Hoshi-imo 

  

Cold Spring night 

Sogyu brings out

sweet potatoes unearthed

last Autumn,

split and dried over winter,

to roast in slow time

over embers like your hunger

as you practice

waiting

until

too hot to hold--

Then bite with care

chew with a dancy tongue

and the sweet

comes alive with your life,

the sun, the rain,

the earth in you,

relives in taste

how all things grow

and raise you up

because you are their flavor

                                   

                                     RB ii.2016

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RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ELDERLY TOMATO

 

In re the aforegoing and as per the hereinafter, I should have mentioned that at this time of year our house itself is a cold frame. We stop heating at the beginning of March, if not earlier, as soon as we enter the single-sweater cusp, so the house becomes a big cold frame.

Aboriginally, plants of course lived their entire lives outdoors, in their natural environs. Market demand for specialized cultivars, however, has since rendered their derived produce so civilized, so coddled, so entitled, as it were, that modern varieties are becoming weaker and more vulnerable to even slight variations in their environment. 

Analogically speaking, their offspring are losing their ability to read and write cursive, and make a living for themselves in the real vegetable world. They need all the debilitating luxuries and medicaments, right away. And not to put too fine a point on it, if you cross them you don’t know what you’ll get. Is this the vegetable future we want for ourselves? Monsanto PR says a big YES!!! in giant yellow herbicidal letters sprayed across a vast industrial cornfield not far from your home, using what used to be called Agent Orange.  

But anciently honored vegetables have their own opinions.“Why, when I was still green,” says an elder sun-dried Roma tomato, “we learned to write mentally, with the figurative equivalent of a steel-tipped pen dipped in 100% tomato juice! We mastered the fine points of tomato grammar in seedling school! A second language was a budding requirement; I studied our original Nahuatl. Day after day we absorbed the ancient Endless Tomato Saga, continually reciting it from memory in absolute silence! That is not easy for a youngster.  

“Yes, we were born outdoors, lived outdoors, and you never enjoyed a better tomato. We were so proud... Those were the days... They were all real tomatoes back then, let me tell you; it was a great time for a young fellow to be alive. Why, look at what they have in the supermarkets now, no integrity at all-- cloned in labs, grown in greenhouses, even in soups of chemicals... 

“In the old days, though... Let me tell you about this beautiful Italian tomato I remember well... She was a beauty; you don’t forget curves like that, nosir-- Bella Toscana her name was, we grew very close, even hung around together... Strictly vine ripened, of course... They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to... Saucy as hell... What a dish... Why, even when we were still green, one time she and I...”

We tastefully leave the elderly tomato over in the gourmet section, musing to himself with a wistful smile, dreaming of a fading past, of beauties that once were, of glorious sauces and truly haute cuisine, when even ketchup was made only from the finest families of the land...

Now let’s see if we can still find any Heirloom vegetables...

SPINACH GOES ALL THE WAY

Despite what whoever else thinks about spinach may think, spinach has its own life purpose, if only an evolutionary one, and it deserves to fulfill that purpose whenever possible, is my humble opinion, especially since I planted so much of the stuff and nobody here is eating much spinach this year, other than me doing my best, which explains this greenish tint. 

Our weird Spring weather is too chilly for daily family salads and anyway there's only two of us living here now, so it must've been in a spell of zombie gardening that I planted a lot of greens, out of habit acquired from years of more mouths to feed, as I'm sure happens to empty-nester gardeners all over the world, we are united  in this are we not, though no one at the forums ever talks about this type of overabundance; there should be an international distribution system for surplus vegetables. 

In any case it's not easy to rationalize all that succulent, flavorful and nourishing vegetation growing so high and leafing out with abandon, gaining fiber in the natural process of going to seed (a noble idiom, wasted on humans), which is what spinach originally evolved to do and has never forgotten how to do; and now, for the first time in who knows how long - no one I know keeps track of these things - some righteous spinach is getting a chance to go all the way, so who am I to put my foot down? 

Yes, who am I to tell a nourishing vegetable friend what to do-- or even more hubristically, cut a beautiful and licentious plant into compost simply because it's useless to me and is interfering with the artificial comfort parameters of my life, such as what will my gardening neighbors think of me for letting this happen (an interesting variation on Veblen's concept of conspicuous non-consumption, btw), for letting spinach walk all over me as it were, and for not tastefully maintaining my spinach bed. There seems to be a moral aspect trying to assert itself in here somewhere...

Speaking frankly, though, I have never seen spinach have so much fun, or look so wanton and passionate with life, so-- fulfilled in its true mission, spelling itself out in max green leaves on rising ruby stems and the beginnings of seeds; it's almost erotic, except it's a plant, so nothing goes on actionwise other than slow intense growth and general vegetative lasciviousness, which I suppose could be arousing to a more passionate gardener. Nothing salacious, though; it's not like Caligula or anything. Still, what are the neighbors thinking of all this verdant intimacy? No one has said a thing yet... 

Not to be all that be humble, but I here and now assert my wish to not have, an eon or more hence, a plaque of thanks in the Leafy Hall of Fame, when Spinach descendants gratefully and capably rule the world... 

It was nothing, really.

Salted

Lower your salt intake to lower your blood pressure? Nah. I use salt whenever I want to (good sea salt, not refined iodized type) - not all that much, but somewhat more than the average daily intake - and have always done so. I like salt on a lot of my stuff, and worship at the savory altars of akadashi, tsukemono and umeboshi. Last week at age 72, my annual checkup showed my blood pressure to be 96 over 67. The lower the better, said the doc.

The Bitter Crunch

I love goya (bitter melon; Momordica charantia) for its flavor and crunchiness; no matter how much it is cooked (or frozen!) it keeps that crunch. You can diminish the bitterness, if you wish, though I don't see the point, just eat a bland cucumber or something. But the goya, even at extremes of cooking, provides beautiful little bitter-crunchy emerald nuggets in everything you cuisinate; its range of astringency and special mouthfeely, delight-filled crunchiness has no cuisinal parallel that I know of. Did I mention the crunch?

 Another great thing about goya, as a tender viny plant, is the wall of feathery green leaves that grow on my high net fence (keeps out all deer, most wild pigs and no monkeys). By this time of year that emerald wall is dotted with the 1- inch banana-yellow goya blossoms about a foot or so from each other, that reach out at the end of long, slender, springy stems of pale green.

From my kitchen window on a sunny day I can see the yellow pretties nodding down to invisibility when even a small pollinator lands on them; then they spring back up, ready again immediately as the visitor moves on to another nodding blossom, the whole yellow-dotted green wall flashing yellow polka dots like a stage show, which in a wild way it is-- pleasant and relaxing to watch all those nods of acceptance, all those goya being generated.

It wasn't all roses, though. This year in late Spring I planted four goya plants along the northern side of my garden, but the season started out so cold and sunless and delugey that the goya languished in the cold and rain through July and even into August. They were the picture of rainy forlorn out there, all shivery and dripping under gloomy heavens. They half-heartedly put out a few token flowers just to keep their roots in the game, but as Spring tended toward Ark-building time (did Noah take plants?) it seemed more and more just a matter of time before the goya cashed in (Goya chips, mmmm!).

But then for some reason it started to get sunny, of all things, and when those goya hit they really hit. Within days there were a dozen ready-sized goya dangling, ready to go, with a couple dozen more little ones hanging around looking to generate some joy. Another truly great (but globally unappreciated) quality of goya is that monkeys hate them. Which moves them ever closer to my heart. Their vines now cover my 20m2 north garden wall with leaves and fruit that few bugs and no critters like. A healthy, productive, versatile and delicious plant is the goya. Can't get better than that. Plant some!

 Plus, they're crunchy.

TIDES OF DAYS

   

The longer I've lived here, the more I've come to delight in that brief time of Spring when the wintered mountainside becomes more and more facets of blue sky as the paddies fill, until for a brief time before rice planting, from certain perspectives - like my front doorway - the sky is all over the ground.

Then come the little astonishments of lifetimes, like the early Spring morning when you walk out of the house into a mountain mist and behold upon that long watermirror the pale-green rows of just-planted rice shoots, stretching away into the soft wall of cloud right at your door... You can’t help but just stand there looking, letting the sight fill you with the miracle of magnificence just plain happening, in this day-to-day way.  

On the blue days, across that magic mirror glide the clouds that come sailing over the mountain like big baroque pearls, while hawks and swallows dive to snatch food from their reflections; at evening the calm of the mirror is broken into widening rings by a now-and-then rain, or rippled into memory by sudden evening breezes that shiver the silver light. 

From the morning train along the Lake, through Spring and Summer you can see the day-by-day changes all along the line, as the tides of days turn the land to sky that soon turns to rice leaves, the fields growing day by day into perfect levels of deep green blades that reveal the wind as they grow taller, until they begin to nod with the weight of their gold...

ROGUE WHAT?

I've heard of rogue a lot of things, mainly elephants and traders, but rogue wheat? If a seed can be rogue, it must be from Monsanto, the reclusive corporate individual who brought agent orange to the dinner table, funds all the useful PACs and sends its execs to head the U.S. Dept of Agriculture under the pliable presidents, pretty much passing its own laws for the benefit of mankind. You might call it a rogue company.

*

"Asia curbs US imports of wheat after genetically modified sample found.

The discovery of rogue genetically modified wheat in a farmer's field in Oregon shook global confidence in the safety of America's food supply on Friday.

Billions in food exports were potentially at stake following the disclosure by the US Department of Agriculture of the existence of the GM wheat plants.

The GM variant, developed by the agricultural giant Monsanto, has never been approved for human consumption."            more...                   PLM rogue Monsanto page

ENGINEERING SALMON CONSUMERS

“The main concern addressed was whether the genetically engineered salmon could escape and establish themselves in the wild, with detrimental environmental consequences. The larger salmon, for instance, could conceivably outcompete wild Atlantic salmon for food or mates. The agency said the chance this would happen was ‘extremely remote.’ It said the salmon would be raised in inland tanks with multiple barriers to escape. Even if some fish did escape, the nearby bodies of water would be too hot or salty for their survival. And reproduction would be unlikely because the fish would be sterilized, though the sterilization technique is not foolproof.” Damn, I guess they're right; I don't see a flaw in their reasoning, not even a loophole the size of a salmon/eel gene switch. It's as safe and sure a thing as so many other government promises. Maybe even better than those decades of Fukushima reactor assurances, starting back in the 1970s and going on until March of last year, when they somehow turned into actual lies. Odds must be, jeez, like one in-- some other number! And growth hormone year round, too! What could go wrong there? Wonder what kind of labfood they're fed in those tanks. Unevolved, human-made and bred fish naturally aren't very smart. I suppose these would have to taste pretty close to salmon. But most folks won't know what they're eating. 

+

Salmon on the Brink

+

Abysmal Record on Salmon, Fish and Water

 
AS TO THE GARLIC BESIDE MY BOWL

She asked if I had put ground sesame seeds on my ramen. I had done so and would later add more when the time was right, which was why I had left the ground sesame container open, and why there was still a mound of fried garlic slices in the small dish beside my bowl.

As this indicates, I subscribe to the Gradual Ramen Augmentation Principle (GRAP), which holds that you don't add every damn thing at once, unless you're a ramen newbie or have a mental condition of some kind with which you can nonetheless walk around among the general population.

With ramen, everybody develops their own Complex Creative Devouring Technique (CCDT), and if I do it wrong, I know I'll regret it for the rest of the bowl. You can't undo misdirected ramen. Nothing in the noodle area of the food shrine is more regrettable than ramen ruination, for one who appreciates the nuances between the noodles, where flavor resides.
 
Among the elements of this effort, apart from the ground sesame waiting over there in its container, is the garlic right beside my bowlful of ramen in thick savory broth with a red oily sheen, plus the sliced mushrooms, red peppers, soy sprouts, thin long-onion slices, bits of ground pork floating, here's a napkin for that drool...

I'd added some of the garlic and ground sesame at the beginning and mixed it in well to blend the flavors while amping up my appetite and cooling the temp to scaldsafe levels before I dove in - these steps are crucial, saving some garlic for later with sesame in my advance through the theater of ramen experience - then when all the succulence factors neared optimal merge and the time was right for more garlic with the remaining ramen and the ongoing garlic/sesame ratio fragrance - these things can get complicated at the quantum level - where the broth/garlic/sesame taste lines converge, the remainder of the garlic to be added at the precise point for optimal flavor distribution, you don't want it all at the beginning where it overwhelms the undertones of the Ramen Flavor Quantum Curve (RFQC).

These are key matters because, owing to cosmic laws as yet unformulated, fried garlic has a special affinity with emerging ground sesame essence, which at this moment begins to waft about, the flavors commingling at the heart of the dish, where one can no longer deal in quanta but can only slurp, scarf and worship.

And when, at the end, with both hands you grip and lift the bowl to drain those precious dregs of deliciousness, you have at last the full measure of your efforts.

Here's another napkin... 

PUMPKINS IN AMERICA: THE MYSTERY

The other day I was enjoying a bit of pumpkin at lunch - Echo makes a nice dish of plain steamed pumpkin cubes with various additions that go great with just about anything-- tasty, sweet, rich in all sorts of noots, long shelf-life etc. While savoring the experience, I got to thinking for about the 9,463rd time why Americans don't eat pumpkins straight as a vegetable, over there in the land of 600lb pumpkins they don't know what to do with other than carve into jack-o-lanterns in the autumn of every year or have biggest-pumpkin-in-the-county contests for the gourd that symbolizes Thanksgiving. Which is admirable enough, but why isn't the pumpkin used as food? Why are pumpkins so looked down upon in America? That splendid squash, standing proud and golden right next to the turkey, symbolizing Thanksgiving for plenty in difficult times! What has happened to that rep ever since?

They do put some pumpkin in cans, to use later for pies at other times of the year, when folks want pumpkin pie, if there really are any such times, but just go and look in any US cookbook for some pumpkin recipes and that’s basically it: pumpkin pie and pumpkin puree, muffins, bread, cookies, which like the few other recipes are basically a way of disguising pumpkins.

Even when I stayed with my frugal aunt and uncle on their country farm where they grew and ate turnips, parsnips, squashes, beets, pumpkins too, even ate turnip greens and rutabagas, but never pumpkin, other than as pie. Strange, no? All that food just tossed... to the pigs of course. Pigs love pumpkins, supreme truffle-finding gourmets that they are.

Here in Japan there is no Thanksgiving day, which is nice because this way we get to eat pumpkin whenever we want, since it's grown all the time because folks here love pumpkin as a food and do not look down upon it as some cultures do without knowing why.

In Japan the main food pumpkin, comparatively less eye-appealing than the shunned US variety, is a smallish, green, rough-skinned pumpkin that is golden inside, much like the US pumpkin, sweet and soft like any squash when cooked, and I would guess somewhat the same texture and flavor, but there my comparison must go hungry, because I realize that never in the American portion of my life have I eaten any steamed pumpkin!

Why should this be? When I first came to Japan back in the early seventies and looked for brown rice, folks were aghast at the idea. Back in feudal Japan, when only aristocrats could afford white rice, and commoners had to eat brown rice, white rice became a status symbol, and so it remained even centuries later, even though brown rice was tastier and more nutritious. Does the US pumpkin historically have a white rice equivalent?

It is a mystery.

 

FROM PYRAMID TO PLATE

With a wedge of purple protein... Looks like about 2000+ calories... This is not the old US food pyramid, it's the new US food plate! Filled to the brim with a red fruit wedge, a green veg wedge, a beige grains wedge and a ... purple ... protein wedge. Name me a purple protein. No knife, spoon, napkin or drink... unless the Dairy disc is a glass of blue milk... Could be blue yogurt, blue ice cream or ... bleu cheese?

Looks like the dairy lobby still has some clout, though it's no longer in the inner circle... The meat lobby lost out big time on this one, merged into not a RED MEAT wedge (that would anyway conflict with the red fruit wedge) but a mysteriously purple protein wedge... (eggplant?), which would include legumes, nuts, eggs etc., plus purple meat (for all you manly guys afraid of soybeans and tofu)... But purple protein on a blue (or chartreuse?) placemat?

As for me, I try to avoid government restaurants...

FUKUSHIMA UPDATE 5.22.11

Contamination: From Minamata to Fukushima

Since 11 March 2011, a different kind of toxin began making its way through the veins of common food sources after TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) completed a planned dumping of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean at the site of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.  Spinach and other green leafy vegetables, milk, and water have been found to have iodine-131.  Fish, cows’ milk, and water have been contaminated with cesium-137.

--

Pensioners come forth for Fukushima

As the Japanese government and TEPCO struggle to bring the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant under control, a group of pensioners has decided to put their lives at risk to save younger people from radiation.

via reddit

--

Fukushima Update: A Very Bad Situation

TEPCO has finally admitted that Reactor #1 has experienced a meltdown event that may have breached the primary containment vessel. Further, truly alarming levels of radiation are now being reported in and around Tokyo.

--

Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake

Infrared emissions above the epicenter increased dramatically in the days before the devastating earthquake in Japan.

COUPLE DOZEN THOUSAND MORE REASONS TO GROW YOUR OWN

Pesticide Residues in Food and Feed

Veterinary Drug Residues in Food

via: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyLI8UVdTzQ   

(5 min)

(Love the way they gave it a Latin name resonant with "nutritional expertise")

and it's international!

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FOOD INC.

(Entire documentary)
(Effectively removes any remnant wool from eyes)

＋


GM Soy in animal food - Greetings from Monsanto

Short and to the point.

via: reddit

SLOW CHOW

Not to change the subject, since there isn't one yet - only the title so far - but I'm getting to it, in my rambly fashion: lately Echo and I have been going once a week to one of our favorite free springs, one we revisited after it had dried up a few years ago and we were recently told it had started running again below Hira mountain.

We go there on Wednesdays, in preference to other days and springs we know because it gives us a chance to eat lunch at Hot Station, our favorite as-yet-uncrowded slow food restaurant around here. Located behind Hira Station on the Kosei railway line and seating maybe 16 real friendly people, Hot Station is run by local obachan (grandmas) that serve set lunches of home-made quality like grandmas used to make (and still do in some lucky households hereabouts). Small seasonal menu of excellent food, and a few items (kimpiragobo, miso, breads, rolls, cooked rice, sweet beans and bento dishes, among other things) always on sale near the vestibule.

What can be better than having a meal prepared by hands that have been preparing the same meals in the same way for 50 years or more, from ingredients grown and made by those same hands, all in the same way those hands were taught by other longlived hands, the line going back hand-in-hand over centuries, reaching back into times when food was still exactly and only food, no thought of fastness, still serving the actual basic purpose food must serve, i.e., to nourish and nurture those who are cared for? Not to kill tongue time or do a Las Vegas number for jaded taste buds, but to show a cherished body and its attendant functions that someotherbody cares about all this, cares about you, puts a pinch of love and joy in the growing and preparing, joy that does something for the flavor, love that grows it right, as those who care know it must be grown; creates it right as something so worthy deserves to be created- the miso, vinegar, tofu, rice, sauces, vegetables - cooks it right, the same care everywhere that you can view in the layout, sense in the flavor and freshness, and live in how good it makes you feel to eat it and be, your cells individually dancing and singing afterward, carrying you along for the fun, that kind of food?

We spoke to one of the busy ladies that run the place, she said it was started a few years ago by a group of 8 now-elderly ladies who sometime back in the 70s had gotten together and formed a company to create and market the miso they and their families had been making for centuries using their own locally grown soybeans. About 5 years ago in the same locally grown spirit, spurred as well by fading traditions of kitchens and foods, they started the restaurant, serving meals made the old way, using local farm products.

So if you're hungry at lunchtime in this lakeside neighborhood, be sure to drop in. Best misoshiru around, and all the other items are the fresh-best too, you could only maybe get better food if you had a couple of grandmas of your own. Barring that, Hot Station is the place to go on Wed. Sat. and Sun. between 1o and 5 (Nov-Feb, 10~4:30). They don't really want to make a full-time job or a full-fledged business out of it, just have a place to prepare and serve their locally grown produce to locally growing folk, like they've always been doing. You can tell they're in it more for love than money.

They also have a steady spring running outside, where you can fill up on your Wednesdays, if you prefer slow water.

WWOOF

World Wide Opportunities on OrganicFarms

PASTA CON FUNGHI E AGLIO PRIMAVERA NELLA MODA BOB

Yeah, that's sort of the way it happened, I was the last one in on it. It started when I went out to dump some wood ash on the compost pile and I noticed the rampant billboard of new shiitake that had emerged since the weekend.

Whenever that happens out there under the spell of the garden I start thinking of plates full of shiitake in various arrangements but I'm a lover of cuisinal simplicity and it's not salad season so as my mind ground along it came up with a pleasing image, in this case spinning one out of the potato urgency now swelling the tool shed (see previous post), that fact prompting my mental mill to recall the baby garlic that was still standing in the way of complete tuberization, with a deep pause in there to ponder the impressive similarity of the mind's workings to those of Rube Goldberg...

Last year I had finished planting garlic and had the littler cloves left over, regarding which those in the know say Just eat them, but being a contrarian I wanted to learn what would happen if I planted them, in comparison to the larger cloves, so I planted the wee ones in a square meter or so left over from the onions. By the time Spring had rolled around they had come up much smaller than their bigger fellows, nor would they ever catch up and get as big-- no surprise there, upon reflection.

But instead of eating them back in the Autumn as little cloves, I'm eating them now as spritely spring garlic-- or better yet, aglio primavera (there's something Italian about Spring produce) and with a dual purpose (so I can plant those potatoes!). You see how everything ties together here in the mindgarden as in the universe at large, where the interconnections are often less obvious, but don't let that fool you.

So as my mind cuisined along I began to envision sliced aglio primavera sauteing lightly in olio d'oliva awaiting handfuls of thinly sliced, freshly harvested funghi shiitake, tutti nella moda Bob. Topped of course with grated pecorino romano, and an insalata di spinaci on the side, all the better to become yours truly.

THE SIZE OF HUNGER

And as to fast food, for my money there is no better fast food than the ancient but always fresh onigiri, which takes about ten seconds to make from the cooked rice that's always around in the Japanese household, and takes its shape from the hands that made it, usually those of a loving wife or grandma (self-made onigiri just don't taste as good).

Molded by wet salted hands around a center of pickled plum, a bit of salmon or scrambled egg, or just about anything (nothing is good, too), the whole then wrapped in a sheet of nori seaweed (nothing is good, too), the onigiri needs no further explanation before eating with wide-open delight.

The onigiri does not require any ketchup, mustard, 1000-island dressing or worcestershire, no slice of onion on top with a pickle and a bun on both sides; simplicity has its own flavor. Nor does it need a plastifoam box to keep it warm inside a bag inside another bag. Warm or cold-- it works just as well either way.

But if you do happen to grill your plain onigiri over, say, the small charcoal fire you're grilling your fish or chicken on, be sure to brush the toasting rice with a little soy sauce and turn it frequently so that it gets equally brown and crispy everywhere and becomes a yaki onigiri. Much delight will follow.

The neat thing is, the onigiri is always exactly the size of your hunger.

NEW TROUBLE IN OLD JAPAN

Here I am back on my intercultural soapbox, and it's about food again, but this time it's not about Japanese cheesecake, bagels, donuts, ice cream, cherry pie, whatever on the long list, this time it's about Japanese food by Modern Japan, where the fast food is, vs. Japanese food by Ancient Japan, where the slow food is. I don't mean to be judgmental here, just mental.

It started out in the usual curious innocence, pretty much the same kind as enjoyed by Adam and Eve back in the day. I was in the supermarket and noticed that the national food conglomerate known as "House" had, in addition to its everywhere tubes of wasabi (Japanese horseradish) kurashi (sinusidal mustard) and shoga (ginger), had a new tube, of-- yuzukosho!

The more attentive readers hereof will remember one of my posts mentioning yuzukosho, how ineffably great it is etc. (Blogger (owned by Google!) has effectively obscured my other yuzukosho posts with its stellar blog search system; maybe I'll do some blogoarchaeology later if I have time.) Well, in those posts I was praising a local product, but here before me was a curiosity-arousing new corporate approach, so as a big fan of the incredible condiment I impulsively bought a tube just to try it out; maybe it would be good. And maybe I'd see Elvis in the snack section.

I put some of the suitably green paste on my rice that evening, took a mouthful and began savoring and -- puzzling -- as though I'd been driving a Lamborghini for a few years and now for some reason I was sitting in a cardboard box going rmmm rmmm. Only this was mainly salty. Traditional yuzukosho, though hot and zesty, is salty too, the original purpose being to preserve the flavorsome blend of yuzu peel and hot peppers, the cured flavor blending in infinite detail with the saltiness into something god is obviously proud of.

What I was tasting at the moment, though, was a corporate committee approach to one of the most exciting condiments on the planet. Corporate approaches to anything that fine are almost by definition never exciting; think artificial truffles. They may be spelled with the same letters of the alphabet and even be somewhere near the continent on which the ballpark of excitement is located, but with an undertaste of marketing factors, demographics, averages, means, nets and grosses, and an overtaste of processing rationalizations, preservatives, overhead etc.

It is an approach that steps on no toes, leaves no stone turned etc., in this case as if the mild stuff in the tube was for the tongues of the Usher family, for those of you who have read Poe. For those who haven't, get the stuff in the tube. You can get it fast, in any supermarket in the country, and squeeze it out fast, onto your fast rice. Compare this to the old way, which is "We have to preserve these peppers for the winter. Let's show those pansies in the next village what we can do eh? Let's make life more worth living, wake these mothers up some-- Whoa! Now that should be some fun around the old communal table, eh?" Followed by about a thousand years of grandmotherly tweaking.

Guess which type I prefer. And Japan is doing this to itself! If this product is still on supermarket shelves a year from now, this ancient culture is in newer trouble than I thought.

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[Added later: The bottle on the left in the photo, containing yuzukosho by Fujishin, a Kyushu shoyu maker, is the best I've tasted; beats every other version I've found so far, and that's quite a few, including the Fundokin brand mentioned in the Wikipedia link.]

THE MUFFIN IMPERATIVE

When the world seems to be heading for the doldrum-pits (isn't it always?), it's sometimes good to focus on the smaller problems, especially the self-indulgent ones, which are the best kind, to wit:

Like any expat, I have my food rants, relating generally to the cuisinal higher reaches comprising cakes, pies, cookies, ice cream and such ecstatics-- the rarefied air of indulgence. This morning I take a slight tangent, to address the no-less-important muffin situation.

English muffins, which someone in America once told me were in fact of American origin, actually originated in England, where they are now known as "American Muffins." (Expat breakfasts are often confusing.) Here in Japan, the natives too have their own version of such muffins, which for purposes of international muffin clarity I shall refer to as Japanese-American-English muffins, starting with the package that I hold in my hands.

As Asia advances through its cultural juncture with the wider world, we here in the J-boonies have been seeing a finer and finer gradation of imported products (I still remember the surprise I felt a few years ago, upon seeing olive oil(!) on the supermarket shelf in the larger village up the road). So it was inevitable that sooner or later English muffins would reach all the way out here to where I live, but like so many derived and adapted cultural imports from around the world, these local Japanese-American-English muffins are but a distant far-eastern cousin of the American-English muffin, being smaller in diameter, thinner, nonchewy, vaguely sweet, vapidly pneumatic and generally less substantial, i.e., nearly all the things - apart from shape and name - that a decent American-English muffin should not be.

There are 4 muffins in this package of - in a typical Japanese twist - "pumpkin" English muffins, so until I get them finished I must occasionally abide before the toaster and ponder related matters of international complexity, like a diplomat making his own breakfast. As I stand there keeping an eye on a couple of orange-ish (fork-split, of course) disks, my foot-tapping mind ponders the inscrutable pumpkin factor, runs through a quick comparison of Japanese/American/British tastes, the smaller portions here in the Land of Wa, the minimalist flavor requirements, the broad variety of subtlety therein (but pumpkin?), the importance of appearance and unobtrusiveness in matters of flavor and texture, the sad lack of... Bing! My muffin is ready.

Coming home down the evening mountain, tired from heavy labors, in the dim light by the roadside I see a bareleafed persimmon tree, laden with bright orange globes like a year of morning suns-- Atop the toppest moves a silhouette of black crow, long beak dipping into soft orange lusciousness-- Ah, the food that colors are...