Late night cooking

Bless the little old lady who lives next door and always shares the loot she gets sent from relatives. Curse her for the same reason. Some things I am very happy to receive, usually fruit. Vegetables not so much because that means you have to use them in cooking, which means I have to cook. I usually buy one onion at a time since I rarely use them. Little Old Lady gave us a whole bag, more than half went in the bin after several months. I know! I know! I hate to waste food too, which is why receiving it usually stresses me out.

A week or two ago Little Old Lady's daughter came by with apples (yeah!) and a nagaimo (boo!). But I promised myself that I was going to 1. cook as much as possible and 2. do my best not to waste food products. So that meant looking for a way to use nagaimo. I decided to finally get off my ass and out of the house today (because the only thing left to eat in the house was dill pickles and canned soup) so before going grocery shopping I checked the Internet for nagaimo recipes and decided I would try okonomiyaki, which despite all my years living in Osaka I have never attempted to make the traditional way even.

Anyway go to Nishimatsuya and the grocery store with Sara who is becoming more and more difficult to take out of the house. She kept trying to crawl out of the shopping cart seat and into the back of the cart with the food. She's a little daredevil with no sense of fear and we have to keep a constant eye on her or she'll try to climb everything and anything and end up falling on her head the second we look away for a moment. But I digress. By the time I got home I was exhausted since I hadn't left the house since we came back from Kyushu on Thursday , except to take Sara to the doctor Saturday morning, and had turned into a sloth-like recluse. So I got Sara down for a nap when we got home and I relaxed a bit before I had to go teach a belly dance class.

I got home around 8:45. Akinori had already dug around and found something to eat for himself, so I'm not sure why I decided it would be a
good idea to start grating the nagaimo to make okonomiyaki at 9 pm, but I did. I started out working in the kitchen on my own, but Akinori comes in with Sara, puts her in her high chair and says "she missed you, she wants to be with you, call me if you need anything." He's lucky
I wasn't holding a knife! Sara will not sit in her high chair willingly for more than 3 minutes when she's starving. It took 30 seconds for her to crawl out of the high chair so she was standing on the foot rest from outside the high chair. I've got sticky, slimey nagaimo all over my hands
at this point but I do my best to grab her without touching her with my hands and take her and the goddamn nagaimo into the living room
where Akinori is so he can watch her, and she won't freak out because I'm in the other room.

It took me 45 minutes to grate the potato. 45 minutes! Luckily Akinori was able to get Sara to sleep during that time and I was able to go back into the kitchen to cook. The recipe called for 380g of grated nagaimo. I had a helluva lot more than that, but nevermind I figured I'd find something to do with it. Follow the instructions on the recipe and after just a few minutes in the fry pan it is obvious my concoction is not
cooking the way it is meant to, but nevermind I just continue to let it fry while I look for more nagaimo okonomiyaki recipes. Find one and start cutting up more ingredients as the 1st batch continues to fry and get nowhere. So now the 2nd batter is mixed and ready and the 1st batch is just looking more and more pathetic with every attempted flip so I give up on it and dump it on a plate. I was honestly ready to give up on cooking altogether, like ever again it was such a pathetic attempt, but then a miracle happened and the 2nd attempt came out perfect! I was very proud! Unfortunately it was 11:30 pm at this point and I was not in the mood to eat okonomiyaki, and Akinori had passed out on the floor in the living room who knows how long before that. I took photos of both attempts which I'll post later.

Akinori was asleep, but we had baby-making plans last night that fell through again thanks to a super-genki Sara, and I am bound and determined to get pregnant, especially since I got an email from my dad tonight saying my sister-in-law is pregnant again and due at the end of August. Why do I feel more pressure to get pregnant with every announcement of someone else's pregnancy? I know it's not a race and it's stupid to want to be pregnant because everyone else is, but with every notice of someone else's pregnancy I feel another surge of urgency. Probably the best way to not get pregnant. Anyway Akinori got a very pleasant wake up call and gave it a good effort. Whether or not we do get pregnant, I have to say that all these efforts have been great for our relationship. We fight so much less and we're both in better moods. There is definitely something to be said for regular sex.
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