Saturday 12 May 2012

Odate & food

The second sitting of holidays of Golden Week (Thurs, Fri, Sat & Sun) has been and gone. The plan was to go up by bike on Thurs and back on Sun. Thursday morning it was pouring. Optimistic checking of the Meteorological Agency's website showed rain the whole way up - Utsunomiya - rain, Fukushima - rain, Sendai - rain, Morioka - rain, Odate... rain. After some deliberation we canned the idea of the bike and trudged off to Tokyo station to join the rest of Tokyo trying to catch a shinkansen... the fast train to Morioka is all booked seats and we didn't have seats... Tokyo station was packed, as expected, but fortune smiled and we got seats on a train to Sendai and tranfered to an express shinkansen for Morioka. It was a bit over 7 hours door to door.

It rained the whole time we were there, which meant that the cherry blossoms had mostly gone and that my plans to go to Goshogake have been postponed again.

The highlight was food...


Mountain veges, shiitake and eggplant.  The mountain veges and
shiitake were all given to them by mountain vege picking friends.



  
The veges above turned into tempura. 
We'd started eating it before I remembered
to take a photo.

Shiitake season - partially dried shiitake next to the wood stove
Shiitake to be dried.
Hiro's sister in law and nieces came for dinner.  Hiro wanted to do
a yaki niku taste testing session with them. 
From left to right across the top Australian kalbi (rib meat),
Japanese dairy kalbi, Australian steak. At the front Japanese dairy kalbi,
New Zealand lamb, and Japanese Wagyu - by far the most expensive of the
meats.  The meat came from Aeon (not our choice).  There was no
labelling of which prefectures the meat came from, which I assume
means they came from areas in relatively close proximity to the
nuclear plant (all meat from the area is being tested and I don't have
concerns about radiation levels - I am less confident about fish and veges.)
In Tokyo all meat seems to labelled by prefecture or region these days.
A close up of the posh meat 698Y/100g - some cuts of
wagyu can easily be 10x the price of this in a very upmarket shop.
Mountain veges soaking.

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5 comments:

Rurousha said...

So you didn't go by bike! I was watching the awful weather and wondering whether you were swimming along the highway ...

Lamb chops! :D How much was the lamb? Was that from down south? Surely not from Japan?

PS: Is "chops" a South African word? Cutlets.

Rurousha said...

Oh, dear, I had another senior moment. It's New Zealand lamb. Oops. ^^

Cecilia said...

;) Even though it's so close to Hokkaido there is very little lamb in Tohoku - perhaps Koiwa farm in Iwate.

It was a good decision not to go by bike - aside from not having to swim on the way up, we were on the shinkansen for an electric storm in Morioka, and were oblivious to the tornado in Ibaragi / Tochigi. We had seats the whole way back from Morioka, which made for a very easy trip :).

Theresa said...

Meat, meat, meat, meat -- the sight of all that meat made me envy-drool.

Cecilia said...

Ruruosha - Cutlets... I have heard it, but we always called them chops, chops can be loin chops (like the ones pictured) or chump chops (which have a bone in them) and are from closer to the back legs than loin chops.

It was interesting that PIL much preferred the black wagyu, but Hiro's nieces in junior high, preferred the Australian meat because it was less fatty....

Seven people and we ate it all.... no wonder I always come back fat from Akita...