I spent quite a few hours with a friend I haven't seen in about 5 years. She was passing through and we arranged to have lunch together. I picked her up at the train station around 11:00 and we chatted and took up space at a restaurant until nearly 4:00!
C-san and I met when we were both new-ish brides almost 35 years ago. She is Japanese but had spent time in the States and was interested in writing about her impressions of America and the differences from Japanese life. Someone introduced C-san to me and together we spent many months translating her writings into English. I went looking for some of those papers this morning to give a record here but that WAS 35 years ago and the yellowed papers are somewhere in the depths of a box in the back of a closet (or thrown out... C-san probably still has them...)
I remember one "chapter" she wrote called "Cutting Board" and she had the interesting observation that on one of her first evenings with a homestay family the mother asked her to cut up tomatoes or potatoes or something but didn't give her a cutting board, just a small knife... How was she supposed to cut up a vegetable without a cutting board, she asked, and the homestay mother demonstrated the quick slicing of the produce using the knife and cutting in the air against the thumb... It had never occurred to me either, until I was helping translate, that this was how my mother cut vegetables too... And that though there was a shelf cutting board in my American home, it was huge and heavy and too cumbersome to pull away from under the counter and carry to a frying pan...
I still think of C-san's "Cutting Board" whenever I pull out Marcy's big heavy cutting board from an overhead cupboard in my California house (such an inconvenient place to keep it... maybe Marcy doesn't use it much either...)
I can't believe I just wrote a whole post about a cutting board... Sorry about that.
kind of interesting actually. we clean ours with bleach every time we use it and we use it a lot.
ReplyDeleteSince you are so generous to share your blog with your readers, you are allowed and expected to write about anything you choose. Rest assured, I enjoy every word! thank you!
ReplyDeleteI have a lot of wooden cutting boards, all ones that Hugh has made. One has a multi-wood-squares on the top and I use it under the slow cooker. others range from one very similar to yours ( it stays on the bench all the time) to narrower, thinner, and easier to handle ones. Love your holder.
ReplyDeleteI have cutting boards all around my kitchen! But I grew up using my thumb ... !
ReplyDeleteI have to admit I have a variety of cutting boards. Some were cracked from being stuck in the water and left too long and some Paul burned by placing them too close to the fire. Even wooden spoons and chopsticks are scorched. The prettiest ons that can be used on the table, I hid in the back.
ReplyDeleteI have a collection of cutting boards, all different sizes. I don't use the wooden ones, since I'm afraid that they will hold whatever was cut on them in the grooves made by the knives. I prefer the plastic ones, that I can put in the dishwasher. If I used my thumb, I probably wouldn't have a thumb left.
ReplyDeleteI find your posts, such as this one, comparing the way things are done in Japan to the way they are done here in the US very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI have to use plastic boards so I can put them in the dishwasher. I never felt that I could get my wooden boards clean enough, especially if I had raw meat on them. Wooden boards are prettier, but much harder to clean. I have one cut in the shape of my state, but have not been able to bring myself to use it yet.
ReplyDeleteIf you think you've run out of things for your blog, how about talking about those interesting-looking cleaning products on your counter? Wish I could read what they say. Are they "natural" - is that important in Japan? Do you have a wide variety of choices for cleaning products in your country? Anything that might seem trivial to you is still interesting to us, because we may not have seen it before. So don't worry about what to post. It's all good!
Interesting. I always thought cutting with your hands was an Asian thing and cutting with a cutting board was an American thing. Maybe it has to do with age. Younger people are able to see cooking shows and how people are supposed to cut with cutting boards.
ReplyDelete