Domo Arigato: Meals at Michi Cafe - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Domo Arigato:  Michi Café - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I became a restaurant reviewer for The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) after sending in published samples of work I had done on the Olympic Games in Barcelona for newspapers in New Zealand and Rhode Island; I lived in Paris at the time and used the very first fax machines to send out queries to obtain published samples that all newspapers still asked for in the 2000s.

I had lived in Japan as an exchange student in high school, so one of the restaurants I asked to review a restaurant that served Japanese home-style cuisine – The Yamato Café (Now the Michi Café).  It is located in Marina, California. 

I wanted Monterey County Weekly readers to know that there was more than sushi in Japanese cuisine:

Domo Arigato – “Thank-You”

I go to the Yamato (Now Michi Restaurant) in Marina (CA), because this is where the Japanese people in town eat.  That is always a good sign.

Yamato’s interior reminds me of Japan, although there is more space between tables than one would find in Japan.

There is a blonde-colored wood sushi bar that seats six people, an imitation cherry blossom tree, rice paper windows, a karaoke bar, and a TV.

Everything is scrupulously clean.

The first thing I sampled was wakame udon, a soup made with a slightly sweet broth flavored with kelp, dried sardines, soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, and sake.  I ate the soup’s long, thick noodles with chopsticks.  The al dente udon noodles would please any pasta judge.

The three pink-edged fish cakes floating in the soup tasted like imitation crab, which is actually made of fish.  I ate delicious soup like every day when I was an exchange student outside Osaka, Japan.

After this great meal, I took two of my writing group friends out and Florence.  One of my friends ordered chicken teriyaki and shrimp tempura.  Florence chose beef teriyaki, another friend ordered tonkatsu – a breaded and deep fried pork cutlet.  I ate eel over rice.

Everyone’s meal came with a bowl of miso except mine.  I already had wakame udon in front of me.  After my daughter saw strips of wakame seaweed in her soup, she quietly passed that to me to eat.

One of my friends picked seaweed out of her soup like a pro and said she liked seaweed, but had never eaten it before.

Fresh cubes of bright, white tofu floated in the soybean paste soup made with a slightly, salty stock tasting of dried kelp and bonito.  We al drank the soup from our bowls as we lifted them like one does in Japan.

Our meals also came with a small salad, which we ate with chopsticks.  The sweet dressing intrigued us.

End of Part 1.

To be continued…

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks, Teen in China,  and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

French Club Activity: Drawing Picture Sentences Game to Improve French Noun-Gender Recall by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

French Club Activity:  Drawing Picture Sentences Game to Improve French Noun-Gender Recall by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Objective:

Improve Noun-Gender Recall for French Nouns using drawing to create picture sentences to help focus on gender-noun recall.

Method: 10 Tasks

Task 1 - Build a French noun (things) list using a reading teacher’s reference book, such as:

The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists 5^th Edition by Edward B. Fry and Jacqueline E. Kress

Foreign-language learners can use this book to build noun lists from lower elementary grades up through high school.

“Thing” words are words like “table” and “chairs.”

Task 2 – Look up the French translation of the words you selected, noting the gender designation that goes with the word – le, la, or l’.

Task 3 – Draw a picture of the word 5 times saying the word and the gender designation.

Task 4 – Draw a picture-word sentence using the word such as:

I see the chair.

-For I, draw a picture of your head

-For see, draw a picture of eyeballs

-For “the chair,” write “la chaise.

All together, write “Je vois la chaise” under the pictures you draw.

Task 5 – After finishing your picture sentences, read the sentences out 10 times before going to bed.

Task 6 – Test yourself by typing nouns and gender designations into an Excel sheet and alphabetize by French noun.

Heighten row lengths, so you have space to write, and test yourself on genders of nouns.

Task 7 – Score your test to see how many gender designations you got right.

Record score and date.

Task 8 – Repeat gender designation and noun test daily until, you get a perfect score.

Task 9 – Do test weekly, once you have made a 100% score

Task 10 – Keep track of scores with breakdowns on le, la, l’ to see where you need to improve memorization.

Desired Objective:

100% recall on nouns with gender designations.

Bonne Continuation!!!

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Fine Beer Reference Books Recommended by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Fine Beer Reference Books Recommended by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I own two “Go-to-Beer-Reference” books, because I have just started learning about beers around the world.  My interest in this subject was inspired by living in Stuttgart, Germany for five years.

When I saw a photo and 2-page spread devoted to Firestone Walker Brewing Company located in Cambria (Outside Paso Robles, California at the same exit for Hearst Castle), I immediately purchased a “fine beer book” that had information on California brew pubs that are patterned after German brew pubs:

The Complete Beer Course:  Book Camp for Beer Geeks:  From Novice to Expert in Twelve Tasting Classes by Joshua M. Berstein.

This book contains information that complements (rounds out) information in another reference book I own entitled:

Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion:  America’s Microbreweries and Classic Beers from Europe – the World’s Great Beer Styles, Gastronomy, and Traditions.

I think California pubs could earn extra money selling those two items for people who would like to do beer tourism and cook with beer at home.

Germans braise meat and put 1 pint of Amber (Dunkel) beer in with potatoes to bake for dinner.  I put carrots and celery root in my version of this dish.

Cheers!!!!

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie

Egg Foo Yuck by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Egg Foo Yuck by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I began reviewing restaurants for the Monterey County (CA) Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) via a small column called “Side Dish.”  My second column was about how I came to like Chinese food.

The following article has been modified somewhat, but I still love Asian restaurants for being able to whip up Cantonese refried rice with cooked egg strips, chopped ham, and peas at almost any time of day:

Egg Foo Yuck

My sister worked as a waitress at the Ho-Ho Inn in Detroit’s (MI) Cass Corridor across from the Art Institute while in college.  She brought me to work one day and sat a plate of Egg Foo Yung in front of 5-year-old me.

I quickly renamed this dish, “Egg Foo Yuck.”  Tears ran down my cheeks as I thought about eating it.

The Chinese waiter named George in and looked at me.  He took the Egg Foo Yuck and threw it in the garbage.

He went to the freezer and brought me a coconut and mango ice cream cup.  My sister came in and glared at me.

George said, “She ate everything, so I gave her an ice cream.”

I smiled sweetly at George.  My love for the Chinese, if not their food, began at that instant.

I wanted to visit China one day after that despite the fact “China” was Communist and off-limits for travel during most of my childhood.

In 1978 when I was 14, I raised money with 21 other young people to visit the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China, which was going to be formally recognized as the official representative of the Chinese people on March 1, 1979 when we enter China from Hong Kong.)

I dreaded the culinary side of our visit, because I did not like pork, China’s staple meat at the time.  I was suspicious of all seafood.  My tour mates teased me about all food, saying the shrimp was really cat, rat, or dog or that the dog meat was on the next buffet table.

I subsisted on rice and soup broth for two weeks.  I cringe now when I think of wasting food in a country that still had a collective memory of famine due to The Great Leap Forward, which featured bad planning.  (5 million people died.)

At lunch on a commune outside Shanghai, I tried to play down the fact that Americans had been described in classrooms and in textbooks as foreign devils until just 2 weeks before when China and the US formally recognized each other diplomatically on March 1, 1979.

I was 15 and did not like pork, but I liked pork stir fried with firm, white bean curd and cabbage.  I could not get enough of that and thanked the commune workers at our after-lunch briefing for the meal and admitted that I did not like Chinese food until I visited China and tried that dish.

After graduation from the University of Chicago, I worked for a translation firm and boutique PR firm in Chicago.  We worked with both Asian and European firms.  We celebrated many Chinese banquets at House of Hunan and Szechuan House for clients from both continents at these places.

I learned to say “xie-xie” – thank you – many times.

When I was 31, I bought a wok and a Chinese cookbook. (Lo’s Encyclopedia of Chinese Cuisines.  He used MSG, but I left it out and kept this treasure chest of Chinese food.)

This cookbook listed different cooking techniques and said that this was “just an abbreviated list.”  I had to relearn how to chop vegetables.  I tried several dishes, but my family had its favorites:

-Cantonese rice

-Egg Drop Soup

-Stir-Fried Beef in Oyster Sauce

When my daughter Florence was small, I showed her China on the map and said:

“Rice grows in South China where it’s hot and rainy in the summer.”

I pointed to the North and said:

“The Chinese grow wheat for noodles and dumplings in the North,” I said.

I showed her how to stir-fry Chinese bok choy cabbage in the wok and hoped that she would visit China one day loving Chinese food before she went.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Note:  Today I use Ken Hom’s cookbooks and Fuscia Dunlop’s cookbooks to prepare Chinese food.

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Selfie