An Old Man's Lazy Cooking Notes (2026_2)

Yesterday was Nanakusa-gayu (Seven-Herb Porridge) Day, so I used a seven-herb set I bought at the supermarket and cooked it in the rice cooker.

I rinsed half a go (75g) of rice, added 600ml of water, chopped up the daikon and turnip and added them in, then added a little salt and Japanese-style granulated dashi. I chopped the other leafy greens coarsely, mixed them into the cooked porridge, waited a while, and two servings were ready. It had a clean, deeply nourishing flavor, and I was satisfied with how it turned out. As a result, I ended up eating one and a half servings.

Speaking of eating herbs, in recent years "Fly Me to the Saitama" tends to come to mind, but when we were children, we grew up hearing stories from our parents about how they picked wild plants during the war and ate them in various creative ways. In the 100th Anniversary Radio Broadcast special program "To Eat is to Live: The Secret Story Behind the Birth of 'Today's Cooking'", life history researcher Kazuko Koizumi (now 91 years old) recreated how they used to cook and eat wild plants. It had been a while since I last saw her, and I was glad to see she looked well.

Regardless, I was surprised by the fact that the program "Today's Cooking" had been broadcast since the start of radio broadcasting. At the time, people must have been taking notes on the cooking methods they heard on the radio and using them as a guide to recreate the dishes. I learned for the first time that Shinpei Goto, the first president of the Tokyo Broadcasting Station (the current Japan Broadcasting Corporation), had stated, "The mission of radio is the equal opportunity of culture." It seems that the expression "socialization of education" is more widely known to the public, but I would like to leave this point as homework for myself.

[Aside] I once invited Professor Koizumi to give a lecture at my previous university for a mandatory first-year seminar. The theme at that time was pre-war laundry, and it was an extremely enjoyable lecture that included a demonstration using actual washboards and other tools. It was also then that I learned for the first time about the technique called shinshibari (stretching fabric on a frame).