Things I did this weekend that made me proud of myself:

1. I made a painting for Metal Victoria! It's another in my Interesting Interesting series, with a green background, her favorite color.

2. I made a painting for my room because my EE said I need to have a painting of green mountains and blue sky. So I made a painted version of a photo she sent to ah Ma. I used spray paint and Posca pens on a new canvas, and it's actually something that I enjoy looking at!

3. I watched the short YouTube video that Luciano told me about several months ago, of Benjamin Buchloh talking about the Gerhard Richter show he curated. Buchloh is the kind of art historian I aspire to be, he has a thesis in what he's looking for, speaks clearly but still has the language of art history when he talks.

4. I rode my bike 66 miles today with Angel and Jake to Carpinteria. We met Robert partway. I really guestimated how many calories I used on the ride (Strava says 1597, but I think it's a gross overestimate), but hopefully I still have a caloric deficit after the big Chipotle vegan bowl because the honey vinaigrette is over 220 calories!!!!!! So next time I won't use it omg.

5. I found and listened to a book on Libby, which my mother uses to listen to books on her drives and at work and when she is on her long lunch. I listened to Marie Kondo's the magic of tidying up, and it is exactly what I have been experiencing firsthand of the changes to my room that my EE told me to make.

5. I am writing a blog post!!! I have been wanting to for years, and even more lately, and now FINALLY I am doing it.

The reason I am doing so many things now is because I CLEANED AND ORGANIZED MY ROOM! The foongsui is REAL. Marie Kondo's philosophy is the same thing. I am so grateful for my mother and for my EE. My life is changing and I feel it. I even see repeating numbers again, and running into Darcy and Luciano in Ventura on our bike ride today is more signs that I am on the right path. I wonder who the two black crocheted sheep represent, the ones in my room, that my mother made because EE told her to...

Kinpira Gobo (Burdock root and carrots)

Ok, I think you subscribers to my wondertasticular blog have waited long enough for the illustrated recipe for KIMPIRA GOBO. So voila, ta-da, ya-ho!

Here is a shot from an earlier te-shoku (complete meal with many side dishes served on a tray) that has kimpira gobo in it (on the pink flower plate in the upper left, next to the tofu topped with a natto-kimchi mixture, photo courtesy of the tuba).

Step 0: Get the ingredients to get together in your kitchen.

• 1 gobo
• 1 really big carrot
• sesame oil
• mirin (sweet, vinegary, winey liquid you keep in the fridge), or sugar if you don't have this
• men tsuyu (concentrated soup base for noodles like soba and udon, available as a liquid and kept in the fridge), or soy sauce if you don't have this
• sesame seeds

Step 1: Peel the roots.

I peel the carrot with a vegetable peeler, but for my more earthy readers you can skip this step and just wash it. To peel the gobo (which is recommended because gobo skin is REALLY earthy) you use the back of your knife and scrape the gobo skin off. Don't use too much muscle because it comes off easily and is very thin (fig.1):

Figure 1:

Step 2: Cut the roots.

Holding the gobo in your anti-dominant hand like you're about to hit someone with it, cut it into shaving-like pieces (that might be called shaving it, but don't cut it too thin) with your favorite kitchen knife. My favorite knife is called Shun by KAI, a gift to Pa from his fancy student, which the chicken-chested ninjat says looks like some kind of traditional Japanese weapon. Shave the gobo like you might use a penknife to sharpen a pencil before they invented pencil sharpeners (or if your pencil is more of a rectangular prism than a cylinder, even after they invented pencil sharpeners). Here is Shun taking a breather from the action in fig. 2:

Figure 2:

Do the same to the carrot, and submerge them all in cold water.

Step 3: Cook the roots.

In a medium to large frying pan, heat about a 3.5" diameter circle of sesame oil on medium-high heat. Drain and add the roots, and stir-fry with a pair of very long chopsticks like the fancy $5 made-in-japan ones I have here, or a free pair from chinese take-out, or a spatula if you feel like being only about 85% authentic (figs 3-4.) Add a splash of water when it starts to look dry and smoky, about 2-3 minutes. Put a lid on the pan, and steam until the water is pretty much gone. Turn the heat down to a little lower than medium.

Figure 3:

Figure 4:

Step 4: Add the seasonings.

Coerce all the veggies into a pile in the middle of the pan, and pour mirin around it like you're making a mirin moat. How much? Make 2 circles around the pile, spending approx. 2-2.5 seconds making each circle. You will have to shake the bottle to get it to come out because it doesn't pour like soy sauce. So the mirin will come out in straight lines, which makes you feel like you're more like drawing tangents to a circle instead of a circle, but that's OK. Stir the veggies around to distribute the mirin. If you use sugar instead, don't do the moat thing, just sprinkle it on top. Maybe about 3-4 tbsp.

Then make it into a pile again and repeat with the men tsuyu, except don't shake the sauce out because it pours like water, and would make a salty brown soup if you did. Make one circle around the veggies, spending approx 2 seconds and with a stream of sauce approx. 3-4 mm in diameter (I know liquids don't come out in a stream shaped like a cylinder, but you know what I mean.) If you use soy sauce instead, do the moat thing but use only about 3-4 tbsp (more or less to taste.)

Stir fry on low-medium heat until the sauce has evaporated, the carrots are tender, and the gobo is slightly translucent.

Step 5: Make it look nice with sesame.

Sprinkle and distribute the sesame until it looks pretty (fig.5).

Figure 5:

Serve on a small dish, one per person. I find that kinpira gobo looks best served on warm-colored dishes. Make a haystack-looking pile in the middle of the dish, covering around 30-40% of the surface of the dish. Sometimes, if there is not very much sesame in the rest of the dish, I feel like an extra sprinkle of sesame on top looks nice. Here is the kinpira gobo presented on a pink flower-shaped plate as a side dish in a complete chicken teriyaki te-shoku (shown from the server's point of view in fig. 6):

Figure 6:

And here is a picture of the food photographer for this entry, Robin the Eyes-On, looking like she doesn't mind that she was being made to eat by herself (fig. 7):

Figure 7:

Here is a gratuitous photo of the dinosaur baby during the preparation of the kinpira gobo te-shoku (fig.8):

Figure 8:

I will conclude with figure 9, which features the cranky dinosaur, the photographer, the cook, and the teen-aged toddler:

Figure 9:

Natto as part of a complete breakfast

This is how I presented the Japanese chicken-chested man his breakfast the second time I made natto-spinach egg rolls. Or well, not egg rolls, but rolled up eggs. Like curly omelets. On the left you will find our green hand-felted brontosaurus from the craft fair that we went to with the very artsy-fartsy Robin, admiring and thinking about yoinking T's breakfast. On the main plate there's the spinach-natto-ponzu rolls (protein), in the upper left is kinpira gobo (fiber), and in the upper right is boiled sweet potatoes (fiber and starch). Like every complete Wa-foo breakfast, this is accompanied by miso soup (this one has enoki, tofu, wakame (the usual flat and dark green miso soup seaweed), and possibly something else, I can't remember), rice topped with shirasu (sweet, dried sanjeel fish), and Yama-moto-yama (a nice brand, nicer than Trader Joe's not-even-green) green tea.

Here is a closer-up shot of the main dish:

Learning from T's mama, the consummate Japanese housemommy, everything but the egg thing is leftover from the day before.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "WHAT IS KINPIRA GOBO?!?" I will tell you so you don't have to go and Google it. First, kinpira is pronounced "keeM-pee-ra" because of what geeky people call place assimilation. Next, gobo is burdock root (the long, as in 3 to 4-foot-long, 1" diameter tapered brown stick things at Asian supermarkets that you can get for about $0.80 each,) and kinpira gobo means you stir-fry it Japanese-style with carrots and top with sesame seeds.

I will post the complete recipe in another post once I have a nice close-up photo of it. But that won't happen until after the next time we buy gobo. So gimme about a week or two.

CAN YOU WAIT THAT LONG?!?! がんばって、ね！！

And I will conclude with a picture of when I caught the dinosaur sneaking into the green tea:

BAD BRONTOSAURUS, BAD! GET YOUR OWN TEA!!!

Natto & spinach breakfast egg rolls

This item was inspired by a photo of a sample breakfast on a package of natto. In case you don't know yet, natto is sticky, slimy, fermented soybeans. It is infamous among non-Japanese as the ultimate, authentic Japanese, "um, yeah...I can handle/love wasabi/red bean paste/uni/raw horse meat (more on that later) but I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot-pole" breakfast food. I think natto has this reputation because we foreigners try to eat it PLAIN, which is quite the horrible idea, since it's slightly bitter, stinky, and otherwise mostly tasteless. But if you buy the kind that comes with sauce, and add hot mustard, and maybe a raw egg yolk, then hooooo lordy lord, it is soooooo gooooood!

Here is a closeup of le "egg roll" (photos courtesy the cute Japanese man):

I made this like an omelet, and the filling is natto (with sauce), chopped (frozen) spinach, and a bit of ponzu. I made this for breakfast for T and he actually loves it so much he has declared it his favorite breakfast food by Gi. やった！

Tomorrow, I will post a photo of this item as part of a more complete wa-foo (i.e. Japanese) breakfast. Get excited! じゃ、またね！

Sail Forth, Ye Ship Full Of Homemade Japanese Food

Welcome to Gi's new blog about something sort of more interesting than how boring it is to be a housewife, i.e. her homemade assemblies/creations of Japanese-inspired GRANDE CUISINE. Or should I say, "GRANDE CUISINE!!!" Or no, better yet, "~☆GURANDO KUIJIIN☆~".

What led up to this blog? Well, since I don't make money, I can't afford to go out to restaurants, so I eat at home. And since I am married to a cute (and skinny, chicken-chested) Japanese guy, I have to make cute food. And since I think Japanese food is super-duper yummy, I try to make cute Japanese food. AND, since I need a hobby, I am going to post pictures of my work for the enjoyment of the entire universe. Et voila, GURANDO KUIJIIN!!!

I have quite a backlog of photos, so what I post will be stuff from this past year mixed with more recent stuff.

ENJOY!! 　いただきま～す！ごちそうさま！