Posts from September 5th, 2012

Over the weekend we babysat for a couple of friends who were out of town (on a sailing adventure). For one friend we babysat a kitten.

For the other friend, Marvel’s X-men’s “X-23” (the female clone of Wolverine), we babysat a crock full of pickling stuff.

To be more precise, we babysat a ceramic container full of what the Japanese call a “nukadoko.” Well, technically that’s not quite right, because “nuka” is rice bran, and this was made with wheat bran (X-23 couldn’t easily find any rice bran). I don’t know the Japanese word for wheat bran. @Tangentbot? @KowaiHitsuji? Is it “fusuma (麩)?”

Anyway, It’s this fun mix of salt and water, bran, and seaweed, and you can put garlic or ginger or beer in it. And you stir it every day. And then it starts to ferment. And then you put vegetables in it! You leave them in for however long you want, and you end up with these fascinating, salty vegetable pickles called “nukazuke.” I put in some sliced-up carrot overnight. It was really tasty!

Here are some nukazuke resources:

• Wikipedia
• Kyoto Foodie
• Pantsfarm (yes really)
• Wandering Spoon

I am a great big stupid-head, though: I forgot to take any photos of either the nukazuke. I did take a photo or two of the kitten (who, by the way, had no interest in the nukazuke), though, so this’ll have to do:

Kittons is Cyoot

I also took a video of it being cute:

Yup, kittons is cyoot. And nukazuke is goot.