menu for April 9, 2022

Soup

Homemade miso (in the making since last winter), garden kabocha squash, daikon, and green onions, wild chickweed greens, tofu and carrots.

Main

Fresh Kale greens quiche with garden eggs (chicken and turkey), garlic, onions, mushrooms, cream, Italian cheeses, and shrimp (I thought of shrimp with the ocean in mind for Earth Day.)

Sides: Garden rappini salad with cucumbers, carrots and sesame soy dressing

Baby lima beans with mixed wild and brown rice topped with fresh garden cilantro (The bright green cilantro and baby lima beans show the green of spring leaves and grass. The baby lima beans also remind me of planting seeds in the soil for a new garden!)

Dessert

Tiramisu topped with chocolate shavings and Eastern RedBud flowers.

The soaked ladyfinger cookies in the cake brought back a memory of when I was a little girl and went to the Buddah’s birthday Flower Festival at a local temple. It is celebrated every year in Japan on April 8th. The people from the temple place flowers on a little shrine with a Buddha statue – his right hand pointing up and his left hand pointing down. The Buddha also stands in the middle of a pool of ama-cha (a sweet tea made from fermented hydrangea leaves). We poured some ama-cha over the Buddah using a small dipper. Not as many people know about the Buddah’s Flower Festival in Japan because it isn’t as commercialized as a holiday like Christmas in Japan. I would have liked to have used ama-cha to soak the ladyfinger cookies in the tiramisu, but instead, I combined some sweetened hoji-cha (roasted green tea) with chicory, brandy, and espresso. The filling is mascarpone cheese and whipped cream and topped with organic cocoa powder and chocolate shavings. The tea we are drinking is hot mugi-cha (roasted barley tea).