Japanese Host Mom Economics by Ruth Paget
I bought the cookbook Everyday Harumi by Harumi Kurihara (available on Amazon Kindle), because the recipes reminded me of the food my Japanese host mom made when I was an exchange student in 1980. Even as a teenager, I could see that she was good with money, food, and nutrition.
My Japanese host mom cooked for 11 people daily when I lived with the family in Toyonaka City outside Osaka, Japan. This number included my host dad and his co construction company crew workers, one set of grandparents, Okaasan and her three daughters, and me.
Okaasan was a nurse before getting married and her three daughters studied nursing at a boarding school on the island of Shikoku south of Honshu. After marriage, she helped my Japanese host dad run the family construction business. I am thankful that okaasan’s management skills made it possible for me to live in Japan as a high school exchange student with Youth for Understanding.
I had trouble getting used to Japanese food at first, but stuck with eating it, so I would be considered a good diplomat. I actually gained some weight by the time I left and liked salty pickled plums and crunchy nori seaweed by the end of my stay.
I want to go through how okaasan organized summer meals in a home without air conditioning during extremely hot summer days where it would already be 85 degrees out at 7:30 am and threatening tropical rain. (Japan’s southern island of Kyushu experiences monsoon weather.)
The following are the typical weekday menus okaasan prepared for my Japanese host sisters and me during the week:
Breakfast:
-miso soup with tofu and seaweed
-two bowls of cold, sticky rice mixed with lukewarm tea that we drank like soup
-tsukemono and sunomono pickles
-yamaki dried anchovies
Lunch:
-udon soup at a restaurant to beat the heat or
-omelet made with snipped chives and sprinkled with soy sauce, salad with mayonnaise, tsukemono and sunomono pickles, and rice at home
Dinner:
Okaasan set out tabletop electric grills so people could grill their own teriyaki chicken and sometimes beef.
We also grilled fish and seafood without marinade and dipped it in ponzu sauce, s sweet, citrusy soy sauce dip.
We ate these items with tsukeomono and sunomono pickles and rice.
(I love the smell of hot rice when a rice cooker is first opened.)
Sometimes we would go to the grocery store after eating and buy ice cream cones.
I liked the routine meals, because it freed up my time to do exchange student activities like learn origami, go for neighborhood walks, and make ikebana bouquets.
Note: Japan’s Nobel Kitchen Appliance: A Jumbo Size Electric Rick Cooker
Note: Harumi Restaurant in Seaside, California serves bento box lunches with items similar to recipes in Everyday Harumi.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
