Noodles

We call different things noodles:

An adolescent kid’s under-developed arms.

The human head.

Brains.

Top Ramen.

I grew up eating bowls of them chocked full of God-knows-what. Osoba and Yakisoba were staples growing up in Japan and when I say God-knew-what, only he (or she) knew what found their ways into our bowls.

Seriously.

Variously described as starfish eyes, lizard lips, cicada wings, and other unnamed ingredients, I really believed my big brother when he would tell me these unsavory things.

In spite of his cajoling, I ate every morsel and slurped (traditional Japanese style, mind you) every drop of the yummy, salty soy broth as the last noodle slid down my throat.

My stepdad would take my Mom and us three kids out for dinner and I think we enjoyed a big platter of zensai, delicious pot stickers and pork dumplings, huge bowls (they seemed huge to a six-year-old) of osoba, and we finished off the meal with sweet bean curd cakes.

The full 3-course meal for the five of us, came to a whopping….(drum roll please):

300 yen.

Eighty-four cents.

1960 Japan.

Gotta love it.

Thirty-six years later I made my own pasta when I served as a gourmet Italian chef and noodles were only one of many shapes of pasta that I made. Orzo, linguine, mostaccioli, lasagna, and of course, spaghetti.

I didn’t lose any of the weight I had gained as a French chef as you might have surmised.

I loved cooking with buckwheat flour and the noodles are so very versatile, lending themselves nicely to all types of protein, especially seafood, which, as you can imagine, was very prevalent in Japan.

In French cuisine, they also lend their light brown color nicely to the palette of reds, yellows, pinks, and greens, allowing a lot of versatility in plating.

Buckwheat pancakes serve as a good base for serving crème fraiche and caviar blinis. They give a perception of value to plates as they take up a lot of space, dispelling the notion of high prices for small portions.

High prices are not a notion for French cuisine.

It is said if you use your noodle, you are thinking.

There is another euphemism for noodle, but it refers to a male body part, and I will not go there.

Noodling is a verb which refers to catching fish with your hands. I have heard of some pretty bad injuries sustained by these so-called “fishermen” and all I can say about this is GREAT!

Good for the fish.

Keep your greasy fucking hands out of the water and leave the fish alone.

Fish lives matter.

So, our search for a new home continues and we came this close to submitting an offer today, but the house was just too overpriced and we were not impressed with the size of the rooms, so tomorrow we go out again to find our last (forever) home.

I established a relationship with a badass realtor here in Ohio while we were still in the process of selling our home.

I told her I wanted her to find a great house for me to die in.

She gave me a look usually delivered by the Domestic Despot, Osama bin Karen.

Stay well.