Whew!

[gurdymonkey]

The King likes my cooking. The Queen likes my cooking. The King's vegetarian brother likes my cooking. Behold the power of rice, pickles and fresh fruit.

The House of Cheerful Monkeys proudly displays its Order of the Period Encampment banner - with koinobori that I am fairly certain are not period.

Detoured through Union City on the way to site in the hopes of picking up another serving plate or two at Daiso Japan, which I did - also a couple of cheap tenugui (towels). Decided to try the Marina Food next door instead of 99 Ranch. Produce looked beautiful, fish counter smelled as it should, to the point I actually toyed briefly with the thought of buying some for the event, only I had the small cooler with me and that was crammed full of onigiri. Found frozen edamame, found the aisle the pickles were in, turned around from choosing pickles and found myself facing a wall of sake. I picked up an unfiltered sparkling sake (no sake was opened this weekend, so it'll get tried at a future event). These two amused me. I'm not certain "Rashomon" is an ausipcious name, given the plot of the film.


Got set up and settled in a spot somewhat away from the center of things because it was (a) right next to the pond, (b) a reasonably straight shot from the parking lot to be hauling wagons back and forth, and (c) a safe distance from other activities to conduct a taiko class without creating an undue disturbance. I went to joycebre 's vigil. No advice, just well wishes. I would not presume to do otherwise.

I took a few pictures of Kevin and Puck's Portuguese great sword class, thinking it might offer some dynamic opportunities.  It was fun to watch.  (Kevin has offered to teach me how to play "Go," but we didn't manage to get together to do so before he had to leave for the day, as I was teaching all afternoon).

His Majesty and his brother were walking along the pond so HM could smoke a cigar away from the main event area, so I invited them to stop by and have some lunch as I was starting to unpack plates and prepare for the Japanese picnic. The attempt to toast onigiri on the grill was a complete failure this time. I'd bought one of those nonstick grill toppers believing it would be less messy than trying to do it on the actual grill rack. The rice (which I'd doused with Mitsukan miso and mustard dressing) stuck and lost all structural onigiri-ness when I tried to turn it over. I sighed, raked everything back and forth on the grill topper a few times to get a bit more of it toasted and ended up mounding it up loose on a serving plate.

They returned with Her Majesty as I was plating the last few things on the picnic table behind my tent. Miles was delighted that there were plenty of things he could eat (edamame, pickled daikon, pickled lotus root and eggplant, miso rice, hami melon) and he and His Majesty made most of the "failed" miso rice disappear. Saeunn joined us as well. I'd had a number of people say they were going to come who never made it. I think my location, coupled with the ease at which one can get sidetracked, is what happened. No worries. Most of the mochi from Nippon-ya came home with me, but it's sealed up in individual packets in the sampler box and I may be able to make some of it go away at Crown.

I had two takers for the first-contact-with-Japan class and that went well, though we were done at the hour mark and class periods were an hour and a half. That gave me time to go back to camp, clean up some of the lunch mess, eat some more of the miso rice and a peach for a snack and set up for taiko. I had three students for that and we played for the full class period with a couple of breaks for water.

Went to court and saw joycebre  receive her well deserved Laurel and then I hit the wall. I was tired. I finished cleaning up lunch dishes and ended up throwing away the leftovers thanks to an insidious ant invasion that got through all the weighted down towels I'd put over things. I left site, bought myself a big ol' MacDonald's Angus Burger and a coke, drove back to site and ate while watching the late afternoon light slant across the event laid out below me from the upper parking lot.

Ended up hanging out with layla_lilah  for the evening and went to sleep to the sound of Canada geese splashing quietly into the pond near my tent. 

More photos from the set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157624267729610/

Comments

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

If you have the opportunity, get the vegetarian brother to feed you an egg salad sandwich sometime. Miles makes the best egg salad ever. I think the secret ingredient is crack.

[mochimonkey.livejournal.com]

oh, no! Grille musubi disaster! I've never used nonstick grill toppers, so I can't give you advice on it. I've always just used regular grill, throw the musubi on top, then let it go. Did you toast the musubi for a little bit first, then add the seasoning/sauces or did you douse then toast? It would probably help if you toast slightly first, then douse/brush, then continue toasting.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

I poured the sauce on first, so maybe that's why the little buggers fell apart. Though I had to rebuild some that had gotten crushed in the cooler before putting them on the grill tray anyway.
I'll try it again some time. The rice tasted fine, its karma was simply not to be musubi.