Japanese people have invited me into demonstrations of prepping food as well as giving and receiving it, and I regret lost opportunities for this. My first year in Tokyo a friend said, "I wish I could show you how to cook." I thought, "Yes, I wish you could!" wondering why she could not, missing the subtext of her words: she was offering while avoding the awkwardness of a possible refusal.
When I lived in Kobe four years later, I was better able to hear the subtlties. The mother of a boy in my daughter's class, a mere acquaintance, invited I and my five-year-old over for tea and snacks. She mentioned wanting to have friends over to bake bread, I knew she offered me an opportunity. I wasn't interested. I knew how to bake bread--didn't appreciate the chance to discover an uncharted friend.
Fortunately, I accepted one invitation to a cooking class, an invite by a close friend, and have enjoyed the recipes taught, a clam and Napa cabbage soup, meatballs, a dessert with tofu.
This week I invited my class of five Japanese women over to watch poultry roasting and making pumpkin pie. Preparing my home and demonstrating cooking took longer than teaching my usual lesson of grammar and conversational English, but the women gave back to as much as I gave them.
The comments, "You're home is so beautiful!" (Really? It's not designer done!) and "It's hiroi (spacious)" (Small by comparison with many in my Menlo Park church, but large by their standards).A good reality check. And when I pulled the browned whole bird out of the oven, not only the women were impressed, but the two-year-old boy held at his mother's waste, said, "Tsugoi!"
Many Japanese homes don't have ovens and if they do, only the few who are bakers use them for bread, cakes and cookies. Japnese cuisine doesn't include roasting cuts of meat. In fact, Japanese supermarkets don't stock even whole chickens.
My students learned not only cooking vocabulary, methods and recipes, but a care-free spirit tocooking, where precise measurement wasn't necessary, where using a frozen pie crust and opening a can of pumpkin and adding spices was good enough. No need to roast a fresh pumpkin and mash it or mix flour, lard and water to make pie crust from scratch.
These Japanese women, even if working professionals before following their husband over here for his stint at Standord, (three doctors among the women I tutor), don't need to be convinced of that making food in one's own kitchen is a very good thing. They count it a act of creation bringing delight and satisfaction.
Joy is found in giving. I believe this as much as I believe that life is about loving. In fact, it's a corollary. My husband says that, "There are just a few pleasures in life better than preparing a meal for those you love and enjoying it with them." http://collinpark.blogspot.com/2009/03/that-made-my-day.html So I'm doing thanks for giving Thanks that I don't need to reserve a place in one of those in-restaurant Thanksgiving dinners displayed in newspaper advertisements.*
*Recommended: The Spirit of Food, a collection of essays <www.leslie-leyland-fields.com/books>
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