken in English this fern is another one of the Japanese sansai or mountain vegetables. Like zenmai it is available only water packed in most stores unless you live very close to a source for it. Also similar to zenmai it is thought (outside of Japan at least) that eating it should be avoiding as a possible cause of cancer. In Japan it is one of the most popular sansai making its way into simmered dishes, soups, rice dishes, dressed foods and even a starring role in ohitashi. warabi: http://www.maruka-ishikawa.co.jp/images/ve...ure/warabi1.jpg

I agree with that particular position...I'm going to take several large steps back and say that I think Ms. Graham was out of line for bringing (any) outside food into the restaurant. Vegetarianism and/or heating aside, is it really okay for a customer to bring outside food into (another) restaurant? If I were the restaurant owner in question, I think I'd be miffed by it. Of course, I can't say for sure that I'd forbid it either. Anyway, to me, that's the essence of the original story and it's why I was so incensed by it...although I am enjoying this thread thoroughly. =R= In general I agree with this, but I find baby food the exception, should we ban baby bottles and breast milk as well? As a mother with young children who frequents restaurants quite a bit, I have had jarred food in my bag 'just in case' every time I went out, though I rarely used it I felt better knowing that if my baby didn't like what the restaurant had to offer or if I didn't think there was anything appropriate I could use my jar. As to other questions about allowing meat into a vegetarian restaurant, do we know this woman intentionaly brought this in? Did she wake up that morning and say to herself I am going to take chicken into a vegetarian and see what happens! Probably not, she did what any mother would do before leaving the house for the day, she packed her bag with baby stuff, she probably had some diapers, some wipes, maybe some bags for dirty diaper or soiled clothes, maybe a bib or a change of clothes, maybe a couple toys, some paper and crayons for the older one, possibly a changing pad and even a mini first aid kit with some character printed band-aids, and of course a bottle or some type of sippy cup if the baby doesn't yet drink from cups, maybe a towel or hankerchief for cleaning up any messes, an extra pair of socks because the bay always seems to lose them and oh yeah lets through in a jar of baby food in case the baby gets hungry. Did she she even know she was going to a vegetarian restaurant that day? Did she just happen to walk by and say oh let's go here for lunch, I am sure she gave no thought to that baby food in her bag, and even if there had been a sign on the door saying no meat allowed, I probably would have walked inside giving no thought to that jar in my bag. It is what happened after that I feel she made the mistake, once realizing that she had a meat product that restaurant would not allow she should have tried to find somethingelse for the baby to eat instead of making the fuss about it. I am sure the restaurant would ahve been more then happy to help her find something on the menu (or even off the menu) for the baby to eat. Even having a bad day does not excuse her behavior.

Hate to post this one after Jackal10's meal, but...... last night my husband was at a BBQ at work so I fed the kids the left over curry rice and I had a block of tofu with a sliced cucumber topped with sweet-chile sauce. Then I picked at some pickled ginger (the kind served with sushi) until it was time to eat the peaches.

a break from ferns as today is a national holiday in Japan! 秋分の日　しゅうぶんのひ shuubun no hi (shoe-boon-no-hee) Autumn equinox is today September 23. for more information look here: http://marian.creighton.edu/~marian-w/acad...ays/sept23.html

I prefer this long one to the oval, I like the "bite" it gives. There is just something about it in that spicy sauce that I just can't get enough of......

Jim I would love the recipe and will be willing to wait for it. I could probably figure it out, after a couple more tries............. It was just missing something and then I tried to add a little more soy for some depth and I really threw it off, it was ok but it wasn't the same. Are these kind of mochi used in anything else except these stirfries?

There is a specific Korean dish that I have eaten a couple times in Japan and I have no idea of what it is called since my Korean friends usually do the ordering when we are out. It is made with a type of Korean mochi, not the oval slices I know as tteok but pinky finger long non-hollow tubes. The package I have of them calls them toppogi (in Japanese). I have only eaten this mochi served in a sautee with some vegetables (cabbage, onion, etc) and a quite saucy kochujang (I am assuming by the taste) based sauce. I tried searching Korean cookbooks at the bookstore and can find no reference to this dish that I love so much. Since I don't know the name I am having a problem searching the web. I tried making it once but it just wasn't the same! anyone?

a former thead on kochujang: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...48&hl=kochujang

I don't think of kochujang as all that spicy, maybe a little less then tabasco and quite a bit less spicy then sriracha, but I have a fairly high tolerance for spicy foods. Sweet is not a word I would use to desribe kochujang so it is very likely it was sweetened with sugar. At home I serve my bibimbap with kochujang straight from the tub and I have seen it this way in Japanese restaurants as well. kochujang is quite a thick paste and if it looks very smooth and runs off a spoon it probably has been added to, most likely with either soy, sugar or sesame oil or a combination. Buy some for your self and then dress it up to taste, another way to lessen the heat would be to mix it with some white miso. kochujang is great stuff and I am sure you will find lots of uses for it!

I really think the joys of shopping depends alot on the age of the kid, the # of kids you have to drag along, and the # of times you need to go shopping a week with them and then of course there is the kids personality........ I am hoping someday shopping with my 2 year old son will become fun, almost every time I get up to the register the person handling the checkout inevitably says "genki desu ne..." which translates something like "what a healthy child you have" but is basically a cover-up phrase for saying "I have never seen such a wild child!" I enjoy shopping with my older daughters but th problem is since the 2 year old is also with us it is never as enjoyable as I would like it to be. My second daughter (age 5) is very interested in food and we talk a lot about different things, my older daughter (age 7) on the other hand would rather be looking at clothes or hair accessories.......... someday, someday.........

and welcome to RKolluri too!

smowen3 welcome to egullet! Add 3 more for me! Kentarou no kankoku shokudo by Kentarou Kobayashi (Korean cooking in Japanese) Jacques Pepin complete techniques Jacques Pepin simple and healthy cooking (the last 2 should arrive today from Amazon Japan)

Sunday dinner: grilled shishamo-- a small pregnant fish eaten whole, head to tail! "Japanese" potato salad lotus root simmered in soy sauce miso soup with tofu and wakame Japanese rice

OK a voice from an egullet mom! I have 3 kids ages 2, 5 and 7 and I can count on one hand the number of times I have eaten in restaurants WITH OUT my kids, so I have a lot of experience in restaurants with small kids. I don't know this mother and I know nothing about her child, but I can say that when my kids were between the ages of about 6 mos to a year I always took a jar of baby food to a restaurant as a back-up just in case there was nothing for the child to eat and they wanted more then breast milk. I have to admit that I rarely had to resort to pulling it out because at almost any restaurant I could find something for my baby to eat. Bread (cut into small pieces) is available at most restaurants, as are soups (pureed ones are best), fish flakes well ansd is easy to eat without teeth as are soft cooked vegetables. There were occasions when the jarred food did come out but these were places like sushi restaurants or yakitori places, though I normally avoided these kinds of places with small children. I never asked a restaurant to heat up a jar (my kids could have cared less) and not being a vegetarian, I easily could have taken a jarred product with meat with into a vegetarian restaurant with out even thinking about it. The difference between me and theat woman though it that I would have been embarrassed to death if they pointed out that they were a meat free restaurant..........and would ahve left the restaurant with a very red face.

word for 9/22: ぜんまい zenmai　(zen-my) This is another fern that is very popular in Japan (and Korea as well), I have seen in referred to as cinnamon fern, flowering fern and royal fern in English. According to some books and websites (all in English) experts are now advising against eating this fern as there is eveidence that it may cause cancer of the stomach and esophagus. These Japanese seem not to have heard this news yet (or else they don't care) as zenmai is a regular product on supermarket shelves. Usually water packed it is available all year round. Its most popular use is in simmered dishes and sometimes it is mixed with othe sansai (mountain vegetables) and added to rice. zenmai (as seen in most supermarkets): http://www.anasuper.com/productdetail.asp?i=2429

Sat. dinner: curry rice (the kids had been begging for it and with the combination of typhoons and earthquakes in the same day I didn't feel like dragging the 3 kids to the store for anything else)

This sounds so familiar, I'm sure Xanthippe makes it--or something that's really close to it. Is it from an Italian cookbook on vegetables?? It sounds like Jack Bishop's recipe from Italian Vegetarian Cooking, I make this same recipe A LOT! Recipe, please? Warning: if reprinting copyrighted material blah, blah, blah... I can summarize it for you! You make a basic tart dough (flour, salt, butter, ice water) and add minced garlic and shredded basil, do it by hand but the recipe is actually made in a food processor, processing the basil and garlic before adding the flour. Let it chill for at least an hour, then roll out and place into a tart pan. place thinly sliced mozarella into the tart and then cover with thinly sliced tomatoes, sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with EVOO. bake at 375 for 35 to 40 minutes. This is incredibly easy and I make it a lot for potlucks.

There was an interesting (tiny) article on the last page of my Japanese newspaper yesterday (Asahi Shimbun) about kimchi imports in Korea. Apparently Korea (which starting importing kimchi from China in 1996) as of the first half of this year now imports more kimchi from China then it exports to China. 19,000 tons versus just under 16,000 tons. Apparently the Chinese kimchi which costs 50 to 60% then its Korean counterpart is used mostly in the prepared lunches given to students and (mostly factory) workers. Not that it means anything, I just found it interesting.

word for 9/21: こごみ kogomi (koh-goh-mee) fiddlehead fern (ostrich fern in particular) This is one of the vegetables that are colectively referred to as sansai (山菜　or mountain vegetable) in Japanese. These are the vegetables that are sought out every spring in on the mountainsides. Although it can be found in almost all of the regions in Japan the majority grow in the Shinshu and Tohoku regions. They just need a light blanching before being made into ohitashi or a dressed salad, they are also popular in tempura. Though many sansai are now being cultivated, it is still hard to find them in the stores in their fresh state and thus most of the fiddlehead fern in supermarkets is pre-cooked and water packed rendering it pretty tasteless........... the ostrich fern: http://www.purea-web.net/links/ssn/ssn2002...sansai_kgm.html

This sounds so familiar, I'm sure Xanthippe makes it--or something that's really close to it. Is it from an Italian cookbook on vegetables?? It sounds like Jack Bishop's recipe from Italian Vegetarian Cooking, I make this same recipe A LOT!

Friday night: eggplant baked with tomatoes, onions and feta cheese roasted baby kabocha potato and avocado salad with lemon and EVOO Japanese rice

a cheap apple danish

word for 9/20: ゴーヤー goya (goh-yah) This actually the Okinawan word, in Japanese it will be also be referred to as nigauri, niga from the word nigai for bitter and uri from the word for gourd/melon. Thus in English this is what we know as bitter melon or bitter gourd, in some places it is referred to as balsam pear. Though eaten in Okinawa for centuries it is only recently that it has become a staple item in supermarkets in the rest of Japan. It seems to be one of those foods that is either loved or hated, the bitter flavor takes some getting used to. The most famous dish is goya champuru a stirfry of goya, tofu, egg and katsuo bushi (bonito flakes) or pork, it can also be found pickled and in dressed dishes. goya (nigauri) http://www.maruka-ishikawa.co.jp/images/ve...ure/nigaur4.jpg

Like ankomochi said this style of sushi seems to be a trend. I noticed this becoming really popular in Tokyo a couple years ago, sometimes the fish is more then twice the length of the rice making it very difficult to eat.