The Angst of Cooking

Cooking is a skill set I never mastered and sorely miss now. The daily responsibility of planning dinner with unfamiliar foods then teaching myself how to prepare it almost makes me want to get a job. Working provides the perfect alibi for not cooking yourself, while simultaneously supplying the funds to pay someone else to cook for you, whether that’s the grocery employees who rotisserie your chicken, the restaurant chefs who prepare your take-out, or the thoughtful folks in the frozen-food industry.

Japanese grocery stores do sell a variety of pre-cooked foods. I never know exactly what I’m getting, but they’re convenient when you’re coming home late on the subway (after spending half a day on a simple task like filling a prescription) and really don’t want to cook. On those nights, dinner conversation at our house tends to run something like this:

“I think it’s either chicken or pork.”
“I don’t know. Tastes kind of – different.”
“Well, it’s pretty good.”
“I prefer this.”
“What is it?” “Beef, maybe?”
“It’s cold and kind of chewy. Is that normal? Maybe we’re supposed to cook it first…”

On one such evening, I searched the pre-cooked food shelves for things that looked like chicken, which generally stand the greatest chance of being accepted by the boys. I spied one package containing short skewers with two breading-covered balls on each. I’ve had balls of chicken before that looked like that, so I put a few packages in my basket. Feeling like I was finally starting to get the hang of things, I headed for home.

Our 13-year-old was the first to try a chicken ball, which is unusual because historically he has been a very picky eater. Of course for him, trying it meant nibbling off a tiny section of the breading. The hole he made revealed the curve of something whitish, shiny and round. Weird looking chicken. He handed it to me with a look that said, “Last time I trust you.” I took a brave bite to set a good example and tasted egg. Quail egg I guessed, because of the small size. It was actually pretty good. I’d say, “live and learn,” but I have little hope of finding breaded quail eggs again now that I know I like them. Next time I buy round things skewered on sticks it will probably turn out to be liver.

Once a week we treat ourselves to Dominos pizza, which is actually better here than in the states. We stick with standards, like cheese and sausage, but the Japanese think that’s strange. They prefer pizzas like these from the Dominos menu:

Lasagna Pizza – potato (when did they start putting potato in lasagna?), parmesan cheese and parsley
Mayo Jaga – potato, “fresh” bacon, corn, pimento, onion and mayonnaise (whitish horizontal and vertical lines crisscross the whole pizza, creating an interesting checkerboard effect)
Giga Meat – pepperoni, “fresh” bacon, pork sausage, and… bacon (not so fresh?)

So next time you fill your cart with foods you can identify and load them into your trunk to drive home, think of me playing guessing games, riding my fully loaded double-basket bike uphill home, and scouring The Joy of Cooking to find out what to do with octopus.

Akemashite Omedetou!

That’s Happy New Year, for those of you without my astonishing grasp of the Japanese language. New Year is Japan’s most important holiday and virtually all businesses are closed for the first three days of January. Most people spend time with family and visit a shrine to offer prayers for the coming year. In the next three days, 3 million people will visit Tokyo’s most prominent shrine, Meiji Jingumae. Mark and I are heading out soon to see if we can get anywhere near it. Leading up to the holiday, the Japanese clean house, finish outstanding business, and generally embrace the prospect of a fresh start.

The New Year in Japan is associated with poetry in traditional styles, such as tanka. For more than 1,000 years, there has been an Imperial ceremony in Japan called Utakai Shiki (Ceremony for Chanting Poetry). Shortly after a new year begins, the Emperor and members of the Imperial Family, all trained in the art of writing poetry from an early age, read aloud the best poems they wrote during the preceding year. As the Empress of my own home, I decided to try my hand at tanka. In Japanese, these poems are often written in one straight line, but in English they are usually divided into five lines, with syllable counts in this order: 5-7-5-7-7. I’ve no doubt butchered a truly venerable tradition, but here’s my poem nonetheless (with apologies as needed):

TokyoMy attachment grows
Like a new crocus in snow
Tentative until
Experience makes a home
And melts the unfamiliar

It’s appropriate for me to share my first tanka poem on New Year’s Day because when a new year starts many “firsts” are celebrated in Japan, including the first exchange of letters, first calligraphy, first laughter, and first dream. Your first dream of the year, called hatsuyume, is thought to signify what you can expect from the next 365 days. So that you can recognize your good fortune if you see it, the three symbols considered most lucky to dream of are (in order) Mount Fuji, hawks, and eggplants.

Traditionally, the Japanese send New Year postcards to friends and family. These are held by the post office and all delivered on January 1st. Can you imagine the U.S. Postal Service pulling that off with Christmas cards? Many of the postcards feature images of the animal that the traditional Chinese calendar ties to the coming year. 2009 is the year of the cow or ox (for calendar purposes, the two seem to be used interchangeably).

Mark was born in 1961, which was also a year of the ox. For him, that’s a propitious sign for 2009. Here’s hoping that the coming year is a healthy and happy one for the rest of us, too!