What I eat, apparently

I may have mentioned this before, but I will never again have the problem of too many cucumbers. It’s not a commonly occurring problem for most people, and in the past, I have mostly only been afflicted with it when I’ve been acquainted with entirely too many people who have had gardens with cucumbers in abundance. Free food is hard to turn down, you see. Free cucumbers, in particular, apparently. They’re so aerodynamic and shiny and other adjectives that have little to do with taste. They’re also really exciting when they come from someone’s garden, as there’s a good chance they’ll be mutant and squiggly. Nothing brings joy more then a mutant cucumber.

In any case, there are finite uses for cucumber. And, let’s face it, it’s not the most exciting of vegetable to just start chowing down on. Thus, I eat sunomono.

I don’t get sick of it. This is because it tastes like lazy sushi without the rice. I’ll generally just make it meatless, as I don’t always have the necessary meats lying around. This time, however, I was feeling saucy and got some fake crab. Or rather, I was feeling crabby and got some fake crab. Either way, it is quite tasty!

I had briefly considered growing cucumbers this summer. It’s the first year ever since I’d moved out of my parents place some 10ish years ago that I’ve had a yard. Or rather, if you’re willing to define ‘yard’ as ‘lying 4 refrigerators on their sides, tracing the area, then covering that area with dirt plus a few trees plus the remnants of the past several decades worth of gardening remains by the people who’d rented the refrigerator-sized strips of dirt before me’. (Don’t worry, no refrigerators were harmed in the making of my yard.)

In any case, I strongly suspected that I might find myself awash in cucumbers by people who were actually capable of growing them. I was right. So, I found myself with 5 cucumbers. 5 delicious mutant cucumbers. I have to wonder how grocery store cucumbers always end up looking all symmetric and phallic and such, all so similar to each other. What happens to the gazillions of wacky looking cucumbers? All the ones that come out of real gardens, not the Great Cucumber Factory in the Sky the apparently supplies all of these freakish perfecto cucumbers to your and my local grocery stores?

So, what does one do with all of these cucumbers? Why, sunomono of course!

Sunomono is a delightful Japanese salad. The particular form above that I made consisted of me dumping some rice vinegar and sugar in a bowl, mixing, then adding sliced cucumber, a bit of seaweed, some sesame seeds, and stirring again. It’s quite good! It would go quite well with sushi, in fact. Alas, my meaningful and hinting glances at the Sushi Gods have been in vain as of late, so no sushi for me.

Other things you can do with cucumbers that don’t require too much effort:

-Goes well with pretty much any sort of salad.
-Pretend to be an upper class snooty person from the 1980s and make cucumber sandwiches.
-Eat them straight (they’re kinda like apples!) (dip in dressing as needed).
-Stick them in a regular sandwich of the ‘meat and cheese and lettuce and tomato’ variety.
-Garnish your ramen with chopped cucumber.
-Wear one down the front of your pants, in case of emergency.
-Hollow one out and make a flute.
-Dress one in miniature diapers and put it in a carriage.
-Two words: Bathtime Buddy
-Dip one in orange paint and try to convince a really drunk person that it’s a mutant Cheeto.
-If desperate, one could be used as a backup bladder.

And that, right there, is every single possible use for a cucumber. That’s right, folks, throw out your ‘Fun with Cucumbers’ books, because it’s a complete sham.

Ever had daifuku? It’s magical. Little balls of dough gently cradling delightful globs of sweet bean paste. So I was inspired about a year or so and purchased a bag of red azuki beans (sweet beans of the Japanese dessertey variety), with stern intentions of making daifuku for myself.

A year later, I finally get around to doing something that was vaguely similar to my plan.

So, as I mentioned a little while back, I have a large bag of sweet rice. This, as also mentioned a little while back, is because the rice sitting right beside the actual sushi rice at the store would be good enough for sushi, since the sushi rice surely must have a good influence on it, right? I mean, why get sushi rice for sushi, that wouldn’t make any sense at all! Point being, I have a gigantic bag of sweet rice that I have been attempting to find uses for.

Thus, comes the Ogahi. It’s like a piece of daifuku flipped itself inside out, and then get all lumpy in the rice part (err, since daifuku uses rice flour rather then straight up rice).

So I dumped this bag of azuki beans in a pot with some water, and let them sit there for approximately 7836172 hours. Then boiled them for a little less then that, dumped some sugar in, squashed it up with a cup as for some godawful reason I am completely lacking in a potato masher, and the end product was this delightful pile of squish:

Then came the rice. Then came the getting my fingers all covered in gooey substances for the sake of deliciousness. Look, they’re facing off for a mighty battle!

Soon enough, all the rice balls had converted over to the Dark side:

By the way, these should in theory have been completely inappropriate! You know why? Ohagi is traditionally made for the spring and fall equinox. I’m about 3 months off here. Ah well, I got close to an equinox, right?

Anyhow, their ultimate destination was to be served at a baby shower where probably at least 1/2 of the people there thought they were either chocolate or meatballs. Definitely a big surprise to bite into one of them thinking that! Anyhow, they went over well enough with those who appreciate such Japanese tasties, and I got to take home the rest, which is also a bonus.

A final peaceful scene of restful Ogahi:

Hobbits and flowers and bean paste, oh my!