Avoiding cooking....

Butterbur done.
Finally.


Not going to include a picture: it looks just the same as it did on Friday. Just now it has a fishy/soy sauce taste.


Getting Okaasan to DO it was like getting a reluctant child to finish a rashly started school project. I enthused about the butterbur and got her up off the carpet and away from the TV and into the kitchen.
I put out the seaweed, the fish flakes and the soy sauce on the table along with the printed out recipe and left her to it...peering at the recipe and clasping a large bag of sugar.


Absolutely determined NOT to help her. My stress levels don't need it. I lost two ovaries to stress last summer and I'm hanging on to my other body parts! The New Year cooking thing taught me to never, ever, EVER stand in the kitchen and cook with Okaasan again.
If she bought butterbur - she's gonna have to cook it.


I retreated to the front step to transplant seedlings. I've had seed trays in Okaasan's room (out of cats' way) for a month now and lots of tiny green leaves have appeared. So thrilling! All taken from a blue, bell-like plant in the garden last autumn.
So, while Okaasan struggled with peeling the butterbur yet again and drowning them in flavoring, Yujiro made computer charts  for optimum velotaxi business...and I transplanted seeds on the doorstep in the rain with the cats.
Each to his own.
I really don't have the patience or interest to spend so much time on cooking something like this butterbur. It isn't so delicious that it's worth all this time. The same could be said for seeds and seedlings of course - why bother? just go and buy the plants at the gardening center!


But I enjoy the gardening and the seeds. I'm afraid I can't get excited about hours and hours of peeling wild celery/rhubarb and seasoning it. 


Anyway. It's done. Enough butterbur for days. Hope she doesn't buy any more. ;-))
We all had lunch together and in the evening we left sushi for Okaasan and went out for a date with eachother to another cheap coupon meal place...it was a former highclass bar in Susukino now doing food...and I got to touch a baseball signed by Darvish....


...and ended the day hilariously by literally picking a drunk old man off the pavement and walking him home...he was a sweet old drunk who said he'd had a  fight with his wife and got drunk to spite her. He was a bit vague on where he lived, but after 25 minutes and a trip to the police station we finally delivered him to the door of a posh retirement complex and ran away giggleing in the night as he staggered into the entrance hall.


May 21. World didn't end here. Still have butterbur to eat.


*  I'm currently rereading one of my books about dementia...noticing things that Okaasan now does/doesn't do more than a year ago...will write more later about that.