December 16, 2008 - Tuesday

Sunny but a little cool. Nice weather.

I had a busy day today, from my point of view! I got up and watched the news. After a bit I wrote some Christmas cards and a birthday card for a very special little boy I know and took them all to the post office. I mailed everything off and then made a quick convenience store run.

Oh, and I also finished up my novel this morning. I finished reading T is for Trespass, the latest Kinsey Millhone novel from Sue Grafton. Excellent read. I didn't want to put it down at all.

I had to get ready for work a little earlier, but I'd also promised my husband that I'd print some of his New Years cards for him. I did a couple but ran out of time. I bicycled over to my school and made good time. I was there at 4 on the dot!

Tonight I vacuumed the school and set up for the day. I had decided to do some stamping for my first class. We did phonics practice at the beginning, then went on to do Christmas vocabulary. I discovered today that I have a box of mini Christmas stamps with most of the words that I put in the puzzles I made. Woot! Great teaching materials. My first class went well. It was fun. I couldn't get the student to stop stamping! My second one went well too. We did a lot of role playing about staying in a hotel. My student had to ask for things and also make complaints to see how it should be done. She did really well!

After work, I finished up fairly quickly and called Fumihiko. He came to get me. And that's about where my day fell apart. Sigh.

At the grocery store I wanted to get some vegetables for our stirfry. I got a bag and then I wanted to supplement it. There wasn't much there, so I chose some shimeji mushrooms. I had an onion at home already. Fumihiko muttered something but wasn't making much sense.

We came home, I set the table, I cut up the onion, the tofu, the chicken, and the shimeji. Then I'm told that shimeji are only supposed to be boiled or roasted. What? Why? Apparently they have some kind of poison that will kill me if I don't cook them at a high enough temperature. Or some such nonsense. I asked my husband if he wanted me to throw out the mushrooms, because after all I was going to stirfry them, which does cook them at high temperatures. He said yes, so I tossed them, and the onion too. The onion was in the same bowl and I didn't have the patience to separate them. Then, he claimed to have a headache and went to bed. Huh? After I cooked the rest of the meal and told him it was ready he refused to eat it. He stayed in bed, for a while, took a bath and then proceeded to cook and eat all the food he could find in the kitchen, with the exception of my lovely, healthy stirfry.

After I'd eaten I checked Google for some information about "poisons" in shimeji mushrooms and couldn't find anything. In fact, Wikipedia said that they were great in stirfries as cooking them brings out their nutty flavour. Gah. Well, I thought I was cooking to save us a little money, but I can see that it's pointless. If I end up throwing food out, then it isn't saving anything is it?

Tomorrow I've got him hanging around for the whole day. I had told him that I wanted to go to the mall so I could buy his Christmas present. I'm feeling very unmotivated at the moment.

Anyway, tune in tomorrow, if you are so compelled to find out how my day went. Night.

5 comments:

Sherry said...

Dear Lord! I should have been dead long ago as I often have stirfried shimeji in many a recipe. In fact, I will have to go back and check but I think some of my recipes from Yoshikei have them in stirfry type of dishes. IF those Yoshikei people don't know they will kill you then who would? Killing off their customers probably wouldn't be good for business.

I know for a fact I have several Japanese recipes for that hayashi rice stuff that has you dump them in at the end and let them cook for only a minute or two on low heat.

Perogyo said...

Oh, I didn't realize the Alphabet mysteries were on T already! I better ask for that for my birthday, I don't think I have time to force an amazon order for Christmas.

Or do I?

Perogyo said...

PS. My kid eats raw shimeji and hasn't died yet. I've never heard that before.

Helen said...

He's now telling me that it's the kind of shimeji mushroom that I bought that has to be cooked at high temperatures but I'm still not buying it!

Medea...Yes, T is out...and is REALLY good. If you'd like I could lend it to you. And... I'll tell my hubby about your son when tempers aren't so close to the surface here!

Things are going much better today:-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Helen, I meant to come by earlier so I am late stopping by to say hi!

I've never heard of such but what a bummer hubs didn't join you for dinner.. ah men... They have their days. I think Japanese food in general is delish but a few things require an acquired taste.. Love Nato, did not care for it before...

What was the other myth floating around.... ( I usually buy it at the super seaweed, brown in colour but you can buy made..) ... darn.. it is late and my brain is not working... I'll think of it soon..