Three Years on a Rock

Oh, I KNOW there's an obvious joke that I'm missing.

2010-10-18T22:10:00.001-04:00

I've been such a good girl lately. I'm cooking lots of healthy veggies and protein and stocking it up in the fridge and freezer, but not so much that it hinders my roommates, and I'm only eating ice cream for lunch like once a WEEK. I'm paying all my bills on time, and outside of a fixation on overpriced gazebo fruit, I'm not making impulse buys or anything no matter how much I Need (with a capital 'N') another Japanese novel because I've almost finished my first and it's only taken me three years! Don't ask how many loaves of bread I've been through in the last two weeks, thanks to a brand new fixation on toast and honey (or un-toast and brown sugar, but we agreed that you wouldn't ask, didn't we?), and it doesn't matter because I'm keeping my check book balanced and doing my laundry every week! Every! Week! At the laundromat, even. Wild stuff when you've grown up with a washer and dryer right downstairs.

So on Sunday, I was lugging my super clean, folded, almost totally dry (that's what hangers are for) laundry back to my apartment, and saw a chance to make due on my Grand Scheme to buy eggs on the way home. (Protein! Look, meat is complicated and beans and eggs are cheap.) There are a number of groceries on the avenue I was walking - as in, a few dozen per block, and I barely exaggerate - so I ducked into one at random, and that's where I met The Greeter, a teensy, barely grown tabby.

(Fun fact - for ages now, our laundry room has doubled as The Cat's Room. Come to think of it, the potential entry into the litter box's danger zone might partially explain why I've always been rather lax about washing my clothes. That, surely; not general sloth.)

"Hey, precious," I cooed, my standard reply to any greeter worth his whiskers. (That does NOT mean you, Walmart employee.) I reached down to offer a scritch, and he leaped up to swat at my fingers and pussy cat awwsies OH THAT'S A SWEETIE and, yes, I need eggs. (And bread, but we have an agreement.) I made my way to the fridge, and The Greeter followed, demanding the affection due to a businessman of his grandeur.

"You're a friendly little guy," I said, reaching out towards his little keppie once more. With great resolve, he lunged forward and nipped at my hand. Oh, so that's how we're playing.

"Hey, that's not nice!" I scolded him. "I don't like that." And then I opened the door to pull out my eggs.

The Greeter, clearly offended by my candor, crawled right inside and hid behind the milk.

Thus begat the awkward need for Amanda to call over the shop's proprietor and inform him that his cat was inside the refrigerator. The guy was mellow about it - in fact, he didn't seem particularly shocked. Apparently, he's got two feline residents, and while the girl keeps to herself, Mr. Greeter has a reputation for mischief. That said, I'm sure I'll be back again next week: the eggs were cheap, the employees can't be beat, and, well, we aren't asking any questions about bread.

Surprises.

2010-10-12T21:52:00.001-04:00

Let's get this straight.

So, I'm living in New York. This isn't like living in Nagoya; that was Japan. This is every country on earth. Here, you walk a block and you're on another continent; you cross the street and it's a new ecosystem. Everyone has an opinion, and be it through tirades on the subway about sexual orientation; furious pontifications accompanying passing out of tracts at the station; snickering socialites huddled with signs protesting construction; or verifiable Jerks muttering under their breath at the Nerve of Some People turning My City into a Third World Country by Speaking Spanish; whatever the opinion, you're gonna hear it.

This is New York City, where I live two blocks from a hookah bar. Where I went for a walk yesterday, took the subway to China Town, and immediately found a grocer with a display of fresh fish, including live crabs in a bucket and whole sharks on ice. Where I then walked for all of ten minutes and found myself in a Whole Foods with conveyor belt sushi. Where every store has the world's best bagel, gelato, baklava, or whatever's on sale.

I can't seem to go out for a walk on the weekend without wandering into a street fair, and seriously, at first I was planning it that way but now I wonder why I even bothered. There are museums everywhere, bookstores everywhere, parks everywhere, bikers who defy fate and physics by weaving in and out of cars and other bikers who wear helmets and tight pants and zip down tidy dedicated bike lanes and where I live I have no choice but to do a little from column A and a little from column B. There are bento vendors - two of them - stopping by my office every morning, and trolleys and trucks selling fruit, pretzels, knishes, frozen yogurt, cupcakes, and I'm sure that if I speculate here that there's one out there with caramel apples and old fashioned lollipops, I'll come across it first thing tomorrow. Everyone's reading on the train, from magazines, free newspapers, library books and e-readers, and if they aren't reading, they're gabbing with each other in any of a dozen different languages.

And what still catches me off guard every time? Booze in the supermarket.

Trader Joe's sells wine! Seriously, New York, what is WITH that!

Pfft, I bet they make people pump their own $3 a gallon gas, too.

Sincerely,
A girl from South Jersey and the Philadelphia area.

Re-re-regreasing the wheel.

2010-10-11T19:52:00.001-04:00

Right, the colds!

Like it could be avoided. I'm in New York now, everyone! Taking the subway to work again. Shopping at corner markets with suspiciously cheap produce. Living in an apartment that doesn't allow cats, but apparently admits rodents free of charge. ("Better a mouse than a rat," to quote a brilliantly optimistic friend.) Enjoying twenty degree shifts in temperature every other day. I'd say a cold was inevitable.

I'm not even going to complain, because I've had worse. (Once, where my sinuses never even felt infected, but my nose ran constantly for a month... let your imagination do the dirty work.) Still, between that and the assault of other sudden changes in the past few weeks, I'm pretty run down. New York City is amazing - even for Amanda, who has zero interest in night life and is too busy reading manga on the train or plugging her eye sockets directly into her laptop to go out and just socialize, already - but if all I have the energy to do is cook, then cook I shall.

Even if cooking is limited to a very burnt grilled cheese sandwich. At least the soup on the side isn't from a can.

Something to talk about.

2010-08-27T07:43:00.001-04:00

Just like that. I got a job.

It's in New York. Accordingly, I will be moving to New York.

A month ago, I didn't have a job. I didn't have to go live in New York.

This is kind of hard to wrap my head around.

I have a job at a Japanese bank. I need to remember how to understand Japanese. I need to remember math. I need to remember how to live with roommates in the city. I need to remember how to cook in a shoebox with compromised storage space for pantry staples.

Wanna hear about it?

You know what's coming.

2010-06-16T16:03:00.002-04:00

I'm all, "What to write about?" And... I'm drawing a blank. It's just a Significant Time in my life, now; I'm working on important things, Significant Things, and that's not what this blog is about.

(What is this blog about, by the way? I haven't quite figured it out.)

But, I need to write, and I thought, and I thought, and all I can come up with? Bananas.

Bananas! There's this banana commercial I saw the other day, about a happy banana taking a boat ride to the US of A where happy consumers can revel in its freshness, and besides the gall of SPOTLIGHTING the egregious carbon footprint of a single produce - the banana doesn't even look that good. They make it a bright, smooth yellow, capped with a touch of green right at the top.

Green, on a banana. Just seeing it makes me a little nauseated.

Green bananas are a little hard, not that sweet, and hard to digest. Green bananas are not tasty, and yet they're considered the holy grail of bananadom, while brown bananas are the pariahs, despite being mellow and pure cream in fruit form. Why, I ask, why are priorities so misplaced?!

(If you haven't guessed, the whole carbon footprint dilemma doesn't bother me too, too much. You're not about to find local bananas if you're in the Tri-State Area. I deal.)

Frankly, if I could, I'd buy all of my bananas right when they're perfectly yellow - I don't want bruises, but I want them brown within the week so that I can peel them, wrap them in plastic, and freeze them; or slice them to top cereal on the occasions that I forget just how dangerous the flaky stuff can be; or just mash them up as is and mix them with yogurt and maple syrup, and it's like eating pudding, or sorbet, and not nauseating even a little bit.

And then it got dangerous, because I was at Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia the other day, and ran into a Japanese friend who was shopping to make curry. He was grabbing ingredients, musing about what to add to this batch, and I lightly pointed out some pineapples. He got thoughtful. "I... was kidding," I explained. "No, no," he responded, "people make curry with fruit sometimes... pineapple, apples, bananas..."

My brain exploded.

See, pineapples and apples are a little bit tart, and firm enough to hold their shape, so I have no doubt they would add a fabulous complexity to the spicy, savory curry. Bananas, though? I'd never have considered. Bananas, in their spotted apotheosis, are - see above - creamy, mellow, and sweet. I love bananas, and I love curry, but for the life of me, I cannot imagine them together.

Yet, others have.

So if I can't imagine it? I have to taste it.

Salt Cake. (It isn't salty.)

2010-06-11T20:15:00.001-04:00

One thing I love about Cookpad.com (in case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit hooked at the moment) is the "Most Searched Keywords" bar at the top. See, I noticed the themes from the start. First thing in the morning, everyone's looking up "breakfast," or "toast"; in the spring, you start seeing searches for lima beans and komatsuna, just like around Valentine's Day, "chocolate" tops the list. So, I figured, people base their searches mainly on times of day, times of the season, that sort of thing.

No, wait, pop culture!

The moment of realization came after I watched an episode of the anime, "Chibi Maruko-chan." (It was one of my favorites since it met the notable criteria of A: being animated, and B: being on while I was awake.) In it, the main character tastes her first baked apple (an unusual treat in Japan, where ovens aren't standard to many homes), and becomes fixated on recreating the recipe. So the next morning, I fired up Cookpad, and what do I see at the very top? "Baked apple." I felt in the loop, all right.

Since returning to the U.S., I've enjoyed keeping up with food-related trends by checking oddly specific keywords. Sometimes it's a member, introduced on talk shows like "Hanamaru Cafe"; sometimes, a specific, even brand-name, ingredient. Most are transitory, but others linger. I'm still waiting on trying a recipe for baked doughnuts, which dominated the site for a while earlier this year. Right now, the boom seems to be something called "Keiku Saré." Clearly, this was a Japanese pronunciation of a foreign word, and the recipes themselves appeared to be a savory baked good, but I had no frame of reference beyond that.

It took some Googling and guess work, and I'm still not sure what initiated the popularity surge, but it turns out the recipes are for "Cake Salé," and it's French. This is bizarre on numerous counts: usually, the Japanese word for cake is "keiki," not "keiku"; and more importantly, as far as I had known, the French adamantly refuse to use loan words. But there it is: "Cake" is, according to Wikipedia, the French term for "fruit cake." More specifically, there are two varieties: "Cake sucré," or sweet cake... and "cake salé," the savory version. Both are quick breads, baked in a loaf pan and leavened with baking powder, but the savory version swaps dried fruit and sugar for vegetables - "salé" being French for "salt." Not that there isn't salt in fruit cake, probably, not that I'd know for sure, since we were always busy with latkes that time of year. Latkes, too, being on the savory side.

What a great idea! I mean, sweet is great, but it's not really an anytime food. I eat a slice of banana bread, and I sort of feel like I spoiled my appetite for the day - sweets just leave me wanting to nosh. On the other hand, a loaf full of spinach and sauteed onions, maybe topped with some goat cheese? That's breakfast.

So, of course, I need to find a recipe, and it needs to be in Japanese, and it needs to allow me to play Mad Kitchen Scientist. Voila! "Cake Salé * Basic Recipe," by a user calling herself "Witch Diner in the Station," calls for a few basic ingredients and free choice of vegetables. So, you take:

120 grams flour
2 eggs
50 mL skim milk
1 tbsp olive oil
70 mL vegetable broth
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

and whatever vegetables you have on hand; you mix the wet ingredients in one bowl, then the dry in another; you microwave the vegetables for a few minutes, let them cool, then drain whatever liquid came out; you mix the dry ingredients with the wet; you pour a little batter into a small loaf pan (this doesn't make much), add most of vegetables, and add the rest of the batter; tap the loaf pan on the counter a few times to even everything out, then sprinkle on the rest of the veggies; and bake for 30 minutes in a 180° C oven.

Ew, weights and metric. I could have made that easier, couldn't I? Okay, scroll to the end for that, but anyway, I was sitting there thinking, "What vegetables would work?" We have corn, and I decided I wanted corn. What else? Well, we didn't have many leafy greens at the time, but there were some jalapeños, always good. Corn and jalapeños; well, why not make this salsa-like? No tomatoes, but... black beans...?

And then I remembered the black bean salad. The one that I made for memorial day, and everyone RAVED about it, and proceeded to ignore in favor of bowl after bowl of dry cereal. (I've stopped buying it. I have a problem.) Here was my chance to give it its well deserved comeback. Even better, since it had been sitting a while, I hardly needed to microwave it to ensure that it had shed just about all the juices it had to shed.

And then I imagined a poor, forgotten loaf with a single slice removed, gathering mold in a plastic bag or freezer burn as it hid in foil. So I made muffins.

The muffins... wow, were wonderful. They were! The beans kept them moist, the seasonings made them interesting, and the batter held enough filling together that they were really and truly FILLING. (This, incidentally, prompted certain household members to snub them entirely, but, meh, more for me.) Except, they clung fiercely to the paper wrappers, and were a bit spongy, and oh, yeah, they didn't brown. I left them in the oven a good five minutes extra before giving in, taking them out, and remembering that, oh, yeah, sugar makes things brown, doesn't it? No sugar, no pretty color. Crud.

Lucky for me (us? No, just me), this recipe makes all of seven muffins, so, do-over! This time, I decided to throw in some molasses, just enough to cross my fingers and hope for a Maillard reaction. (Science is fun!) I also needed to use corn meal to up the corniness (which, in itself, makes this post a little cornier), and to use whole wheat cake flour for no other reason than that it's in the fridge and I'm me. And then I ran out of salsa halfway through, but still had cubes of cheddar cheese from a previous recipe, so that, too! Finally, I ditched the muffin cups in favor of nonstick cooking spray on a nonstick pan. I upped the temperature a tad, crossed my fingers, and went upstairs to get dressed.

This is the recipe you're getting. Because it was amazing. And because, seriously, I'm not safe with cereal anymore.

Black Bean Salsa Corn Muffins
Adapted from Cookpad.com
Note: I measured by weight, but I'm including volume measurements since it's the only way most people will try these out. Just be warned, I haven't tested it that way!
Ingredients:
90 grams (3/4 cup) all purpose flour, cake flour, or whole wheat cake flour
30 grams (1/4 cup) cornmeal
2 large eggs
50 mL (or a bit under 1/4 cup) milk (fat free should work)
70 mL (or a bit over 1/4 cup) vegetable broth
1/2 tbsp molasses or sugar
1 tsp baking powder
About 1 cup black bean salsa, homemade or bought; or, 1/2 cup black bean salsa + 2 oz cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven to 360° F. Cut cheese into 1/2" cubes. Lightly grease a nonstick muffin pan using additional olive oil or nonstick spray.

2. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. (Add sugar, too, if using.)

3. In another bowl, combine eggs, olive oil, broth, and milk, plus molasses, if using; whisk after each new addition.

4. Pour wet ingredients over dry; stir just until combined with a rubber spatula.

5. Place 1 tablespoon batter into 6 of the muffin cups, then top each with 1 tablespoon salsa. Add another tablespoon of batter, then top each muffin with another tablespoon of salsa or a few cheese cubes. Don't mix! If there is batter left over, repeat with additional muffin cups. (I got seven, but better to play it safe.) The cups should not be full to the brim.

6. Bake in preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until muffins are lightly browned. Don't bake over 30 minutes, though; they'll be done when they're firm to the touch.

7. Allow to cool in pan for about a minute, then gently remove from pan and finish cooling on cooling rack.

I sat up for the typing part.

2010-06-08T21:15:00.003-04:00

Smoky Duck doesn't care that I've had a knot in my back since last night.

It matters not to Mr. Duck that no amount of stretching or massaging will assuage the pain in the slightest, and in fact, it's simply migrating further towards my tailbone.

He does not consider it his concern that even the sight of anything but a straight-backed wooden chair now makes me wince at visions of stale, salty pretzel spines.

All that my little cat knows is, I'm lying on the tiled floor while he's curled up on the sofa.

As it should be.

The first time was from running in the halls. 'Swhy they tell you not to!

2010-06-07T14:56:00.001-04:00

What I really love about how I jog right now is, there are double the milestones. See, I have a "speed" run, where I get to finish under 10:00 miles! I have long runs, where I get to run over 4 miles! And I have, um, the "miscellaneous" day, where I do things like forgetting that the human body includes one of the most sophisticated cooling mechanisms of all living things, and wind up jogging in a t-shirt carrying ten pounds of sweat. But then I can pretend that day didn't count.

All on a treadmill, of course. Wouldn't want to be serious, or anything.

So, yesterday, I hit 4.25 miles, and to celebrate, I... stumbled outward on my right foot and can't rotate it without soreness, now. But after THAT, there was a running shoe producer giving anyone who asked a full foot analysis (to determine the idea level of support in their shoe) and a free t-shirt. Awesome!

Oh, the twisting? Pah, nothing to see here. It's a chronic problem, and it's already much better than yesterday. We won't dignify it with our usual histrionics. Today.

No, I don't want new running shoes. I'm actually quite happy with what I've got now, and ever since I started using cords in place of actually tying the laces, all of the pressure pain on top of my feet has vanished. Still, while I'm always reluctant to take advantage of an obvious sales tactic when I have no intention of making a purchase... they had a foot scanner! Geez, it was the coolest thing ever. Back, conscience! Begone with you.

And the results! A whole lot of "average," actually - average ankle flexibility (with a sprain? Am I a superwoman, or are the salespeople mildly indifferent?); neutral leg axis; normal connective tissue flexibility. I do over-pronate a bit, and I've got a narrow foot with a high arch, which excites the heck out of me because I believe it's the least common foot type, but on the other hand, it probably explains why I've been twisting my ankles so regularly and severely that my whole foot turned purple during summer camp before ninth grade.

Hey, did I tell you about the time my whole foot turned purple?! ...yes? Many times, and always unsolicited? Oh, go stick your head in the sand.

A task for us with stunted olfactory abilities.

2010-06-04T15:03:00.000-04:00

Step One: Chop up extremely cheap organ meat.

Step Two: Combine meat with chopped/freeze dried vegetables.

Step Three: Cook until soft.

Step Four: Mix in some cooked rice.

Step Five: Inform your dog that she's luckier than anyone else she is bound to meet in the near future.

The hardest part is shoving the cat away with the side of your foot.

I, um, don't actually have a Darling Only Child.

2010-06-03T15:17:00.001-04:00

It's like the setup to an old joke:

What did you eat for breakfast? Chirashi-zushi.
What did you eat for lunch? Chirashi-zushi.
What did you eat for dinner? Two helpings of chirashi-zushi.
What did you do all night? Slept an hour and a half later than usual and woke up with unprecedented Foggy Brain, why do you ask?

Clearly, my version loses momentum on the punchline, but yeah. This stuff was tasty.

It really started a few weeks ago, when a Minimalist column focused on raw fish-less sushi. Now, look, I've been around the block, sushi-wise - I've had it prepared a la carte with sea urchin, salmon roe, and squid; I've played chicken with conveyor belt sushi, grabbing what appears to be onions on a blanket of pink foam resting on it's white rice bed; my crab and miso-loving heart has been seduced into ordering a place of "kani-miso" sushi, only to recall too late that A: The Japanese eat EVERY part of anything from the ocean, and B: "miso" can also mean "brains." And it cost me a buck fifty for two tiny pieces and I was surrounded by Japanese friends who had been too polite to ask if I knew what I was ordering, so yes, I have eaten crab brains.

That said, even in Japan, where they sell clearly marked sashimi-quality fish at every grocery store, I never tried to prepare my own raw-fish sushi; it just feels wrong. This is something you leave up to the professionals. I did, however, try my hand at inari-zushi, little packets of vinegared rice stuffed into sweetened fried tofu packets. The recipe I followed had me mix the rice with seasoned hijiki seaweed, which didn't do much for flavor or even texture, but created a peppered effect and probably provided a few vitamins or a gram of fiber or something.

So yeah, this was old news to me, yet it struck a cord: removing the raw fish seemed a tidy way to eliminate the skeevy factor that keeps many from attempting to branch out into a new - by which I mean, long since integrated and increasingly popular in the US - cuisine. And thus, lately I've been promising everyone and anyone that should they ever be fortunate enough to find themselves at my dinner table, I would "make them sushi rice." Everyone! Anyone! Piles of sour, sweet, and starchy buried under fresh, crisp cucumber, creamy, rich avocado, and not to worry, because even the nori seaweed shall, for one night only, remain verbatim.

And then mom defrosted some fake crab meat and I figured, what they hey, tonight's the night.

With memories of the colorful vinegared rice topped with slices of seafood that always seemed to take on an air of celebration at my dorm back in Tokyo (and that I, myself, always eyed with a wary disappointment - adventurous eating is still pretty new to me, too!), I immediately combed the ever reliable Cookpad for chirashi-zushi recipes (and, later, kinshi tamago - strips of thin omelet). The name literally means "sprinkled sushi," and the result looks not unlike a confetti cake. Look - it takes work. I seriously simplified my version, yet I probably spent a good hour and a half thinly slicing and parboiling carrots and snap peas; straining cornstarch-stabilized eggs to make thin omelets to be rolled up and cut into julienne; boiling konbu seaweed (YES, the Japanese use a lot of seaweed) and dried shiitake mushrooms in their own soaking liquid with soy sauce and sugar, then slicing those up, too. I steamed some rice - 2 cups of water to 1.5 of dry grain, people, if you don't want to eat mush - then cut in a quarter cup of vinegar, a couple tablespoons of sugar, and a couple teaspoons of salt, before mixing in the strips of egg and vegetable and letting it all sit a few minutes more. I served it with the crab on the side. If I had wanted to be really fancy, I'd have topped it with pearls of salmon roe and briefly boiled shrimp and served it as part of a huge bento lunch to celebrate my Darling Only Child's latest school club gathering under a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. However, for a late spring dinner with my mom when the weather is convinced that it's mid-summer already, I think I went comfortably beyond "well enough" last night.

Notice that I gave all the measurements for the rice, itself, and nothing else. If you don't have an hour and a half in your spare pocket, consider going for 20 minutes. Mix in a few tablespoons of sesame seeds, then top it with thinly sliced cucumber and cherry tomatoes, then tell everyone about it. The stuff is tasty.

I made it to 3, at least. I mean, I'm not THAT smart.

2010-06-02T13:11:00.000-04:00

I learn so much about running every time I get on the treadmill.

Like, today, I learned that when it's 90º Farenheit already at 8 AM and you're running indoors and you need to get your bangs trimmed and you haven't done your laundry yet so you just put on an oversized t-shirt and your jogging bra's on the snug side and you forgot to get a drink of water so all you've had since 9 PM the previous night is a cup of fully caffeinated coffee, and for that matter your feet were a little stiff and you're trying to run medium speed for a quarter mile longer than usual?

You're pretty lucky that you made it to the water fountain before common sense smacked you senseless, because clearly, you weren't doing anything with those senses.

See? Now my fancy book smarts are supplemented with awkward memories of the guy in the parking lot reassuring me that, "At least you worked up a sweat!" Us girls, we pride our sweatiness. ("Sweatiness" might not be a vivid enough adjective. Think, front row of the killer whale performances at Sea World. Be sure to summon your olfactory imagination.)

Instant gratification.

2010-06-01T14:17:00.000-04:00

I don't always wait forever to follow through on my Brilliant Plans.

Moving to Japan? Well, let's just say that after the idea struck me, I spent a good six years with a sore cheek. Tasting new foods? The goal was to start that at ten years old, which seemed SUPER mature at age seven, but it turns out that twenty was a better fit. Writing enough to justify attempting it for a living? Er, this would be day three, attempt... forty? Along those lines.

And that's just the mundane! All of the stories that were never written, the projects never started! I'm itching to knit a pair of knickers surrounded by tuille, and to create a batch of "I can NOT be the first to think of it" Taco-yaki. I have every intent of following through as soon as possible, but don't wear out your mouse hitting the "Reload" button in your eagerness for pictures.

Every now and then, though, something comes along that actually happens, and happens quickly. It helps if the supplies are easily obtained; it helps if the process is so straight-forward that it's finished before I have a chance to hesitate.

Enter moyashi.

I'd considered this before (and there I go disassembling the foundation of my very point), but the catalyst was an entry from The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl in which she waxes poetic on sprouting. There were canning jars in the sink; they sold mung beans for spouting at Whole Foods; I'm a little hooked on weeding right now. All this was enough to turn my thumb green for the four days it takes to make a batch o' bean spouts.

When living in Japan, I had a period of slight infatuation with these critters. They're pretty pleasant to munch on, with a watery crunch evocative of snap peas (though cooking mellows out the raw flavor and, frankly, is the route to take if you're less lazy than I.) They're all kinds of healthy; beans are good enough, but there's a mindset that sprouting grains and legumes makes them easier to digest and increases absorption of nutrients. (Or so I've heard, and Google kind of affirms that, well, it's holism. Beans are still healthy!) They're - what's the word? CHEAP - even in the US, you'll be hard pressed to find a hefty bag for more than two bucks, but there were places in Japan throwing around half a pound for 20 yen, around 15 CENTS. (The seeds resulted in a bit more than that, and all at the low low price of $2.50. I wonder if it'd work with normal mung beans.) And, finally, they're great in soups or stir fries, the type of veggie that sucks up all the flavor around it and adds a little texture and heft for your trouble.

Plus, they're adorable! Lookit!

Doesn't it just remind you of a mussel peeping out of it's shell? (And nothing else - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE - stop thinking like that!) Precious, precious, oh I love it.

I may be the only one raised in this country to think so. When I pressed my Facebook network to tell me what to do with a jar of mung bean sprouts, the very first commenter said he would "throw them out." A subsequent brilliant mind seconded his opinion.

So I just parboiled them, then mixed in a little soy sauce and a little curry powder and everyone was very happy. And the naysayers can't have any. So there.

Priming the pump.

2010-05-31T14:12:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I went to a party populated predominantly by the family of a family friend; today, my darling great-aunt and great-uncle from out of town visited. None of these are people I converse with frequently, and thus, I spent half the weekend answering some variation of, "What are you going to do with your life?" Innocent questions born of good intentions, no doubt, but I was no good at answering as an 18-year-old high school grad, and eight years later, I'm not much better. Quite frankly, if asked today, I'd probably say... I want to write, or to study nutrition. If none of that works out, I'll settle for baking bread.

I'm back in DIY-mode for the time being, and I've got a spiral scarf and a half-finished bikini top and plans for a frilly skirt, once I find a pattern; and I've been weaving sandles, and some of them aren't even half bad, and the next pair WILL have a Minnie Mouse theme, just you wait; and I've finally learned that if I run two miles at top speed one day, and four miles at skip-to-my-lou pace the next, then no one set of muscles gets burnt out, so the jogging is back on! Mostly, though, I'm back into the cooking loop. The past week alone, we've had Japanese red beans and sticky rice, known as osekihan and excellent for creating choking hazards; ultra soft but hardly squishy hot dog buns, which made the supermarket ketchup-topped hot dogs within halfway healthy, per Michael Pollan himself; baby castella, officially christening my puff pancake pan only weeks after insisting I'd do so any day now; and, as of today, Smitten Kitchen's brown butter Rice Krispie Treats, and good luck not following suit now that you know they exist, even if it takes you, um, seven months what is WRONG with me.

I find it hard to accept that I can't do escapism for a living. If all else fails, couldn't I live with my crafts and work the rest of the time?

Pst. Jingle-jangle.

Ultimatum!

2010-05-29T20:05:00.000-04:00

I want to be a writer, and writers must write.

(I know I'm stealing that quote from someone, or a lot of someones, but given that I have no idea from whom, let's just attribute it to... IOU?)

So! Rather than trying to think up topics from my life, like four mile jogs, or amazing hot dog buns, or amazing-er kaiser rolls, or job hunting For Serious This Time? I got a book of writing prompts. And I WILL be using it, and I WILL be promising entries on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It's part of my job now.

Honestly, if the little couch potato can run a ten minute mile, she should be able to write at least HALF as often as she did in tenth grade!

Step one.

2010-04-24T21:52:00.000-04:00

That's one of the tricks, isn't it? You can't blog about your life when you get too worked up to talk about it and too ashamed for feedback.

I'm thinking, "Old Red" for the bike? I realize it's teal.

2010-04-20T07:03:00.001-04:00

I have a bicycle now! A Novara Express XX Women's bicycle, to be precise.

I've ridden it twice now, and I've got the sore saddle to prove it. I see the podiatrist today, and I figure if he OK's running again, I can warm up on this baby because, after a twenty minute ride, my feet are GOLDEN. Oh, for more hours in the morning.

(Update: I wrote that yesterday. It's Achilles Tendonitis; the doc OK'ed treadmill running after another week of rest. I can live with that. I can still ride outside.)

Incidentally? It needs a name. I'll work on that.

The same day this baby entered my life, my mom and I stopped by the residence of her friend, an expert acquirer of used goods that mostly reside on her second story. It's the sort of home you'd either call "cluttered" or "a treasure trove." Guess which camp I'd join. Sorry; I have a weakness for stuff.

So while I'm braving the Great Upstairs, I notice a pile of cast iron pans. Particularly, this odd little fellow popped out at me:

The goodies that emerge from this baby range in name and flavor from "puff pancakes" (filled with jam and topped with maple syrup for maximum approachability) to the Japanese street food "takoyaki" (with a chunk of boiled octopus inside and a shower of salty-sweet sauce and writhing, papery fish flakes), but if Williams-Sonoma has a say in it, they'll be best recognized as "Ebelskivers," a Dutch treat that's like a middle ground between pancakes and popovers. (Or so I've heard.) (I have had the takoyaki, of course. Seriously, those fish flakes WRITHE.)

"I didn't know you had an ebelskiver pan," I said, going downstairs.

"A what?" responded mom's friend, totally blankly. I explained that it was the name for the pan with the little holes in it. "Is that what it is? I just got it because it was cast iron. You can have it."

What? You're sure? Waffle, waffle. Yes, she was sure. It's mine now, and it shall do my bidding. (Okay, so I'm thinking savory right now, but that's just because I still don't fully trust sweets. I'm working on it!)

Incidentally? It, too, needs a name.

Bearing in mind that I am prone to hyperbole and histrionics.

2010-04-15T08:12:00.001-04:00

Sigh. My feet hurt.

Siiiigh.

I thought I was taking it safe this time - stretching like crazy before and after runs; spending almost three months getting up to speed on a treadmill, and then another three keeping pace before venturing outside; edging in an extra day of running at only half the mileage.

Yeah, half was too much, apparently.

After Sunday's race, my shins went on strike, and my feet and hamstrings have been hinting their plans to join the union. The last four days have been spent icing, stretching, and taking the five stages of grief ridiculously out of context as I jump from depression to acceptance to denial and anger, both at once, and then back to depression over these shooting pains that themselves seem to jump between muscles without rhyme or reason. The one thing I'm not doing, really, is jogging. Or walking or biking, for that matter, or any of those "low impact cardio" routines that you're supposed to jump in on to keep from losing momentum.

In my moments of lucidity, I'm not seeing this as a big deal. So I'll be sedentary, nothing new, for two weeks, maybe a month, and then, worst comes to worse, I'll hit the Couch to 5K again and be back to where I was by mid-summer. Running is a life-long endeavor, right? Doesn't really matter when I start, or where, or how many false starts precede success. Each failure is a learning opportunity, I'm glad I tried it, yada yada.

Yeah. And then the louder voice in my head, the one that asks if I want to eat another pear and then scolds me for being hungry at all; the one that isn't sure I should be knitting from a pattern, unless everyone ELSE is knitting from that pattern, and then why haven't I already knitted from that pattern; the one that closes its eyes and shakes its head - the voice does this - when all I buy is silly little MAINSTREAM comic books; this voice is saying, run through it! Then get thee to a podiatrist! But no matter what he or she says, run through it, ya wimp, because when you're twenty-five and running less than twelve miles a week, injuries SHOULD! NOT! HAPPEN! Pfft, it says. Pfft.

That "get thee to a podiatrist" part, though? That holds water. Here's hoping for rainbows and orthopedics. Because I'm really, really wired. And I really, really need to burn it off.

What happened, Logic? I thought we were friends!

2010-04-12T07:06:00.001-04:00

Things I never expected from my first 5K race:

1. They don't have complimentary coffee, despite the 7 AM sign-in. The heck! (It was also a very small race, but still. I generally attend events expecting coffee. In hindsight, that was probably my first error.)

2. Not everyone is gonna run. And the non-runners are pretty darn content with just that.

3. Not everyone is gonna run the whole way. And even if you do? Some of these guys are gonna beat you. (In my case, um, more than some.)

4. Talking about losing and winning and beating just casts a pall over your whole day. From now on, far as I'm concerned, I win as long as I cross the finish line, and so does everyone else, from the Iron Men to the old lady walking her German Shepard who crossed long after they stopped the clock. Just... the Iron Men win long before I do.

5. There is no designated stretching area. Nor are there any stretches that look too foolish. Improvise and be proud.

6. It's cold at 7 AM. It gets warmer. Quickly. Consider keeping your car keys somewhere other than the pocket on your sweatshirt, because you're gonna want to unzip that thing, and stopping to pick up your keys and tie your shoe and drink water, that... that takes up time.

7. Yet, it's possible to unzip your coat and drink some water and tie your shoes and pick up your keys and still finish so much more quickly than you have been that you're absolutely sure that someone, either MapMyRun.com or the race organizers, is shaving feet off somewhere. Or maybe that's just because...

8. You WILL try to pass people. Tell yourself otherwise all you want, but after the umpteenth time that someone leaves you in their dust at what seems to be barely-a-brisk-warmup pace, you get antsy.

9. The apples are HUGE.

10. Doesn't matter how many months you've been running 3 miles on the treadmill or even outside. When you get up at a quarter to 6, drive yourself over the Ben Franklin bridge, spend ten minutes weaving through Fairmont Park looking for the parking lot, walk from the farther possible spot to the registration area, and pace for an hour before they call you to the starting line, you burn up way more energy than you do sipping a cup of coffee and stepping out the front door. Plan for a nap.

(Incidentally? The race was the first annual Cherry Blossom 5K, a precursor to the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Which I ended up opting out of due to a burgeoning caffeine headache impeding the problem-solving skills I required to find a parking spot after the Please Touch museum kicked us all out. Maybe next year.)

Now that I have a ten dollar jogging watch...

2010-04-09T22:02:00.001-04:00

Okay, so right now, I'm running three days a week, and about three miles for each run. (Except when I'm feeling hyper and optimistic and running about three and a quarter; or when I'm feeling hyper and pessimistic and lasting all of a mile before deciding that if I go any farther I'll break my ankle and never run again and, by proxy, never walk again and, by proxy, have never actually spent the last six months running at all, and then it kinda turns into a full-time struggle not to spiral into Woe Is Me.) Now that the weather is GORGEOUS!!!!!!, I'm trying to ease it up. I mean, REALLY trying to EASE it up, because my two instincts are 1: to force myself into five-mile jogs five days a week; or 2: to keep doing what I'm doing and wish I were doing more.

My college boasted a course called "CIE," the common intellectual experience, which all freshmen were required to take. The whole idea was that we'd study the media of great writers, poets, artists, essayists, theorists, philosophers, and dictators, taught by professors trained in any given field, and talk about what we were learning with our new classmates and Best Friends Forever between binge drinking sessions (or, in my case, staring at the same web sites for twenty hours a day without anyone to stop me - FREEDOM! SWEET, HORRIBLE FREEDOM!). They honestly could have saved a lot of time by taping signs saying "Everything in Moderation" to the front doors of our dorms. Turns out that, all those categories of Very Important People above? Were pretty much getting at just that. (Except the dictators, but I think that, historically, those are the exceptions that prove the rule.) I earned a good 8.0 credits towards my degree being taught the same thing my mom got through with the "Only Two Cookies" rule.

So, everyone important would inform me that easing up my running is the way to go - that means starting by adding about a mile and a half of running on one extra day, and then sprinkling in another half mile to a mile per week, depending on how I'm feeling - if it hurts, take a step back; repeat any weeks that felt like a strain. Keep moving forward, but don't foil your efforts.

Yet, I don't WANT to run a mile and three-quarters tomorrow. I want to run three miles, maybe three-and-a-half; and I want to do the same on Sunday; and if I can't do that, I don't see the point of running on Saturday at all.

"But, Amanda," I explain, struggling to recall whether it was Plato or Aristotle who wrote about Socrates saying something worth quoting that I wouldn't recognize without looking it up first, "A mile and three-quarters is MORE than nothing. This is basic arithmetic; it's a full MILE AND THREE QUARTERS more than nothing." I hope that playing the math card will help; I retained a lot more about math than I did about CIE, other than the previously cited vague recollection of something about keeping it balanced.

Yet, still. It might be because running even a little jacks up my appetite, and I worry that I'll eat more if I run a little than I would without a run, after averaging out calories burned. Or it may just be that the human brain is not designed to process moderation. Which might be why those dictators who opposed it, while scorned by the history books, were probably a LOT more popular during their lives than, say, Socrates. Who was the one who was sentenced to swallow poison for talking about things people didn't want to hear. Just wish I could remember what.

Oh, hey.

2010-03-09T20:47:00.001-05:00

I think I'll start journaling again. (...Journaling. Journalling? Spell check isn't much help.) If you don't mind my talking about food I make, food I want to make, and how I really should stop mainlining cereal and fruit after dinner until I reach a painstakingly calculated ceiling of "enough." (...cieling? No, it's ceiling. See, spell check has the capacity.)

And jogging, Japanese, and generally mishegos born of trying to hop back in the 9-5 saddle after five months of unemployment. (...mishegos. Miche.... you know what? This is what Google's for.)

iTunes, youTunes, weallTunes

2009-12-09T16:40:00.001-05:00

I'm a fan of the Pasta Queen blog, formerly known as "Half of Me." Originally, it was a weight-loss log and culpability mechanism; after reaching her goal (more or less, but that's one of the things I like about her), Pasta Queen diverged into more personal entries about chronic headaches, branching out into self employment, and her cats.

I'll admit that her casual, anecdotal style, which (in spirit, at least) reminds me of my own, was one of my motivating factors in starting to blog. She's also the reason I decided to try out the Couch to 5K; after training for and completing a half marathon (horrified gasp!) as part of her weight loss routine, she, well, I'm going to say "took a break" from running long enough that she began to struggle even on short trail jogs. After running a half marathon (horrified gasp!), she had no shame in partaking in a training program designed chiefly for total beginners. So why not me?

Anyway, there's all that, but mostly, I mention her because she did an entry a while back (that I can't find. I can find more cat pictures?) on the music she listens to while working out. She mentioned a preference for fast beats, sneaking oversized headphones into her races, and a few programs that will automatically adapt one's playlist to match one's pace.

Yesterday, during my 2.75 mile jog (because I ran that far, people! That's 2.75 miles, jot it down somewhere so you can compliment me later), I attempted to listen to music for a while, and absolutely hated it. The rhythm! The pacing! They did not line up in perfect symmetry! No, this did not do. And no, I am not saying that this was the first time I tried listening to ANYTHING on my run.

Normally, I'm very happy with NPR.

Podcasts, specifically. "This American Life" is my favorite, but I'm also partial to "This Week in Food," "Story of the Day," and recently, "Radio Lab." I'm also giving "Planet Money" a stab, in the hopes that a twenty minute broadcast of blog post-esque analogy-based humor will make up for a twenty-five year run of totally failing to understand economics.

It all makes perfect sense to me. If I'm going to run to escape from wallowing in thought, why not upload something new to think about for when I'm done? The lack of steady beat in talk radio lets me work out my own pace, too - and, while I might need to rethink this once the weather grows partial to running outside, there's no rush when I'm stuck on a treadmill.

Am I alone here?

Still time!

2009-11-28T22:30:00.001-05:00

I have an entry in process, to be posted tomorrow. Promise for reals!

Until then: I didn't even remember sending this thing until someone I met by chance contacted me about it on Facebook. Huh. A new friend, and a published letter of sorts! Today ended well.

I so want to make an-pan from this, now.

2009-11-25T20:46:00.001-05:00

When we last left our Daily Update Vow-breaking heroine, she was nursing a freshly wounded ego that craved bread. Pumpkin bread. Yeasted pumpkin bread. Alas, like catgut, the Hundred Years' War, and Diet Crush orange soda (which boasts about forty calories a can - you misled me, supermarket display designed to induce impulse buying!), my beautiful dough was a misnomer of epic proportions; the can may very well have contained butternut squash for its superior texture and pleasantly sweet flesh, and the yeast, well, it managed to sit unopened on the counter for the span of preparation.

I grieved my lost bread far more than I did the family's pet frog that I can't remember having. (He was with us for... years, you say? Seriously, it doesn't register.) I grieved, until I read - alert the presses! - my blog's very first comment ever.

Er. Second, that is, since a long-lost friend claimed a number one spot. So second. My blog's very second comment ever. Ever.

Hey, I've done that too (forgot the yeast)! Thanks for trying our stuff, I'm so glad you like it-- come visit our website for questions anytime-- still answering ourselves.

Signed, Jeff Hertzberg, co-writer of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Which is the book where I found the original recipe, for those keeping score.

Holy dinner rolls, Batman! That sure did the trick.

So, I present to you, for the first time ever, Amanda's Second Attempt at Pumpkin Pie Brioche: Revenge of the Leavening*.

Behold, it is oozy. Inhale, it is yeasty. Smile, all will be well.

The first time I made this, I put half of the dough in a loaf pan, let it rest, baked it, ate it with dinner. The next day, I ate it with pumpkin ice cream. Then, with apple butter. Cranberry sauce. It's not brioche, exactly (I went with canola oil, which is not only healthier than saturated-fat laden butter or highly processed margarine, but - and this is the important thing - doesn't require the additional fifteen seconds to melt it. Spend those fifteen seconds doing something for yourself, like temporarily spacing out while trying to remember why you ran upstairs this time.), but it's delicious.

The rest of the dough returned to the fridge. And Monday night, I realized, it was nearing the end of its short fuse. With a series of busy days ahead of me, I needed to do something now, which is no longer now, but it was then! I needed to do something then. Off to the kitched I trudged.

Drawing on a comment from the book's website, I rolled the rest of the dough into a thin rectangle, sprayed it with a bit of cooking spray, sprinkled it with demera sugar and cinnamon, rolled it up, plopped it in a loaf pan, huffed and grumbled as I realized I had forgotten to grease said pan, shrugged it off, and left it to rise in the fridge overnight. I then trudged back to the den and went back to knitting antique-looking slippers. (I mean that in a derogatory way.)

First thing next morning, it looked like this:

We have refrigerator rising, I repeat, we have refrigerator rising! (Hee hee. I sound like a switchboard operator. Testing, testing!) (My cat thinks I'm funny.) Bread, 1; slippers, 0. I'm back to booties for a bit.

To the oven! From the oven!

Yes.

Oh, yes.

Aaaaaand I'm happy**.

Next time: Tummyache Day!

*Some pictures may actually be from the third bread-making effort, which currently awaits Tummyache Day in our 'fridgerator.
**I didn't actually eat it, by the way. I'm told it was delicious. That's enough for now.

Japanese video: Metropolitan Museum

2009-11-23T07:29:00.004-05:00

I'm going to New York City today for an appointment, and in addition to my routine book store trawl, I'm going to try to stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Art of the Samurai exhibit.

So today, in lieu of an entry, I bring you a video that has apparently traumatized generations of Japanese children!

Translation:
The angel statue on the marble pedestal
Leaned over and whispered to me,
"At night, it gets cold in here.
Won't you lend me your clothes?"
Time travel is so much fun
At the Metropolitan Museum!
If it would be all right,
I'll give you one of my red socks!

In Egypt, the Pharaoh sleeps,
Wrapped in a bed of stone.
I tried to call out to him, but still
He lies in a dream that's lasted 5000 years
Time travel is so much fun
At the Metropolitan Museum!
Okay; I'll just leave set this here,
An alarm clock for you!

A violin case...
A trumpet case...
Who needs to pack a trunk?
I'm ready to go!

Time travel is so much fun
At the Metropolitan Museum!
It's all locked up
In all our favorite paintings!

(That last line could also mean, "I'm trapped in my favorite painting." Which further explains the trauma.)

Another gift card rendered useless by current trends.

2009-11-21T16:03:00.001-05:00

The main problem with knitting somewhat obsessively: you can't really buy any generic knitted goods.

It's not just that you fear being asked by every Shrewd Observer if you made your hat, or your boots, or your sweater. It's that, once you reach a certain point, and knitting stops being a mere vehicle to churn out more scarves, and frankly, you don't even want to hear about scarves anymore, anyway; once you reach that point, at least for me, buying a sweater at Macy's becomes... a Waste.

You still see things, sure; and you still think, perhaps, how interesting a particular style might be, and how attractive it might look should you put it on. The difference, however, is that you aren't actually seeing a consumer product, oh, no; you're seeing a yarn, and a stitch, and a cut of sleeve and joins and seams that you could easily avoid by working in the round, and I wonder how it's set under this oversized collar, and wouldn't it look nicer with that three-inch trim you saw on the sweater by the entrance?

And no, you don't actually have time to make every sweater you own yourself. In fact, you very well may never get past the dreaming stage, or at the very most, you may continue relying on actual patterns from magazines and books and the net, copied more or less to the letter with minor variations to suit your preferences.

But you still can't bring yourself to buy that sweater, unless you plan to unravel it and make, say, slippers.

You can see the slippers when I finish them.

Oh, forgot one.

2009-11-20T08:25:00.001-05:00

So do I write about the yarn that I need for my current project, and tossed who-knows-where-not-me? (After a two hour hunt peppered by deep breathing sessions?)

Do I write about comics, which I've yet to read this week because the comic shop is out of my way?

Or...

"And jogging blog! Cooking-knitting-comics-jogging blog!"

So said my mother, and, oh, yeah. I'm doing the Couch-to-5K.

The Couch-to-5K Running Plan is... you know what? Quotation marks make everything easier:

"You should ease into your running program gradually. In fact, the beginners' program we outline here is less of a running regimen than a walking and jogging program. The idea is to transform you from couch potato to runner, getting you running three miles (or 5K) on a regular basis in just two months."

I'm in the middle of week 7 now - that's three days of 2.5 miles with no walking - and I have to say, this plan is certainly working out. I particularly like it compared to my plan from when I tried running two years ago, which consisted of... oh, that's right, no plan at all. My father and I walked together, and he would tell me to run ahead and come back. As soon as I got back, he'd do so again. I wound up jogging up and down hills, wearing the first pair of shoes I found, barely stretching, and a bit less than a month after starting I was running every other day without walking breaks.

A bit more than a month after starting, my Achilles' tendons began to ache and tear so badly that I limped for weeks. Oops! Dad blamed my lack of a thirty-second warm up stretch. I blamed him.

Turns out we were both... well, I was probably premature in my analysis, and he was only about a third right. This time around, I'm spending five-to-ten minutes stretching before and after each jog; I'm running mostly on a level treadmill; and, in sharp contrast to some well argued theories, I'm trusting my ankles to sneakers designed to ameliorate pronation. I'm also only going three days a week, and repeating days of the program that I couldn't finish the first time. If my initial attempts were foiled by running too far, too fast, too soon, too often over too difficult terrain, then maybe - just maybe - my natural tendency to favor doomsday will at last be trumped by logic. After all, I've made it almost two months so far.

By the way - when my brother got married three weeks ago, I wore high heels to the wedding for one of the first times in my life. Gorgeous shoes; sore calves. I limped for a week, and worried profusely about how my regimen would be affected. Wonder of wonders - after an extra long stretch, I succeeded in jogging the full session without a twinge. The walking intervals were torture, but it appears that jogging really does rely on different muscles. See, kids? Physiology actually has real-world parallels!

Milk for the bread!

2009-11-19T09:20:00.000-05:00

My parents joined a CSA this year, and since coming home from Japan, I've been rediscovering vegetation outside of the sparse pickings at a Nagoya corner grocery.

Carrots? Check. Spinach? Naturally. Little white hakurei turnips, heads of napa cabbage, and curiously itty-bitty daikon radishes? Inexplicably, yes. There's synchronicity for you.

Carrots are great for munching (I haven't turned orange, yet), and both the daikon and hakurei were victims to my culinary adventures - the former, boiled into a newly nostalgic miso soup; the latter, victim to a slapdash adaptation of a savory steamed custard that only I could really finish. Mom tends to lay claim to any greens other than lettuce, which is probably for the best, as my cooking reputation isn't exactly built upon being adept at washing and preparing, and these come to us straight from the mud. (We've been forced to offer lukewarm hospitality to a number of hitchhikers, notably a merry little slug from some lettuce the other day. I was entirely ready to name him Stu and be jolly friends forevermore, but mom insisted that he be evicted immediately. Yet, I'm supposed to make eye contact and listen and everything when HER friends visit. Pfft.) Mom has a knack for cooking leaves, anyways - she's come up with some pretty ridiculously good salads, like spinach wilted by sauteed onions and mushrooms, or braised cabbage with apple cider vinegar, or good ol' fashioned grilled radicchio.

What really excites me, however, are the roots, squashes, and cruciferous veggies. While the carrots never seem to last long enough to actually cook, we've pulled dozens of cookie sheets from the oven laden with beets, turnips, parsnips, and rutabega, not to mention cauliflower, broccoli, and (as of tonight, we hope) Brussels sprouts; and both my mother and I have found ourselves stuffing sweet dumpling squash with cous cous, frying spaghetti squash into fritters, and pureeing butternut squash and acorn squash into soups accented by onions and garlic, apples and ginger, or a couple of sweet potatoes.

Yes. The sweet potatoes.

We got a lot of those. I've been playing with them almost every day, and the pile has barely been breached.

A brief tangent: a few weeks ago, I picked up Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, a sequel to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I don't own the original, but that's for the best, because the book I do own has taken over my life. I've found wild success in the master recipe, inundating my household with whole wheat in free-form, bread loaves, crackers, and croutons. With a basement full of sweet potatoes, it was natural that I try the "Sweet Potato and Spelt Bread" next. I grated tubers until my arm ached, searched high and low for spelt flour, and left a bubbling concoction perfumed by yeast to rise all night long, with dreams of nuanced sweetness and light, chewy textures. As it developed in the fridge, I babbled about making more for Thanksgiving, sharing it at an office where I volunteer, working out the best price to sell it. There's a strong possibility that I was introducing myself to strangers by describing my highly anticipated sweet potato bread.

My hopes might have been a touch high.

Yeah, well, I probably should've drained the sweet potatoes, because that's not what I got. The free-form boule was a total failure; the muffins and the loaf were somewhat better, but still far too dense, pretty much raw in the middle. This is what happens when you decide at 9 PM that you MUST start combining ingredients NOW, and never mind that this is going to wind up way too wet, because thinking is for daylight hours. It's why I'm a day person.

So, last night, I decided to go in another direction, the "Pumpkin Pie Brioche." This one relied on canned pumpkins and white whole wheat, and was insured by eggs, honey, and oil; it seemed a safe bet. And the result had a far more promising texture, still wetter than average (as the book assures is desirable) but stiffer than the un-enriched versions, slightly pliant. The cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves didn't hurt, either. I left it to rise with high hopes.

Ten minutes went by with nothing - no bubbles, no yeasty aroma. Since physics has yet to back up the theory that the progressed time until completion is inversely proportional to the time spent observing a physical or chemical reaction (read: a watched pot never boils), and since I have far too much free time, I knew from past loaves that SOMETHING should have happened by now. Were the additions of fat and sugar affecting things?, I wondered. Or...

Oh, crud. I forgot the yeast.

Yep. A big bowl fulla sweet-smelling dough, DOA. Maybe the chefs of the Night Kitchen can rely on little boys in suits of bread to pilot wonder-enhanced propeller planes into jugs milk to magically enhance their wares with moments to spare; but it was pretty apparent that the time for yeast had long since passed, and so, down the drain it went, and mope I did.

Though, I stopped moping just long enough to adapt this recipe from Smitten Kitchen with sweet potatoes, wonton skins, and plenty of garlic. An hour or so of sauteeing, mashing, folding, and boiling later, I had a sweet plate of dumplings and a freezer full of more.

And a sink full of dishes. But today, I'm not writing about doing the dishes.

...on a rock.

2009-11-18T09:15:00.000-05:00

I made a new friend last night.

We met in my favorite South Street yarn/miscellania shop. I was knitting; she was crocheting. We chatted about the effect of internet misinformation on the versimilitude of information, and about how low standards benefit self esteem.

We also talked about blogs. She has a blog, she says, because one cannot always rant about ideals through an oral medium if one plans to maintain certain social ties.

Me - I have a different problem. I just want somewhere to rant about my interests, to showcase my writing, and possibly to, perhaps, <i>forge> a social life. Earlier entries attest that I found the perfect title; apparently, though, that wasn't enough to delve out an angle. My interests remain myriad and subjective.

"If I write about my interests," I said, "I'd be writing the 'Knitting-Cooking-Comics Blog.'"

"Well, just write about all of them, then," said my new friend.

Yeah, sure. I was leaning that way, anyway. I'll even throw in "Japan stuff," for good measure.

"Three Years on a Rock" has a new direction, then. Same title. ("Knitting-Cooking-Comics Blog" is probably already taken.) My mini-goal: I'll be posting every day until Thanksgiving. Honestly, if A.J. Jacobs can read the encyclopedia, I can talk daily about the hobbies that pervade my consciousness every time the TV goes off.

Taking the time to enjoy life, involuntarily.

2009-06-23T22:42:00.000-04:00

This year, at the beginning of June, I slept in a bed for the first time in a year and a half. I began eating three square meals a day, prepared to include sufficient protein, vitamins, and calories. After months stuck in a job that revolved around speaking nothing but English, I was given the chance to speak nothing but Japanese from morning till night, while I could read a book of Japanese essays to my heart's content. I was cared for.

I would have given anything to be anywhere else.

See, a week before that, fatigue had me set to blow up at work. Shortly thereafter, stomach pains forced me to actually blow off work, at least to the extent of repeatedly pleading for time off. My appetite steadily decreased, until I was eating only my meager portions at meal times, with all snacking phased out. My weight was going down. I didn't want to move. When horrific heartburn had me up in the middle of the night, I gave up and went to see a doctor.

The doctor didn't speak English, and frankly, I didn't care. It couldn't have been more than a bad bug. (Or swine flu, but I'd be far too unconscious for communication to matter if that were the case.) I gladly let him poke my belly and prod my chest, and made no complaints when he ordered a blood test. (Having a fully protruding vein in the middle of my right arm, blood tests have always been short and relatively painless, so long as the nurse is capable hitting the broad side of a barn with a tractor, a skill claimed by a good eighty percent of the nursing workforce.) I even waited patiently for an hour, a full hour, while nifty little machines shook my blood with multi-colored chemicals until weird reactions garnered a string of numbers written next to three-letter codes for proteins, hormones, and acids. The doctor finally called my name, and presented me with a sheet listing those numbers.

Those numbers, as it turned out, were higher than they should have been. Much higher. Around 200 times higher. And the computer conveniently added a little "H" right smack dab next to them, just like how Skype sticks a little moon icon next to your name when you go idle.

"H" for "Hepatitis."

I spent about three full days in the hospital, followed by about three weeks of total rest and frequent blood tests. I've been eating more and moving less, and amazed to see that my weight has stayed the same. I'm finally starting to feel better again, gradually returning to work, thinking about what comes next. Because, to tell the truth, I've had enough.

Congratulations, Japan. You've given me enough material to last me well into my late twenties. Of course, I'll still be here another two months, so at your current rate, there's no guarantee I'll even last that long.

Just so you know.

2009-06-12T08:56:00.001-04:00

Just so you know - I plan to keep this blog going.

Just so you know - there have been some significant changes to my hastily laid plans. But I still plan to keep this blog going.

I just really, really need a direction.

I'll type out a full update on my status in work and health, very soon, ideally this weekend. I have an idea for a series to keep things active for a little while, and will try to implement that (it involves food!).

But right now.... just so you know... plans are truly overrated.

Medium popcorn in a tub the size of your head. Like home.

2009-05-04T02:19:00.001-04:00

What to write about. It has to happen.

Let's see. It's Golden Week, which should be fodder for adventure, but - prepare to feign surprise - I'm not so great at planning, meaning that five solid, consecutive days without work are essentially going to waste. I tend to compensate by riding my bicycle all over the city and watching a lot of movies, though. Window shopping and theater hopping are, indeed, something.

So, well, movies. Hm. Not including that time I saw "WALL-E" a few months ago with the Japanese dub, which wasn't much of anything - face it, the main character mostly communicates in beeps and pops - most of the films I see here are in English to begin with. It's so easy to forget that you're even in Japan once you step in that theater.

There are hints, of course: a pervasive buttery, sweet smell from the omnipresent caramel popcorn; sales of overpriced brochures for every major feature; an employee behind the counter asking where you wish to sit, so that he can print your reserved seat on the ticket; patrons waiting for the last credit to scroll and the lights to flicker on before vacating their seats; Japanese subtitles cluttering the bottom of the screen; beer. Oh, and lots of Japanese language films.

But once you step in the theater - actually find your seat and sit down and take a sip of the diet cola you snuck in because the theaters here don't actually sell any, though regular cola and melon soda grace most menus - once the lights go out, and the previews end and your old friends from Hollywood begin reading their cue cards - it goes quiet. And you're sitting in the same reclining seat, cradling the same old bag in your lap to save it from the sticky floor... and, for an hour and a half or so, you're escaping the unfamiliar.

And, at 1800 yen a ticket, you probably won't be escaping all that often. But, anyway, there are enough theaters at a stone's throw from my apartment, if that stone were dislocated with a cannon, that it's a pretty solid way to compensate for another national holiday that isn't going to be all that different. Hey, I can always talk about food next time.

Cue the Queen music.

2009-03-16T23:46:00.000-04:00

If you have a moment, and only if you're comfortable with it, but would you mind letting go of the mouse, closing your eyes, and saying a quick, silent prayer? I would truly appreciate it, as would a very dear friend of mine whose health recently took a turn for the nasty. Truth be told, I had seen it coming for some time, though when things finally came to pass, no one could have foreseen the manner in which my friend toppled. It's like they say - "When it rains, it pours?" Well, stormy skies certainly raged last week when, after an active lifetime despite ill health, and on something so simple as the daily commute to work, my dear friend's rusted iron seat snapped clean off.

Oh, my friend is a bicycle. I really hope that last sentence made it obvious.

Anyways, the seat thing came from out of the blue, but the tires and the breaks have been giving me trouble since day one, when I bought it second-hand last May. It doesn't help that I over-ride it, but I really do love my bicycle. Like most of the "mama-chari" (ママチャリ) that are popular here, it's equipped with a basket for food shopping and a built-in lock that essentially stops the back wheel from turning; however, while those are single speeds, mine's a six-speed. This might be why I'm so reluctant to just give up and buy a new one, actually; the thought of tackling hills with a common used bike gives me chills. It's Spring now. The time for chills has passed.

Still, it took far too long to get my bicycle the in-patient treatment. (I keep saying "bicycle" instead of "bike" for a reason. In Japan, if you say "bike" - バイク - you get gapes, since that happens to be the word for "motorcycle.") The first place I went to ignored my requests for a checkup, instead skipping straight to insisting that I needed a new one, and that said new bike had to be the most expensive model in the store. The second place, a multi-national chain called "Don Quixote," twice informed me that I'd have to wait until there was an opening just to check it. (The man who said that then promptly went back to lolling around in his fold up chair and scowling. Way to hold on to potential business, corporate world!) The third place said that it would be too expensive to fix, and I'd just need to get something else repaired in the near future, so it would be better to ride my consumptive behemoth to its death, then buy something better. I began searching the Sayonara Sales and sending out e-mails.

And then, on a whim, I went to one more place, where a sweet old guy gave me a loaner bike and, after an agonizing hesitation, promised that he could patch up the old girl for 5000 yen, about $50.

So we wait.

It's always something.

Out of the woodwork, into your reusable bag!

2009-02-28T19:33:00.000-05:00

Welcome to March! I took a month off. I promised myself not to dwell if that happened, but apologies nonetheless. I still need something to get back into the groove of blogging, though. And, as a great man (or woman?) must have said in one of the cartoons or tween dramas I once coveted: When in doubt, stall.

So, a year ago. Over a year ago. I was 23, just out of college, working a job for which I was already overqualified, and ready to go back to a country that considers poisonous blow fish a major delicacy. (That and raw horse. Oh, you never hear about that one, do you.) A month before shipping off, I quit that job by the book, and made cookies for my infantile coworkers which they subsequently ignored, just as they ignored my leaving. Fortunately I also made those cookies for the super awesome coworkers who gave me cute chopsticks that I'm still using, and which have been surprisingly useful, even though countless forests have been sacrificed to ensure that I can always and whenever snag a free pair of wooden eating utensils. Wrapped in plastic, just to make sure Mother Earth feels it when you punch her in the gut.

Ooh, that sounds like a tangent I just can't refuse.

I know that the States are working on a Green movement of their own right now, with Whole Foods suspending plastic bags and all. There's something similar going on in Japan, of course - a number of supermarkets and food stands have come up with ways to encourage customers to eschew plastic in favor of a cloth or vinyl "My Bag" (マイバッグ) that the customer brings for him-or-herself. Said bags are often offered in exchange for points collected by buying certain products - the bread companies are huge on this. While the bigger chains will usually just take a few cents off your purchase, a sort of reversal of the Whole Foods method of charging for the plastic bags themselves, smaller stores offer another point card, giving out stamps or stickers for every bagless purchase of ¥200 or more. In addition, while these cards are generally the same for most stores, and can be used interchangeably, some of the national supermarkets give out their own, exclusive point cards.

Clothing stores and restaurants tend to have point cards, too. It's very easy to lose track of your point cards. And if you don't, and manage to remember said card twenty times or so, and salvage enough tiny, soiled stickers, you'll probably be rewarded with fifty yen or so off when you buy overpriced broccoli. Mazel tov! Moving on.

The "Eco" (エコ) movement, Japan's mandatory abbreviation for "Ecologically Friendly" (which English speakers further transformed into a mandatory metaphorical representation in its "Green" movement), doesn't stop with cloth bags that most people don't care about. You can also buy overpriced, eco-friendly thermos cups for coffee! And, the source of the tangent, reusable bamboo chopsticks, also known as "My Hashi" (マイ箸), which you are expected to tuck into your bag and carry on your person at all times, just in case you're struck with the munchies and need to nip into one of the three or four convenience stores on every block to buy a calorically unsound "bento" lunchbox. (Convenience stores and bento. There are two topics that'll be revisited fairly soon.) For the record? I still can't figure out how "My Hashi" are any different from the chopsticks that you can buy for 99 cents or so in bargain stores. Maybe they're imbued with extra smugness. That would explain a lot about the Japanese psyche. Or maybe, in this case, the ¥1000 yen bill that you exchage for two dull sticks is the equivalent of another point card.

There have been complaints.

2009-01-27T03:02:00.001-05:00

Just a word in hopes of exonerating myself on a point from that last entry: Kasha the semi-puppy is not evil. My use of the moniker, "evil puppy," was merely an effort to empathize with her wary cousins of canine and feline derivation, both of whom have been known to describe her as such in moments of frustration. Everybody loves Kasha. This is a fact.

Carry on.

"Metabo" part 1: The Ballad of Lucy the Dog

2009-01-21T06:03:00.001-05:00

Lucy the Dog is, arguably, the most beloved creature on the planet. This is a simple fact, and you cannot possibly argue otherwise: If you're warm-blooded, capable of rational thought, and not an evil cat or guerilla bunny, you love Lucy. Even if you've never met Lucy, you love Lucy.

Or so my dad would have everyone believe, which is probably how poor Lucy wound up in her recent predicament.

See, in her heyday, Lucy was a solid mass of muscles, with the razor instincts of her (assumedly) pitbull father and the going-and-going-and-going joy-powered body and brain of her labrador mother. She had been painstakingly trained to treat every situation as a possible game, and go tearing through the house barking wildly whenever she got excited. She spent her days sprawled across the living room couch, gazing out the window and snapping into Aggression whenever she saw a possible threat make its way across our property. (Possible threats include large men, other dogs of all sizes, Girl Scouts, squirrels, and toddlers. ESPECIALLY toddlers.) No small animal in the backyard was safe, as we learned the hard way almost every summer.

And, Lucy the Beloved enjoyed treats of all caliber, from carrot sticks to peanut butter; sampled every mass-market brand that could fit into our already overflowing closet; learned to expect her bright-red Kong every night, the horn of plenty, that spilled forth all of her favorites. No problem. Like I said, she was solid muscle. Like I said, that was her heyday.

Lucy has since slipped into her golden years, and she's not the same doggy-dog as she once was. In her lifetime, she's survived lime disease, attacks from other dogs, botched home manicures that left her goose-stepping about in socks, and a certain temperamental teenage girl accidentally (she swears it was an accident and she felt horrible and lost sleep for real FORGIVE HER) slamming the door on her tail. Lucy shrugged off these peripheral attacks, ultimately; there was far too much fun to be had to sit around and bemoan a virus or an ouchy. Alas, our Lu couldn't escape from her genetics, as we discovered a few summers ago when she bounded off after a rabbit in the middle of her walk, then limped home - and never stopped limping.

It was a congenital condition. One of her back knees was shot, and the other was soon to follow. After a summer spent lying down, she finally needed an operation - a stressful experience for anyone, especially a very pack-oriented dog - and that carried another few months of recovery time. Even after her gait steadied out, she was never quite as spirited, growing easily fatigued and increasingly irritable around unfamiliar visitors, such as my older brother's iron-skinned (and -headed) eterna-puppy. She gained weight. A lot of weight. That's what continued to stand out, the weight gain. We tried putting her on a diet, limiting her treats to the occasional carrot stick and weaning her off the wet dog food that had crept into her bowl during her extended convalescence. She got walked every morning (a necessity, seeing as she had begun suffering from incontinence, on top of everything), yet the weight kept piling on. And then the seizures started.

I never saw this first hand (thank god - I'd have panicked), but during what remained of her walks, if she strained herself at all - pulling at her spiked collar toward another dog, for example - she'd occasionally collapse, phase out, and drool for a few minutes. The second time this happened, my parents brought her to the vet and got some tests done. There, they learned two things:

1. Lucy had gained twenty pounds. Granted, she's a large dog, 70 pounds in tip-top condition, but come on, and this was while she was on a diet.

2. Lucy had metabolic syndrome. This was probably responsible for the seizures, and was definitely beckoning additional pounds.

Metabolic syndrome, incidentally, can be treated with a pill, which has become a regular part of Lucy's regimen. Astoundingly, within days, the old Lu began creeping back into those old bones. Her energy spiked, and her mood improved. She struggled less to keep up with Kasha the Evil Puppy, and required less recovery time. She lost weight, a LOT of weight, 9 pounds at her last weigh-in.

But, see... metabolic syndrome. As soon as I heard that, I laughed. Guffawed. In relief, mind, but mostly for another reason. Trust me, you'll laugh too.

You will. Next time. When I explain.

(Meaning, "To be continued." In case you missed that.)

Braaaan(s).

2009-01-11T02:20:00.001-05:00

That does it. I'm baking again.

There were actually two inspirations here - one was a cheap cookbook, and the other a giveaway. But, since I've only loaded the pictures for one...

See, I went to a party the other day, a "sayonara" party for a friend who's going back to Germany within the week. The group of friends that we share is extremely diverse, ethnically speaking - of eleven participants, two (he and I) were of European origin (in my case, a fourth generation American Jew); two were Korean; and the remaining members were all Japanese, though at least two of them had studied within the continent of Australia for extended periods. It's a fun bunch, but the basic point is that the party was decidedly "Japanese," and that generally means either "all-you-can-eat" and "all-you-can-drink," with everybody dipping into the same dishes, or - as this one was, and as I happen to vastly prefer - buffet-style.

To be specific, it was at an "Organic Farm Restaurant" called "Moku-Moku," which specializes in fresh, homemade dishes, many vegetarian, all from seasonal ingredients, all extremely healthy. Oh boy. Please don't ask how many "second helpings" in which I partook, but the whole thing filled a comfort quota that's been neglected in my body for some time, and that goes beyond warm, delicious food. The people present were just fun - non-judgmental, inclusive, unconcerned about nationality or language, resulting in flowing conversations that had more to do with life and the present than futile scrapes at cultural barriers that might not even exist. Refreshing, rejuvenating, satisfying in all ways.

(Can you tell that perceived barriers are something that contributes to my stress? Yeah, you're smart like that.)

But, anyways, I wasn't talking about fitting in and finding my way in an unfamiliar environment. I was talking about food! And, for whatever reason, "Moku-Moku" had a big basket by their front counter, full of little bags, full of a grayish powder, with the sort of sign that seems to glitter and flash neon green lights, even when it's jotted on a piece of scrap paper, as this one was:

"Help yourself."

Everyone was trickling towards and away from the cashier, paying for dinner, chatting, waiting. I grabbed a few sheets of paper, one with recipes, the other two putting a name and information to the mystery ingredient - it was definitely food, something called "kome nuka" (米ぬか). I had seen it before, and knew that it could be made to make a certain type of pickle, but had never bothered to look into it; could this be an impetus to find out? One of the papers, after all, had instructions for making "nukazuke" (ぬか漬け), detailing the pickling process, and it seemed simple enough. Everyone started to leave, and I joined them, walking away, leaving the dust for another day when I knew what it was, what I could do with it, when I wouldn't waste it.

And then I remembered that it was free.

And I ran back for it.

So what was it? Squinting at the sheets of information that I had gathered, and ultimately deferring to Wikipedia, I at last discovered: it was rice bran! (BRAN. Not brains. Why must we all default to the assumption of typos? If I use this much overture to introduce a little baggy full of America's original superfood, I think consumption of brain-matter, or anything that claimed a similar name, would merit a novel at least.) So that would explain all of the health claims. Very nice. Unfortunately, my squinting had also determined that the pickling wasn't of the overnight variety, and would in fact involve several weeks of daily interaction with a bucket of brownish sludge. As tempting as this project seemed, the fact is that I'm slowly killing a basil plant with indifference right now. No, I needed something instant. I needed to consult my favorite Japanese recipe website, Cookpad for anything that I could throw together with zero effort, using ingredients that were gathering dust in my fridge.

Which is how I wound up making miso-bran cookies.

The process - simple. Mix the bran powder, some miso, some sugar (I used brown. Because I can!), some water; roll it out; cut, poke, bake. The appearance was pleasant, not unlike graham crackers. The texture was lovely, unbelievably soft and moist and just a bit crumbly.

The taste, well, opinions diverge.

At first, I thought it was... interesting. Yeasty, a bit sweet, with a strong... something. Hard to judge. Love it or hate it. On the other hand, my neighbor took a bite, made a face, and politely excused herself to go spit it out. She just doesn't like kome-nuka, she explained. Nothing personal. And a day later, my roommate braved the cookies that I introduced as "kind of bad," and announced them to be quite tasty indeed - upon hearing which, I took another, and had to agree. They definitely benefit from aging. That just doesn't seem right with baked goods, but it was true. The yeast in the miso must have something to do with them mellowing over time.

Anyways. There's nothing traditional about these cookies. They probably don't even deserve to be called cookies (health crackers?). But they deserve some time. And with half a bag of bran left... maybe I should just go the expected route this time and make muffins. Or something.

A momentous occasion.

2009-01-05T00:52:00.001-05:00

Happy Strawberry Day!

Because... it's January 5th?

Um. 1/5?

And, see, in Japanese, 1 is pronounced, "ichi," and 5 is "go."

Which makes it, you know... "ichi-go." Right?

Okay. And in Japanese, "ichigo" (苺) is "strawberry."

Get it? Get it?!

This is all according to my "Holiday a Day" calendar. At least half of them seem to be less actual holidays than similarly crafted puns. Expect to be reminded in the event of writer's block.

Not half the story - the New Year in Japan

2008-12-31T19:08:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year, and welcome to a post that isn't ABOUT New Year's!

Look, I wanted to write about Oshougatsu (お正月) in Japan - the New Year's Day - but there's just too much to say. It's a major, MAJOR holiday here, steeped in rituals old and new that begin weeks in advance and don't end until half a month later. You eat special food for good luck, you clean your house from top to bottom, you visit a shrine after watching the clock tick up to midnight and then spend the first day of the year drinking sake and exchanging your old charms and talismans for new ones. And, you watch music specials while you wait for the new year. There's also the year end lottery, and the crucial custom of writing New Year's postcards to absolutely everyone you know, and those who time it right can expect them to be delivered on January 1 in one fell swoop. It's intense.

Me? I ate soba for dinner, then a friend came over, and we sniped, opined, watched TV, read manga, and drank tea until we were both nearly asleep. Then, another friend stopped by. 2008 went out, 2009 came in, and I politely ushered them out as quickly as possible, because I'm not a night person. The second friend went out for hatsumoude (初詣), the year's first visit to a shrine. The first either joined her or went to bed. Either way, I was out cold by then.

Well, look at that, I wrote about it after all. I guess my non-New Year's post will have to wait for a true non-New Year's Day.

On sneezing

2008-12-30T07:05:00.001-05:00

If you ever spend an extended period overseas, you're going to get sick at some point.

Realistically, you'll probably get sick even if you aren't overseas, but most of the time, you'll get off with the same old sniffles, or the same old sore throat - things that you're used to. Stuff your body's been through before, and if it's in the mood, it'll raze it right out, and if it's feeling a bit sluggish and really would rather just take the day off, well, you know where the cans of Campell's are. (Or, in my case, the world's greatest Chinese wonton noodle soup. Seriously, my grandparents have been known to drive an hour to our house and pick it up on the way when my brothers or I report a runny nose, just for an excuse to eat the stuff with us.) Whereas, if you go to Japan, or Europe, or even Canada - heck, even if you jump STATE - it's a whole new battleground.

No, wait, let's tweak the metaphor: the battleground, that being you and your immune system, is the same. But, well, suddenly the gleaming badges of the neighboring army riding in on white horses, the soldiers who shoulder their rifles square upon equally square shoulders and know better than to shoot before the agreed upon day, hour, minute in the agreed upon spot; suddenly, they're gone, and you've got the barbarians. And the barbarians are eating your dinner and taking your women and bashing you with rocks whenever and wherever they please, and your immune system is all hot and bothered and just doesn't know WHAT to make of all of this hoo-hah. All of this means that until the language is learned, the culture acclimated, and a truce arranged so that the proper battle lines can be drawn, you're stuck with steel wool shoved in your sinus cavity and down your throat and possibly in your eyes and brain. Oh, and don't expect your immune system to make peace with the locals any more quickly than you can.

Fun fact: there's a Japanese saying that, "A fool never catches a cold." Assuming that the reverse is true, and given that I'm currently on my third cold within a three month period, Einstein's got nothing on me!

So, let's review: Getting sick is a universal constant. CHILDREN getting frequent colds is a universal constant. Adults who frequently WORK with children, like English teachers, catching said colds with equal frequency is a universal constant. You know what isn't a universal constant? Nyquil. Airborne. Tylenol Cold and Sinus. My beloved Benedryl.

Oh, and the simple phrase, "God Bless You."

The need to hunt for alternative cold medications is a pain, but it's not unmanageable - I can speak and read Japanese more than well enough to get by, and I'm generally too lazy to take medication anyways. However, the lack of a reaction to sneezing still seems off. Proper manners are paramount to the Japanese education, with dozens of ways to express gratitude and apology, or to greet and part. There's something to say when you enter a room, or when someone else enters a room; when another leaves home, or when you leave home, and both are different from when you leave work; changes based on region, age, and hierarchy, as well as how well you know the other person. Many a foreigner has lived to tell the tale of being ganged up on by Japanese store clerks screaming, "Irasshaimase" (いらっしゃいませ) in domino pattern - once one starts, everyone else is sure to follow. It's only proper.

Yet, sneeze, and it's like nothing happened. Your sneeze is invisible. No "God bless you," or "gezundheit"; no "salúd," no "labriyut." Silence. Silence that's only occasionally shattered by another sneeze. (Or, in the case of some guy on the train last week, five more sneezes. And that was just before I changed trains. And not. One. Word.) It's bizarre, so bizarre. I've had to explain to adult students that, when I or any foreign associate sneezes, it is improper not to say something, let alone to keep chattering away as though nothing happened. Another time, I was sitting next to a Japanese man on the train, and he sneezed. Without thinking, I murmured, "God bless you." He smiled nervously, and it ended there. Maybe he went on to talk to his co-workers about this exciting, international experience, or maybe he could care less and forgot.

I've been here for almost 11 months, but like my immune system, there are some things that I just haven't figured out yet.

The less distant past

2008-12-28T04:44:00.000-05:00

When I ask my adult students how long they have been studying English, the response always comes by way of a guilty little apology, and always sounds considerably longer than it should. At this point, I've developed my own standard response:

Teacher: Does that include junior high school and high school?
Student: Yes...
Teacher: Aha. Nope. That doesn't count.

There are exceptions to every rule, but in my experience, nothing from school actually STICKS, and I'm talking right up to undergraduate college. The point of this period isn't to teach you any more than the absolute basics; the most important thing you'll get out of high school is not who wrote "Common Sense," or how to calculate the rate of inertia in a moving object, or whether to put the comma inside or outside of the quotation marks, but rather, HOW TO LEARN. You learn how to retrieve this information when you need it, and how to filter out the garbage, and decide what's worth remembering. Unfortunately, no one actually TOLD me this until long after grade school had ended, when even college had me in its death throes. Somehow, I imagine I'd be a lot less prone to self-criticism if I'd realized that cramming for Bio 101 wasn't an insult to Mendel. I'm sure he kept notes, too. And, maybe he even doodled in the margins.

In Japan, everyone starts studying English when they hit junior high school - it's a required class, and since the curriculum is generally decided on a national level, kids don't even get a choice between other languages. As anyone who has ever been twelve can tell you (I extend this message to everyone 11 and under, of course), narrowing down a tween's or teen's choices to one is hardly the best way to foster an appreciation for said choice. Even worse, said classes are executed in the dullest manner possible, through grammar drills and reading aloud and multiple choice tests, all taught by teachers with nebulous English ability themselves. In many schools, after complaints from parents, said teachers aren't even allowed to SPEAK English. That's right - since they speak with an accent, all of the actual "teaching" is performed by ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) or, even worse, by recordings. Good intentions all the way, but it doesn't exactly make the class seem pertinent to life, especially when that life is at a stage where it revolves around a cell phone and a Nintendo DS.

I don't approve of adults beating themselves up for sleeping through more than a few childhood drill sessions. If you want to love a language, or a culture, or anything, the love has to be personal, and you've got to act on it personally, even if it doesn't make much sense at the time.

It is with great pride that I announce: I learned Japanese to save money on comic books.

Given how much money (and time, and potential) I've WASTED over the years on said comics, along with tapes, DVDs, and other tchotchkies, that statement should make O. Henry himself blush, but bear with me. The source of my Japanophilia was a certain friend from a certain summer spent at a certain day camp, which I attended because my parents toast their children's misery nightly with Tang. It was there that I discovered, at the tender age of 14, that Sailor Moon isn't REALLY a cartoon, and is thus totally OK to watch. After staunchly promising myself not to become obsessed, this time, I proceeded to join the crusade against dubbing and buy the comics.

At the time, English-translated manga was still a novelty. The selection was limited to a single shelf at the biggest bookstores, and horrifically overpriced - I still recall that the first volume of Ranma 1/2 grazed at $20. On the other hand, some of the comic book shops would occasionally stock a volume or two of the Japanese originals, and well! Well! Less than $7, on average, and the selection! When it took five or six months for a single volume of issues to merit a graphic novel release, the idea that the future sat in some little island on the other side of the world made me drool. So began the collection, aided by various online shops, eBay, and - eventually - day trips to the Japanese bookstores of New York. (I lived a two hour train ride away. Yes, I'm not helping my case here, but that was impossible from the start.) And, in the midst of this, I bought a few dictionaries, spent a few hours staring at the foreign writing system, and suddenly realized that I could read Japanese.

By the time I hit college, it was a given that I would be studying Japanese for really-reals, and would eventually make my Japan Debut. Of course, I probably should have planned it better... but, then, that's less distant than the less distant past.

Keeping it short - last night's dinner.

2008-12-27T08:10:00.000-05:00

My dinner last night: pasta topped with sauteed hijiki, onions, garlic, and enoki mushrooms. I got the idea from a cookbook I bought recently, "vege dining: 野菜のごはん" ("vege dining: vegetable meals"). It's actually based on a popular Japanese blog (and yes, the site is in Japanese - and yes, there are lots of pretty pictures, so if you're really that bored, feel free to click regardless), and boasts meat-free, quick to make, low-calorie meal ideas, which are generally the three things I look for in my dinner, so the real question is, why haven't I bought the sequel yet?

But anyway. It wasn't half bad, for a dish that looks like it has a five o'clock shadow. And with that mental image firmly entrenched, would anybody care for the recipe?

The mission statement

2008-12-26T04:01:00.000-05:00

I've wanted to start a blog - on a variety of subjects - for at least a couple of years now, but never did. It wasn't so much that I lacked subject matter (just being alive seems all the qualification one needs to take the internet by storm), or even inspiration. No, what I needed was a spark - a reason - the fizzle and death of my final excuse NOT to blog. Granted, there were plenty of those, too; what if it lacks cohesion? What if no one reads it? What if I write three entries and then get bored and give up, huh? WHAT THEN?! - but ultimately, I needed to whittle that down to one, something concrete. I settled on the title.

I needed a good title, that was what! Something with punch! Something that represented me, my style, my quirks, and then, the world, the people in it, the quirks I would observe and process and spew out the outer husk and possibly most of the nutrients before presenting, steaming hot, to my starving fans! (In my mind, there are always fans. It's a logical piece of the equation; one part inspiration + legions of fans = internet popularity! I find it best to replace the two parts perspiration with an equal amount of fat-free low-sodium vegetable broth. It's healthier and more flavorful.) The title was the thing that held me back. Once that problem was solved, there was nothing to do but log on, tune in, and start typing.

So, a few weeks ago, some friends and I headed to the Nagoya Creator's Market, a large craft fair by the city's pier. At some point, as is inevitable when you've got ADD and too many colorful bits of fabric around you, I wandered from the group, and spent some time filtering between booths full of stuff that I clearly needed but could, in hard times such as these, grudgingly live without. (Though it would certainly lower my quality of life to go on without doughnuts made of felt and a book of some amateur Japanese blog poet's musings on how life is, too, wonderful and worth living, so take that, pessimism!) And that's when I saw the frog.

He was very floral, very froggy, very much on a lily pad. He was also very half-price. The three women who made him (they emphasized that each piece was a team effort) were also very, very charming, encouraging me to keep up my Japanese studies during one of my frequent (as of late) moments of stewing over just how difficult it is to find someone that will actually talk to me. And, most importantly, he was a frog.

What really drew me, however, was the calendar that he held, which includes three years worth of pages, and the tongue-in-cheek tag line that accompanied it: "Ishi no ue ni mo sannen karendaa" (石の上にも三年カレンダー), or "A three-year calendar on a rock." Never mind that the frog was actually seated on his very own lily pad (a lily pad! And he's a frog! Squeal!); the expression was familiar to me, and it struck me as one of the cuter puns in a tragically over-punned country. The meaning of the phrase, too, is one that I rather liked at the time, for no real reason except just because. At any rate, it brought the phrase to the forefront of my mind, and as the frog, who may or may not be dead according to a certain lovable neighbor, has taken residence in my living room, each look at him was a little reminder of his association with the metaphorical vigil.

The frog's name, by the way, is Jerimiah. My little brother came up with that one. Call him Jerry.

Anyway, a few days ago, and I can't even remember why, it occurred to me that "Three Years on a Rock" would make a nifty blog title. Based on an actual saying - check. Established significance to me - check. A little bit confusing, yet relevant to a broad range of subject matter - check. Score! And so, the blog was born.

As I proudly announced the birth of TYOAR to another neighbor/friend, however, her immediate response brought a certain problem to the forefront: "Of course, now you have to stay in Japan for three years to prove the saying right." Abuh? Oh dear. That very possibility had occurred to me, but I brushed it off as paranoia. Now, though? If other people are thinking that, then it must be addressed.

Three years of doing something is, well, a long time. It's very hard to hold myself accountable. (It took over a year just to think up a blog title, people!) On the other hand... I dunno. Staying in Japan for three years is rather unlikely at this point in time, due to various other plans, but... any ideas? Three years to endure... something? Personally, I'm up for letting karma take its course and decide for me... but that's just me.

So... there you have it. Three years of... something, starting once it's decided what that something shall be. Until then, well, structure is another post, now isn't it?

The distant past

2008-12-24T20:40:00.000-05:00

My mom has told me a story - and this is something I vaguely remember - about a certain event from my fourth year of life. At the time, I was a fresh big sister to a brand new baby brother (Hi, Ben! For the love of Ford, go shave!), and a suffering baby sister in her own right (Hi, Mike! Have I mentioned lately that you're ugly?). I was also enrolled in preschool, spending her busy days (well, mornings) singing songs about being swallowed by boa constrictors and her afternoons watching "David the Gnome" and "Eureka's Castle," because TV used to be worth watching for ten hour stretches. And, with that routine firmly entrenched, it became my mission one day to walk to school.

For the record, my preschool - actually a synagogue - wasn't all that far from our house, perhaps a mile in total. And, surely, I noticed at some point that the car ride hardly seemed worth the time it took to strap my brother and I into our car seats, to get on our coats and wait for the car to heat up or cool down, to go back inside after waving my older brother off on his bus ride to the Big Kids' School only to go right back out again. Surely, the idea of covering the distance under my own ambulatory power appealed to the born control queen that was even then emerging. (This really was when it had become apparent that little Amanda wasn't planning to grow up like all the other children; already, my best friend was my remarkably docile teddy bear). At any rate, I had determined that I would walk to preschool, and nothing my mother could say - NOTHING - could convince me otherwise. So, it was with great excitement on my part that she finally relented, and one day, with my brother in his stroller, we found ourselves off on foot towards our destination.

Remember, now: I was four-years-old. Four. With the exception of bizarre super-babies who are born with actual muscle mass and bench-pressing by the age of six, young children just aren't designed for sustained cardiac exercise - that's why they hold off on phys-ed until you're at least old enough to sign a waiver. (I think we were about up to "G" in the alphabet at this time. I've got a "Y" in my name and everything.) Ten minutes in, the love affair with my own brilliance was wavering. Fifteen minutes in, I was begging my mom - carrying a backpack and pushing a carriage - to carry me. By the time the school emerged on the horizon, after who knows how many strenuous minutes, I was just about ready to collapse. We arrived late, and I ended up sleeping most of that class. (At least I rocked nap time!) So much for great ideas.

This is just my extremely roundabout way of saying that I have been stubborn my whole life, and regretting said stubbornness almost as long. Generally, when I get an idea in my head, it happens. On the other hand, I'm extremely cautious, and fairly sensitive to criticism - likely survival instincts instilled by the Creator when the alternative to sense became apparent. So how does someone who craves a world where everything is "right," after defining her own "rights" and "wrongs," get through life? At the moment, I compensate by simply doing things on my own terms - my way or the highway - and trying not to mourn every roadblock. It works surprisingly well.

And then I came to a country that has already put a great deal of its own thought into what's "right" and "wrong," and just like that, my policy was put to the test. Which brings us to the dawning of 2009, where Amanda sits in her third apartment within a year, after seeing off her third roommate within a year, searching for her fourth job. It was meant to be a year of chances. So far, so good...

The introduction

2008-12-24T19:30:00.000-05:00

(Somewhere in the annals of my memory, I recall a nebulous source - some teacher or textbook - drilling the warning that one must never begin an essay, a report, or a story with a quote. To do so is seemingly the height of unoriginality, and forever entraps the writer as a hack.

Frankly, I agree with that wholeheartedly, and I consider this blog to be as linear as any high school history book; which is why I must tell that source, with great sadness: I can't think of anything better. Sorry.)

There's a saying in Japanese, "Ishi no ue nimo sannen" (石の上にも三年), which translates literally to, "Even if you spend three years on a rock..." The wording draws my memory to a number of similar-sounding phrases that pervade the English language: "You must have spent the last three years living under a rock," or "The grass is always greener on the other side." (Think back to the fable that spawned the latter. Yes, my brain frequently makes connections that require careful explanation.)

It's safe to say that these phrases spawned by a so-called "Western" language carry with them "Western" sensibilities - keep up with the times! Enjoy what you've got! It's all in your head, so stop suffering and start moving! It stands to reason that a phrase born in the Japanese language would, then, reflect Japanese sensibilities. And, quite honestly, the meaning of "Three years on a rock" does just that: in practice, it means that no matter how unpleasant a certain situation may be, if you continue to persevere through the hardship, you will ultimately be rewarded for your patience. Or, in other words, "That's the way it is and should be, so grin and bear it."

I'm an American girl, stubbornly independent even by American standards. Seriously - no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I want to, I can't do ANYTHING by the book. Which, well, sits with me just fine. So, what happened when Bethama, the reluctant nonconformist, decided to move to Japan, work for one of the major "Eikaiwa" private English schools, study Japanese, and, just maybe, fall in love with a cute Japanese dentist?

It's very doubtful that she's going to last three years, that's what.