I make hot pot, my husband makes his own snacks. Evening drinks for a couple who were both only children

On a cold night, I want to eat something warm.

Supermarket deli food is cold and feels somehow lonely. Until now, I had been heating up store-bought oden in an earthenware pot to go with my drinks, but I started to feel bothered by a faint chemical smell. Is it the chemical seasonings in the fish cakes? The next day, that peculiar chemical smell still seems to rise from my own body.

I wish I could make hot pot. But how do you make it? Having grown up not knowing much about cooking, I don't really understand the ropes. It would be easy to just buy a store-bought hot pot base, but then I feel like I'd just end up feeling "somehow lonely" again because of the smell of additives and the intense umami flavor.

I flip through a few books on small-pot cooking. It looks simple, but it's still daunting. If I start thinking about making dashi, gathering ingredients, and prepping them... my head starts to smoke and I get discouraged.

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That was when I came across Megumi Fujii's "Fujii Chanko".

The highlight of this book is its five "hot pot bases." And by hot pot bases, I don't mean pouches or cubes. You just mix the seasonings together, and it's done.

1. Salt hot pot base

2. Soy sauce hot pot base

3. Sweet soy sauce hot pot base

4. Miso hot pot base

5. Spicy miso hot pot base

You don't need to make dashi because it comes out of the ingredients on its own. You can even make it ahead of time. The ingredients are very simple, just two or three types. The process is basically just cutting and boiling. For a clumsy, lazy person like me, these were truly grateful recipes.

Another book, Ai Yoshida's "Okazu Nabe" (Side Dish Hot Pot), also became a reliable companion. This one is categorized by ingredient, so it's useful when I think, "I don't want meat today, I want fish." There are even unique dishes like "Yukimi Nabe," where salted salmon is placed on top of potherb mustard and steamed with grated daikon radish and a small amount of sake, so I never get bored.

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Since then, I've been making hot pot like a broken record.

I thought I would get tired of just hot pot at first. But that wasn't the case. Because I can change the flavors and ingredients, the time I spend wandering around the supermarket thinking, "What kind of hot pot should I make today?" is truly fun.

Even when Jiro (my husband) is home, I prepare my own pot. We prioritize what we each want to eat, so that's how we do it. Jiro is better at cooking than I am. He, for his part, arranges the sashimi he bought beautifully and makes something else on top of that. We take turns standing in the kitchen, tasting a little bit of what the other has made, and then we sit at the table, each wearing our own earphones to watch our favorite movies or read manga.

It's a strange way for a couple who were both only children to have evening drinks. Two people who lived alone just happen to be under the same roof, living our lives by doing our own chores as we please. If one of us wants to go out for a drink, we don't necessarily have to go together, and whoever feels like "I want to laze around at home today" stays behind.

Now then, what shall I do tonight?