Spring cleaning

One thing about unpacking after a long hiatus is that you never quite know what you're going to find in the boxes.






Or you get a chance to revisit old, long-beloved creatures that you know it's time to let go of...

Chronicles of Noodlemaking, Week 1: Earlobe Noodles

I don't like to be bereft of projects (though somehow this is rarely a problem for me); and I had just been through six months where I barely got to cook at all. So before I even got home I had made major culinary plans, the most ambitious of which is the Noodlemaking Project.

Actually it's not that complicated. I just decided that as a Homecoming Resolution, I wanted to make noodles from scratch once a week for a year. I got addicted to breadmaking a few years ago and baked at least three times a week, with the result that I can improvise all sorts of bread depending on my mood, flat or loaf, leavened or un-. The plan once I get cosy with noodles is to progress to cakes, since my recipeless experiments in pastry thus far have NOT been successful. Noodles seemed a lot more forgiving (and easier to eat en masse), and so a better way to ease back into cooking.

Jet lag couldn't keep me down, so my first full day back saw me tossing flour in a bowl with some salt, oil, and an egg. I'm focussing my explorations on the cookbook Beyond the Great Wall, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, to begin with anyhow. I've ogled the photos and browsed the recipes but not really cooked from it yet, but there's a fairly broad noodle section, most of which are simple to make. I decided the Inaugural Noodle would be Earlobe Noodles, from western Tibet.

Making the dough is pretty much the same as making a bread dough - you just stir it all together, knead it a bit, and then let it rest awhile. The recipe calls for using a food processor, but I prefer to do things by hand when possible and this dough came together easily, though I may have ended up using a bit more water that way. While the dough was sleeping I made up a quick stew. Noodles are often eaten with lamb in Central Asia, but I figured a vegetarian chickpea-tomato-cabbage combination would work too.

By the time the water was boiling, my little sister had dropped by and my mother came up from her endless unpacking, so we got to shape the noodles together. This step is why I picked the earlobe noodles to start with. You just divide the dough into four pieces and roll them into long sausages. Then you stand over the bubbling pot and tear off little pieces, flinging them into the water. It got a bit crowded standing there together in the steam, but it seemed like the essence of being home, hungry but smelling the rich smells and working together for our meal.

And the noodles were delicious. Thick and soft but with a lovely springy bite; despite uneven size and shape none of them were soggy. They had enough flavour that we all sneaked a few extra noodles eaten plain while we were cleaning up. The stew coated them nicely and the vegetables were a fresh contrast to the slippery noodle rounds. If it's this easy every week, the year is going to fly by...

The morning after

My first morning back in Canada dawned clear and cold, with a startlingly low snowline on the local mountains. This is the view that greeted me when I stumbled blearily into the kitchen, and true to my recent training, I immediately stumbled back to the bedroom to fetch my camera. Phew! I didn't leave all the beauty behind me in Asia. It was a gloriously sunny day, and the espresso machine blinked at me from its corner. It's good to be home.

My Wandering Days Are Over

Photo: Kamakura-Enoshima Furii Kippu, day pass for a trip to the region in Kanagawa-ken, with a background of commuters hurrying for the Shonan-Shinjuku line back to the city. I had visited Kamakura for the first time on my first trip to Japan, in July 2008. It was such a pleasure to return on my last full day in Japan, in Asia, to go back to see the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) and the Kannon Hasedera Temple, as well as new discoveries like Enoshima Island. Six months on, so much to revisit, so much new to find.

You know my wandering days are over
Doesn't mean that I'm getting boring
You tell me
I'm tired of listening to myself here

I'm back! Safely home! And although, like in the song by Belle & Sebastian, "six months on, the winter's gone", I'm not filled with melancholy like the lonely circus boy and disenchanted pony. Instead I'm full of energy to leap into my new life, to settle into Vancouver, and to sort through the detritus of what seems like several past lives currently tucked into myriad boxes.

But I'm not turning my back on the trip altogether. I've transferred all 7,389 photos to my computer, and eventually I'll start sorting through them and posting some more here. Although I never got around to writing most of my planned posts on my travel music, I might get around to it now...and there are always future trips to plan.

You know my bip-bopping days are over
I hung my boots up and then retired from the disco floor
Now the centre of my so called being is
The space between your bed and wardrobe with the louvre doors

Lyrics here.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

So glad we got to celebrate not too far off the day.