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Sayuri’s note for 4/8/23 dinner menu
There is now tender green grass growing in the garden, and the chickens have started laying eggs. It’s so exciting to find their eggs in the nesting box! When our kids were little, we used to do Easter egg hunts in the garden. Those are some of our fondest family memories. After the flood on March 26, 2021, we had so much to clean up in the garden. One of Sarah’s friends came to help out on April 4th, and although it was a little early, we did an Easter egg hunt for them. They were so happy looking for eggs. Later that day, Joe found an Easter egg from many years ago that the kids must have missed. Inside, we found a golden egg (from the empty foil wrapper of a chocolate egg) sitting in a nest of beautiful moss. It was an amazingly beautiful creation by Mother Nature! Speaking of which, Earth Day is on April 22!
Image from Jotokuji (Buddhist temple where Sayuri's family is from)
Spring’s arrival reminded me of a memory from a spring day at my kindergarten in Japan. I remember using a little dipper to pour a sweet tea called amacha (made from the fermented leaves of a special Hydrangea variety) over a little Shakyamuni (Buddha) statue in the flower pavilion at the kindergarten. At that time, I don’t recall making the connection that it was his birthday that we were celebrating, but I recently realized that the Buddha’s birthday is celebrated on April 8th. According to explanations I read about the statue’s pose in the flower pavilion, it is based on what he did soon after he was born. The story goes: Shortly after the Buddha was born in a field of sweet smelling flowers, a sweet dew fell from a nine-headed dragon in the sky, purifying him (which is what the amacha represents). Then, the Buddha took seven steps in each of the four directions and struck a pose (standing, holding one finger up on his right hand up above his head, and one finger on his left hand pointing down), and said that there is only one precious thing when you are born as a human being--that all people can rise above the six realms of desire and suffering, until they reach a seventh, heavenly (transcendent) state.
The inspiration for today’s menu is Easter and the Buddha's birthday. The kale and collard greens, rapini, green onions, and garlic chives in the garden have bounced back from the cold weather (3 degrees Fahrenheit / -16.1 degrees Celsius) we had around Christmas. They are so delicious now! You can get a lot of power from them. I chose a noodle called Harusame today, which means spring rain in Japanese. We will also serve rapini salad alongside the Harusame noodles. Tsukune are usually chicken meatballs with a sweet sauce in Japan, but I modified the dish with Easter in mind by shaping the meat into patties with shredded carrots and kale and spicing up the sauce. The Hojicha roll cake recalls my experience in Kindergarten pouring the sweet Hydrangea tea over the small Buddha statue.
Soup
Soup
egg, garlic chives, onion, corn soup with green onion
Main
Main
Tsukune (ground chicken/vegetarian meat patty) with carrots and kale,
Harusame (thin noodles made from mung bean starch) salad (cucumber, carrots, wakame, sesame seeds) and rapini salad with sesame-soy dressing
Onigiri (rice ball) with red shiso
Dessert
Dessert
Hojicha (roasted green tea) roll cake with fresh mint tea
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