Thursday, December 16, 2010

A "simple" lunch

Earlier this week one of my former students called and asked if I could stop by for a few minutes. I suggested that since I had an hour for lunch on Wednesdays that I pick her up and we go to Starbucks for a quick sandwich. Yesterday when I got to her house I found that her mother had made lunch for the three of us.

Look at this lunch!!! True, Mrs. Inoue was once a nutritionist and has experience in planning and making meals. But lunch was amazing! A far cry from Starbucks sandwiches!

"Oh, this is nothing... Most of this stuff is made before hand anyway. It's not difficult to make."

That obviously depends on the person. My poor husband doesn't get a dinner like this from me EVER.

Starting at the front, going around clockwise. Broth soup with tofu and greens. Rice with healthy millet grains. Simmer dried tofu and stuffed deep fried tofu pouches (stuffed with vegetables and ground chicken). Simmered icicle radish with miso-meat sauce. Simmered mushrooms (three or four kinds). Pickled radishes (she had radishes drying in her yard to later be made into pickles). Pickled cauliflower. Sweet and sour green onions. How's that for a "simple" meal?!

Mrs. Inoue has always enjoyed collecting little pieces of special pottery and she shows them all off in her beautiful meals. Lunch was a delight!

*****

We must have taken the 1995 New Year's picture right before the deadline to make cards. The house was filled with Christmas things. I don't see Lammy in the picture so she may have already disappeared into the forest. She wasn't with us for more than a year or so. Shoko the dog had begun to have camera phobia and we were always wrestling with her to stay still for a picture. She HID whenever she saw a camera!

That tiny Christmas tree is all my kids have ever had. My mother had sent it to me when Tetsu and I were first married and it was just the right size for a small apartment. Nowadays we can buy larger artificial Christmas trees but I no longer put up a tree at all anymore. SHOCK! I learned the hard way a couple of years ago that the cats enjoyed knocking the ornaments off of the tree and using anything red, white or green as cat toys. A lot of smashed ornaments! Though Christmas (material Christmas) has been adopted in Japan I've never seen a cut Christmas tree... if Japanese families put up a tree at all (and most don't) they are artificial trees sometimes with the tinsel and plastic balls already attached!

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