menu for September 17th, 2022

Sayuri's note

September 10th was the Harvest moon in 2022. In Japan we appreciate the harvest of the year by decorating 15 dango (rice dumpling balls) on a night we call “Jyuugo-ya (十五夜)” for the fifteenth day into the moon's monthly cycle. We go outside to view the beautiful full moon, “Otsukimi” (お月見). Besides the fifteen rice dumplings (dango), we decorate using fall vegetables like sweet potatoes, nuts (like chestnuts), fruits (like pears and grapes), pampas grass, and seasonal flowers. After viewing the Moon, we enjoy eating the foods that we decorated with. It was a rainy night in Georgia this year on the night of the harvest moon on September 10 so we celebrated the night before!

The Cherokee Indians called the September moon the "Nut moon" and the October moon, the Great Moon, when all life appears to have reached full maturity and creation appears to be finished for the year. I would like to use our Willy's mule corn (home ground corn meal) using Joe's Grandma Nina's cornbread recipe. I didn't know cornbread when I was in Japan and I didn't know how to make it either. Grandma Nina who was quarter Cherokee and passed the recipe through her cookbook.

When we look at the moon in Japan, the shadows of the craters look to us like a rabbit pounding rice cake “mochi” with a mortar and pestle. In an old Buddhist story; a fox, a monkey and a rabbit saw an old man who had fallen down on a mountain. They wanted to help him so the monkey found nuts and the fox got fish for him to eat because he couldn't walk. The rabbit worked very hard but she couldn’t find anything to offer to him, so she decided to jump into the fire and offer her own flesh for him to eat. The old man was actually the chief of many Gods called Taishakuten or Shakro Divanam Indra. He felt sorry for the rabbit and he made an image of a rabbit on the moon, pounding a rice cake so she doesn’t have to offer herself as food again, and so people can remember her kindness. Other areas of the world see moon shadows as a frog, a roaring lion, a girl, a woman's face, and even a big crab’s claw.

I was thinking about the harvest Moon when I made this month's menu.