#9 | Heather Fukase: Innovation vs. Tradition + All Things Rice
Hey there! This week's interview with farmer and mother, Heather Fukase, is a bit on the long side but I just couldn't cut out all the deliciously fun topics we cover! So, take your time with it and enjoy.
In this week's episode, we get a full lesson on RICE-- learning about how it is grown in Japan, the different varieties & what makes them different, how to eat it and of course, a rice recipe for Miso Yaki Onigiri (Grilled Miso Rice Balls).
Along the way, Heather shares her stories of being a young Australian woman trying to naturally farm in Japan and the ways in which old traditions and modern innovation come together. We learn how she's grown her business with a SUPER UNIQUE niche and delivery method as well as how japanese students learn about food & seasonality throughout their schooling.
I LOVE japanese food and so we wander into a few areas of japanese food culture that I think you'll enjoy to hear about and find a place to try in your area.
The Recipe starts at: 50:11
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Heather's Business: Nagano, Naturally
Heather's Social Media Links (where you can watch her rice farming process and enjoy her funny anecdotes!): Instagram, Facebook
Book Reference: "We Are What We Eat" by Alice Waters
Become a member of the Women In Food Community at: WomenInFood.Net/Community
Missy’s Farm Website: CrownHillFarm.com
Missy’s Business Coaching Website: SpiritBizPeople.com
Miso Yaki Onigiri
Ingredients:
For the rice:
1 c. Japanese Rice
1 c. of water
For the rice balls:
1 tsp oil
4 TBSP Miso
2 TBSP Mirin
Instructions:
Wash and cook the rice according to your preferred method – ideally in a rice cooker or evaporation method – you want the rice to be a bit sticky. When finished cooking, allow the rice to cool slightly until able to handle by hand.
Form 4 rice balls: place ½ of the fresh hot rice (approx. ½ c.) on a square of plastic wrap in your palm. You can use plain rice but for something really delicious try mixing a teaspoon of sesame seeds and a couple of shredded shiso (perilla) leaves through the rice. Fold the square of plastic over the rice and by cupping your top hand and keeping your bottom hand flat as you gently squeeze the rice (gentle is definitely important here- you’re trying to get the ball to hold together rather than squeeze it out) you should get a triangle with rounded corners. Just make sure that the rice balls are not too thick (about 2cm maximum in thickness) to ensure even cooking.
In a separate bowl, combine the Miso and Mirin. Add a little water if necessary so that you can brush the sauce on the rice balls.
Heat 1 tsp vegetable oil in a frying pan on medium to low heat. Brush one side of each rice ball with some of the miso sauce and then place the rice ball sauce-side-down in the pan. Brush each top with more of the miso sauce. Fry each side for about 1 min, then flip over. Repeat the flipping and brushing of the tops with the miso sauce 2 more times.
The rice balls are done when they are crisp and browned on each side. When it’s finished leave it on a cake rack to cool and then wrap in plastic wrap. Or eat it straight away- even better!
In our commitment accessibility, we’d love to offer polished show notes to help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts. However, Women in Food is still a startup with limited resources. So we’re not there yet.
What we can offer are these very imperfect show notes via the Scribie service. The transcription is far from perfect. But hopefully it’s close enough - even with the errors - to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to participate.
DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPTION or READ IT BELOW (coming soon!)
0:00:00.0 S1: Hey there, my women in food listeners and friends. This is your hostess, Missy Singer DuMars, just a quick note to let you know that this episode is a little on the long side at an hour and 40 minutes, as I was listening and editing this episode, I just did not have heart to cut out any section of our conversation, so you're getting the full 100% uncut version of my interview with my dear friend Heather face, who is a farmer in Japan, we talk about all things rice, we give you a rice recipe, we also talk about her stories and experience being in Australian living and farming in Japan. As well as some fun tangents into some of Japanese food culture. I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to another episode of women in food. I'm your hostess, Missy Singer DuMars. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things food, business, and the feminine. Each episode, I invite you to sit down with me and my interview guest as we dive into this intersection to spark your food curiosity, share a favorite recipe and give you some fun food explorations along the way.
0:01:18.5 S1: I'm inspired by these women farmers, chefs, teachers, women cooks, writers and food makers, who all bring their passion for beauty, for nourishment, community, pleasure, connection and deep care to others through food. These are women who advocate and take action towards increased food awareness for themselves and their families and their neighborhoods. Before I introduce today's guest, I have one request, if you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're using to listen and give us a rating and review. It's a simple act. That helps us a ton. Thank you so much. So today, I am so thrilled to introduce to you my different Heather for case, Heather is a Canadian Australian woman who grew up across the road from the beach on an island in Southern Australia, and now lives at the foothills of the mountains in central Japan, known as the Alps in Japan, she started gardening at the age of five when her mom gave her and her brother old lamp shades to use his planters, she went on to study Japanese and ESL education and found herself in Japan teaching while there she met her husband and hasn't left. Now, she grows rice, wheat, rye, apples, and about 30 types of vegetables to feed her family, her friends and customers through outta that she supplies via the mail.
0:02:41.0 S1: And we'll talk more about that in just a moment. She's mom to her two children and still enjoys teaching with students of all ages, so they're... Welcome to women in food. I am so overjoyed to have you join me today.
0:02:54.9 S2: Thank you so much for having me. I'm an avid listener and feel very honored to be a part of the process. Thank you. And
0:03:02.7 S1: I have to say how we know each other, which is through the women farmers international or international women farmers Facebook group, which for my regular listeners, Tonya, one of my first guests started that group, and he and I are members, and there's other amazing women who have been members, and we do video farm tours, and we message each other and help each other, although we don't talk this time of year, 'cause we're all really busy work in our forms, but over the... What, three years or more that I've known you. One of the things I loved, and the reason why I asked you to join us, is that you share the entire process of growing rice, and I just think it's so fascinating, I love watching your videos and learning about the process. I had no idea there were so many steps and details to growing rice, and so I thought it would be great fun to have you come on, you're also a great, fantastic storyteller and historically. Funny. And so I thought could talk a little bit more about rice and share a recipe or two about rice as well, because I feel like...
0:04:19.4 S1: I mean, beach just making a plan. Bullied to have on the side of whatever. Also, I'm cooking, I don't know that much about rice or different ways to use it, and I have to admit I don't even make it that much because even with an electric rice cooker, I have burned right about on the pot, so I just avoid cooking it or I only eat it if there's someone else in the house who's willing to cook it, so that's my story of rice, but how did you get started with growing rice? I assume obviously, Japan... Race is a big thing. But you can grow a lot of different things. Yeah.
0:04:53.9 S2: Yeah, so the history of rice agriculture in Japan is actually really interesting because at higher elevations, it actually was not possible for quite a long time, so other grains were more common, so the image of everyone in Japan eating rice three times a day is actually a quite Mister Cally speaking. And the area where I am, got irrigation quite late, and the way I understand that rice is growing in different ways, I know they're seed by plain Australia in some parts of the US, but in the context where we are, it's all grown in flooded patties. So you need constant access to fresh water and advances in grain cultivars as well as in irrigation methods, meant that it came to this area and about 40 years ago, a number of new areas were opened up to rice cultivation, and the field we use was one of those that actually... They decided that it was just too much work. A lot of the people who live in my neighborhood have fields further down on the flat land and the... There was no advantage to having a field close to you that was more work, so I was actually invited into rice farming, there was another foreign woman farmer in my neighborhood, and she's an amazing freelance journalist, but freelance Janis doesn't...
0:06:40.4 S2: For regular schedules, and one thing about rice planting is there's a lot of day-to-day care, it's definitely not a plant in forget crop. So she and her husband asked my husband and I if we'd be willing to farm together, do all of the processes together and then split the harvest 5050, and my husband eats a lot of risk, I would say he probably eats over 500 grams of rice a day, and if I cook Liana, he has a side of rice, there is no meal that he thinks doesn't need Ross. In fact, it's kind of a joke in our family, like I cook Christmas Dina with all the roast vegetables, the stuffing and everything, and we still put the rice cooker on, so
0:07:35.0 S1: I wanna go back to rice cultivation. So is it the natural habitat for ice to grow in water?
0:07:43.2 S2: As far as I'm aware, yes. Like I said, I follow a rice farmer in the Southern US, and when I first started getting into Rice, I knew that we had rise in Australia, and I also knew that no farmer in Australia would be putting in as much effort as we do on such a small scale, and I found that they deal with seasonal flooding and planting the grains by airplane, whereas here we grow from seedlings and we control the water, so there are different ways of doing it, but the way I think the way that's common throughout Asia is to grow in flooded fields, that's
0:08:27.9 S1: Like, Oh my gosh, just as a farmer to feel like I'm wet all the time working, I feel does not sound fun, but
0:08:35.9 S2: You know, I never have crept heels because you know how people pay good money for like a mud, like Epicurean little pebbles in the field, and so after you walked up and down, up and down, up and down for literally half a day, you get out and you've got feet that are Instagram worthy. So
0:08:56.4 S1: Do you work in the Rose fields? Bare-footed then some
0:09:01.7 S2: People use knee high, I guess they look like writing boots, like they're very, very fitted boots, but they're needed rubber and they have a build in Gotha at the top. I can never get them off... I don't have Japanese style legs, and I just find it incredibly frustrating and I also... I grew up up quite Bertrand, I really don't mind being barefoot, so it's much easier for me, I take... Sorry, we called him
0:09:34.3 S1: Thumbs in a social flaps is what we would call a UPS or a
0:09:41.0 S2: Lower the to walk down and then I leave them by the side of the Patty and just to go barefoot, I really feel that I get a lot of information from the paddy through my feet, like how hard the buddies like there's a really perfect zone of not to sludge and not too firm, the water temperature warm because of the sun and where your inlet... 'cause we're using river water and because we're up in the mountains, so you really get... I get a lot of information through my Beretta.
0:10:17.7 S1: Different kind of connection to a
0:10:20.0 S2: Pet also really, I feel quite connected. Yeah, yeah.
0:10:24.3 S1: So I'm just trying to picture, when you plant seedlings, how do they not just float away?
0:10:34.6 S2: Well, because some people are had corn to everything by hand, we don't... We have a planter and it drops... I don't if you've seen one of those paper pot planters and they have like... You get a plug that we use trays that have diets, but each diet is about the size of a paper pop planter, and it drops that into the soil and then we go along behind it and you kind of write them like the ones that fell over you push them up, and that's why it's really important to get your mud just at the right consistency, 'cause if it's too soft, you're right, they don't get held and they just kind of float, and if it's too hard, the machine is not boring holes, it's more kind of just pushing. So if it's too hard, the mud is stronger than the machine and they just lie on top of the mod, so the preparation to planting is really technical way more than any other vegetable that I grow and... Yeah, so we're planting tomorrow, and so all this week, every morning, my husband and I are down at the Patty and we're like, What do you think it should be like, turn the water on or we've got the water trickling...
0:11:53.0 S2: Is that enough? Should we turn it off? And then today it's... We're getting heavy rain, so we turn everything off because the rain will keep it wet enough and we've... We've gotta drain it before tomorrow, and it's just so particular.
0:12:07.1 S1: And then there's quite a process after it's grown to harvest it... Correct, yes. I know you harvested and then you have these racks and then you take it to these machines, polices, it, which is like an ATM for rice. It's kind of... Tell us more about that part...
0:12:27.5 S2: Okay, well, one thing I think some people that realize his rice and white rice are not separate things, all rice is brown when you do... In fact, alright has an outside husk, people who have grown a week... We'll understand that like... So you gotta ask, and then you've got the literally, the whole green when you get your whole green bread and that kind of thing, and then to make white rice, you're actually polishing off the outside layers, and so a white rice green will always be smaller than a brown rice green, 'cause basically you've just shaved off the outside...
0:13:06.8 S1: Is that why Brown race is considered more nutritionally, does
0:13:11.9 S2: The germ... Like weak DRM is healthy, the actual germ is removed when you change from brown rice to what it hindering, however, it's quite controversial, because if you use pesticides, when you publish the rice, I mean her beside or pesticide to any kind of agricultural chemical, you're actually removing the layer that contains that now we grow at Rice completely chemical free, so we're very happy to eat brown rice, but just when you were worried about nutrition, it adds an extra layer if you're buying from the supermarket and you buy a T.
0:13:50.8 S1: So it sounds like as a general for my listeners as a real thumb, if you're gonna eat brown rice, make sure it's organic or higher quality, so that you're not getting those pesticides, if you're gonna get non-organic, then get white rice, so you know that some of those pesticides have imposed off
0:14:11.0 S2: And I know that's a really privileged thing to say, but yeah. It's something else that, of course, all the levels are safe for human consumption levels, but it's just something that I didn't realize when I first started growing rice and in ground rods, I had people asking me to sell brown rice because they knew that ours were grown without chemicals, and I was like, Well, now what does it matter what? And I said, No, that's where the green actually stores.
0:14:38.3 S1: Okay, so I have so many questions. Oh my gosh. So one plant has a tough at the top, wheat with multiple grains. Is that how that works? Yes.
0:14:49.5 S2: Yes, yes. Okay.
0:14:50.3 S1: Or they all along the stock...
0:14:52.5 S2: Note, modern varieties of rice are grown all with the heads at the top, you other than very particular ecological rice farmers who grow... For example, one, they grow single grains of rice, most people grow between three and five grains in each seed plug, and then from that, each one kind of splits, so I'm pretty sure with weight you get one store per grain, whereas rice, they split from the bottom and you end up with up to 20 opera clump, not per each grain, and so that's something else you're checking throughout the year, if you got really good... I can't think of a better English. We then split all of rice knowledge is Japanese, so I'm trying to set...
0:15:53.7 S1: It's not quite like germination, it's a little different.
0:15:56.4 S2: We do now it's... Kinda think of other big... Maybe deal, feni, you have more fullness, I would say how full it is. Yeah, yeah, yes. You get multiple runs, multiple stands.
0:16:08.3 S1: Stores. Scots interesting, you send out about modern... Right, because the last episode about in corn flower acorn, one of the things about the heritage original we is that it doesn't have as heavy of a head at the top, and the greens are a little bit more along the STEM, like the older varieties and that the modern hybridization made it, I guess, larger yield, but also easier harvest by having it all at the top, and it sounds like Rice might have a similar history...
0:16:45.4 S2: Well, that's what it was actually, after I listen to your income was really flawed by that, and that's what made me look up what rice originally looked like, because I knew there was a lot of... Not hybridization, but a lot of research and a lot of change goes into how they're always tinkering with what rice looks like to try and get it. And my understanding is that the current way rest all the head to form at the same height is to do with ease of harvest by agricultural machinery and like, so that they can just do one pass and maximize their yield without getting too much straw mixed in it, like that, they're cutting it all at the same height...
0:17:43.1 S1: Right, so how do you harvest use machines or are you saving them or how do you do it?
0:17:49.0 S2: We have a walk behind harvester that cut a bunches and cuts at the bottom at the bottom, and then we hang on recs, a lot of modern rice goes through a combine harvester, which I think is very similar to how large operations in the States work for other grain crops, where it takes the entire crop and spits out Chatman keeps the grain and that goes to a silo where it's mechanically dried hours after it's been spit out, spend out taking bunches. We then hang the bunches on poles in the field, and we sundry a rice quite slowly, depending on the weather, it's about 10 days, or we have a small moisture calculating machine and you're aiming for under 13% moisture in the green...
0:18:54.9 S1: That's interesting. That's not far off. My understanding was growing, I'm getting better at growing popcorn, which is also about 14, 13, 14% moisture. Or do
0:19:05.4 S2: You keep that in the husks? Do you keep... The corn comes in the husk when you store it.
0:19:12.7 S1: I don't totally know, but I bought little humidity detectors that I Stavros jars of popcorn, commercially grown popcorn and a local farmers popcorn, and then my own popcorn to gauge the difference in moisture and see... And then I could add a little water and you need the moisture for popcorn in the moisture, so it pops out particular... Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, it won't pop. Right, it all to stay. So what happens when your pop pop corn is that little bit of moisture steams and then creates pressure in the Husain, the kernel and then... And then
0:19:56.7 S2: Topics kept in the US, like the outer shell has a different moisture content requirement that rise it just as brown rice, and the advantage of keeping it in the house is the husks contained protective oils, which keep it tasting fresh for people who grew up in non-rice cultures, being able to say, Oh, this rice taste like new season rice is... At first I was completely like, Oh, this is such a load of WHO as though you can taste, but it's like like a ton in season to matter, most people can taste and in season to matter when you're tuned in to Rice. I swear, I'm not making this up, and I realize how unbelievable what sounds... 'cause I didn't believe it. You can taste new season rise.
0:20:54.6 S1: No, no, no, I get you, because where I live actually in this town is like, sweet corn is a really big deal, they actually have a sweet corn festival in August, and it's like... I just heard someone talking about this, how you turn the water on to boil before you harvest the corn, right. You reduce the amount of time a horn goes from stock to eating... Yeah, my neighbor is like that, he will not eat deild corn. He knows he renewables like, I will not eat corn if I didn't go down to the field and to right now. And
0:21:30.9 S2: I'm like, I don't know, Tayside. To me, it's like a week old, but it tastes great, but...
0:21:37.5 S1: Yeah, no, so yeah, I think that's true for any TA that would really get into it, that we start to notice the subtle differences, and I think that's a true pleasure and enjoyment of the tuning into flavor and becoming a foodie, I'll say it is getting really refining your palette. And getting into those kinds of details, so with rice, now there's so many different kinds of rice, sushi, arborea, Jasmine brown, short green, long green, are these just different varieties or are they like brown versus white, different ways that they're prepared... After it's grown.
0:22:26.6 S2: I would say, I'm gonna try and make an... That I'm not sure it's gonna work. Okay, let's go for it. Okay, they are green skin pumpkins and gray skin pumpkins. Sorry, I think Australians called everything of pumpkin, I think American Winter squash or pumpkin. So there are big family types, different types, I would say Your Borris, Spearman rise, these are your green, your range in your grade. They're big differences. Now, you said, Sure. I honestly couldn't tell you off the top of my head the number of varieties of rice they grow in Japan, but I would say it would have to be close to 100, and each pre-factor will have specialties, and you can go to your supermarket and you don't just buy what race. You can buy a kit came... Told me about it 'cause he carinthia this prefecture. And so those are like the... Personally, I would say minuscule differences, but to be fair, I only eat kosher, which is the most common type because where we leave the climate, we're quite limited, they have warm season is narrow, but it's quite long, so the price were literally from one end of Japan to the other...
0:23:52.8 S2: So there's a lot of research that's gone into getting rice that suits the climate, really high humid with a long rainy season versus a late spring and early autumn price, so each area has that is better suited to being grown there, so there's so many types of rice and people have a, I don't know, like a rice pride in your own... Here's rice, so there are people who they move for work and they'll still... They'll spend the extra, the premium to be able to buy rice from their home prefecture, it just... Yeah, I... Rise is a whole world.
0:24:39.9 S1: It's like, I think any food... I think the most common metaphor or analogy is wine, how wine, there's different reenters, different vintages and different years, and then different varieties, and the soil and the growing practices, all those things, and people spend a lot of money and get very particular about that, and I've learned a little bit about, particularly Chinese teas, which are the same thing, Which mountain, the same tea grew on will have a completely different medicinal property as well as taste and flavor and different years, depending on the weather and the climate that year and different vintages and how it was aged and all those things. So I think any food, if you really get into the details of that whole type of food, in this case, rise, you start to learn about cultures and communities and peoples and all of it, how it mixes together to create a flavor, you know...
0:25:47.9 S2: Yeah, and I think that's a real connection between the grower, the product and the location, like you say, for so many foods, when you get into it, and I think that makes it really interesting. Well.
0:26:03.7 S1: Speaking about grower and location, most of your paying customers are not nearby... No, tell you more about that, because when I first heard about it in our international women farmers group, I was blown away, like I gotta figure this out here in the US, talk a little bit about... So besides rice and greens, you grow a whole ton of different kinds of vegetables and where are your customers?
0:26:29.0 S2: A lot of people I sell to are in Tokyo, which is maybe 300 kilometers in... Definitely, I'm not delivering a buy-sell as far away as QC, which is halfway down Japan. I've sold to Akira-ly, the like the breadth of Japan. And I actually started... When I first started growing things here, I was just so happy and I wanted to share the happiness, and I would just randomly send things to my friends unsolicited. And people started saying, Can I buy that from you? And I would say no, and I would... We have an amazing postal service here where you can send things overnight to most of Japan, and you get a tracking sleep. And prices have gone up since I started. But it's still about 8 to send up to 20 kilos now. And to give you an idea how carefully the post office looks after things, you can send a glass, like one later, a bottle of wine, like slap a sticker on it and send it. People send rice in paper bags that are tied at the top with a tie, then
0:27:59.1 S1: The first all over the mail room.
0:28:01.0 S2: Because of the way the male is looked after... Here it is, seriously. And where I deliver, I now go to the commercial side, because I live in a farming area, and because a lot of people sell direct to customers, we actually don't go to the front desk of the post office, we go around to the loading bay and we can offload our boxes there, and you can see where they keep all of the... All of the things that are being ready to be sent out and it blows me away. I cannot imagine Australia Post accepting
0:28:35.9 S1: Serially, not the United States posts, especially in the past year.
0:28:40.6 S2: And so it's a real culture of sending and receiving agricultural produce and just gift twice a year in summer and winter, people send gifts to your teacher from high school who really helped you, or business colleagues and a number of business like you can send him through the post, you can send these... Anything you can think of, you can send... Yeah, so I basically started selling because people were like, You gotta at least let me pay for postage, and I grow vegetables that are unusual in
0:29:23.6 S1: Usual in Japan or satin.
0:29:26.7 S2: Generally depend. So I would say 90% of the people who buy from me are other foreign people living in... Who like robot is a huge seller for me because robo hasn't really taken off in Japan, and it's something that you probably... If you have it available around you, you probably don't think GMB, but once it's gone, there's no food that really is a close substitute
0:29:57.8 S1: One. You chose rebar, we're in the height of reverses on here, at least where I am, and I've never grown it. I didn't grow up eating it, I don't have a care for it one way or the other, I'm not particularly decided by it, but I've not repulsed by it either, so I've not really got into growing it, but this year I've had multiple people message me or ask me about rubra titular-ly and I'm like, Maybe I need to buy some and play with cooking it first, and then I'll get excited to grow it, but I don't really eat it much and I don't eat much, but... It's big around here, it's in every store right now, I
0:30:36.9 S2: Starting people miss and I also grow to at the small retorts and Halpin OS and different things that are not readily available in Japanese supermarkets and or something that a lot of people live in places in Japan where they don't have a backyard, a lot of people live in cities or apartments, so it's something that... I'm kind of a cheap person and I'm very concerned that whatever I send should be worth the price and the postage, and I quite often feel quite so apologetic to have to charge postage. But the feedback I get it is like, No, thank you so much. Like, you know, I look from the book and its smell like home or I could smell the someone... And you're selling memories, you're selling time food and airline tomato is like I grow... 'cause Japan has kind of a fixation with making everything sweeter, and when you buy fruit at the supermarket, I will often tell you like the brick score of what you're buying.
0:32:01.3 S1: For our listeners, the brick Score is used... That's a score that tells you the sugar content it's used, most often you hear about it in terms of grapes, brick scores and berries, like where I live actually, a minister neighbor right next door attached to my property grows Concord grapes and they don't get purchased by the company that buys them until they reach a certain bricks number, and so what I do, what I do is I wait till I hear the harvesting machine that morning, and then I run out with bushes, harvest as many Concord, 'cause they're Concord grapes and they go to... I think they go to watches and so if they're good enough for watches, then I know that we did for me, and then whatever we had planned on the farm that day gets dropped, and all we do is process grapes all day that day, 'cause that usually means they're so sweet, they're bursting and they're not even gonna stay fresh long, they're just gonna fall apart into juice that's... Yeah, so the bricks number, and I'm like the past year and a half or two years, I've heard more and more conversation about bricks numbers for tomatoes and four other fruits, but I first heard about it in terms of groups, and it comes up
0:33:14.5 S2: Like tomato is in Japan are grown to be sweet and each to their own, and I don't mind a sweet tomato in a salad, but if I wanna make past OSCE or I wanna make some pizza, I don't want a sweet... I love that really severe. I purposely grow varieties that will give me that and being able to send that to people, and even something like a Zeke... In the last couple of years, you can buy... Zeke is in Japan, but because of the high humidity were, you can go the entire month of July, never got dipping below 30. I don't know what that is. In America, 95-30 degrees Celsius. I have no idea how to do that conversion, I should know by near the Canadian border, but I don't... And you can be above 50% humidity between 50 and 70, so literally leather shoes go moldy in Aransas, a Kenny will get blossom and rot, so being able to be in a place where you can go a unique... Because we're at altitude and towards the mountains, there's things that I can grow more easily than other people, and just things that you can't get in the supermarket, so...
0:34:34.7 S2: Yeah, to me it's really... It began out of feeling very lucky and grateful to be able to have this experience of eating these vegetables and eating them fresh and wanting to share that, which has meant that I know the intersection of women through the feminine and business, I'm really lacking on the business was not to say like what I was noticing listening to you is you created a business, like I like to create a business, you led with generosity, and
0:35:09.5 S1: You probably still do lead with generosity, which time is one of the best ways to start a business is to leave with generosity, you say food to your friends and as a gift, and then they pass it forward and just the way you talk about it, I know that, and I've heard you talk about it before. The amount of care, the generosity of spirit and the generosity of caring that you put into not just choosing the varieties and growing in for packaging it, sending it to them, and the carrier putting into knowing that you're holding people's memories, they're ties to their childhood, they're ties to home, that's a completely respectable way to build a business, and that's a great way to build a business, and many people start... I listen to a lot of business podcasts, and it starts his friends and family more often than not, whether it's friends and family invest in your business, or friends and family, or your first customers, and then somebody tells something and then you have a customer. And then somebody else tell somebody, and then you have another customer and it's a slow road, but I actually... To building a business is not the like sky rocket to success business path, but I think it's a solid and sustainable business journey.
0:36:31.4 S1: Would you agree?
0:36:32.7 S2: I think I'm very privileged, and I'm very aware of my privilege that my husband has a full-time job, and I also work as an English teacher in the evening, so I don't... Catastrophes, just to make my cry, I'm not gonna be on the street, so I'm very aware of that privilege, however, to me, I don't want to upscale an upscale and up scale and get a bigger and bigger slice of the market, I totally respect people who do, but for me, being successful is having everyone who buys from me is happy, and that's really difficult, but it's something that yet to me, I have a satisfaction guarantee, which is you pay after delivery, and if you weren't happy, please don't pay and please don't order again, because I've done my best, and what I'm sending you is my best, and if that doesn't work for you, I totally respect your opinion, however, I'm already giving you my 100% so far. That's really worked for me. And again, I think it works because I'm small and I do have a personal connection. I mean, I've automated the emails that go out when I process your order, but if people have a question or they wanna see...
0:38:00.0 S2: I have an open Farm Policy, you can come and if you wanna see the way I do it, you wanna ask a question how I do things or why... You're welcome any time to just let me know.
0:38:10.6 S1: I do live quite far the way, so not many people have taken me up on that, but I love to share what I do, I believe strongly in how I do it, and I think my enjoyment and excitement comes across, and I think people... I don't know whether I respect that people can appreciate that and when they pass on an off... Literally, everyone I sent to, I knew personally or I knew that they were a friend of someone, I knew... To me, what you're describing is a feminine way of doing businesses as a way of honoring and respecting relationships and inter-relationships, working through community, your community of friends and family and friends of friends, and building a business by allowing it to happen and by giving really deep nourishing care, and by following the lead of pleasure of what brings you joy, to me, all of that is a very, very feminine business model.
0:39:18.4 S2: A, thank you. Or I was taking... I had no business model, the business
0:39:23.4 S1: Model is just, it's so different from what has been promoted and Crufts for so many years, that's unfamiliar, but it's the way of the future, if you ask me or any of the women in the interview, building business in these ways, is the way of the future is it's time for building... Re-weaving the web.
0:39:45.2 S2: That's also, I think, because my community is a minority community in Japan, we are the foreign-born people who have made a life in Japan, and I sell beat, which is a very common vegetable in many parts of the world, and it's integral in some eastern European and Subiaco, again, in the last couple of years, you can buy boiled shrink-wrapped meats at some foreign super markets, but it's definitely not common, and someone shared my website on a group of women from... I think it's Romania, it was somewhere... And these women, suddenly, I started getting lots of messages, not in English, and I speak English and Japanese, but I definitely don't speak any other language, and so I started writing back in English and Japanese... Hi, I speak English or Japanese, and I was getting screen shots and it was beautiful to see that even among the minority community of foreigners in Japan, as an English language background person, I'm quite pre-leg in that a lot of people speak English in Japan and also I have the majority minority community, and these were women who were not English speakers and... In minority, within a minority.
0:41:15.6 S2: And we're missing beats, and I sent out five kilos here, 10 kilos here, and they'd send me photos of the food they made, and I'd be like, Wow, what's that? And they'd write and I'd have to put that into Google to try and find... And I just, I love the happiness that they wanted to show me that they made with what I send him a love
0:41:36.2 S1: I love... My favorite thing is photos on social media or an email or whatever of what people made with like I spent my love and energy growing and then it's next life after at least we...
0:41:52.6 S2: And I think it makes you feel really connected to them, they are women that not only I did I not know, but we also couldn't easily communicate, but I felt the love they had for the food that they cook, the fact that they said they took the time to do that, and I felt that they could feel that it was... Having grown those vegetables was special enough to me that I would appreciate seeing it, I really felt like a really deep connection to what was really like a commercial transaction, but to me, I felt, again, I'm... Because of what I grow and the people who like what it means to them to be able to access it, it just made me... And now, every time I'm out there, and I never seem to get the weed timing right on my beat, and I spend hours carefully protecting the beat as I call little panes around each one, but I never feel frustrated 'cause I know that the people who receive these will be so happy. And
0:42:58.1 S1: I love that we're talking about beets, 'cause I were just... My baselines are just getting their first true leaves and growing more than I ever have this year, but last year I had two interns helping me on the farm who were really into beats and they were really good at in sending the beats, pulling it... It's roots and replanting it. Oh wow, I save... I've been trying to do that and fill in the holes that didn't germinate my rose, and it's not that hard if your soils... Nice and wet. Nice and damp. I've done pretty well by just sticking my finger right next to them and loosening way down underneath it, and then the whole root will pull out and
0:43:43.8 S2: We'll see what happens, but
0:43:46.0 S1: I'm totally with you, let's say even if you send them, which for my listeners, then sometimes you see things, you plant more seeds and you need... Or in the case of beats, it looks like this funky alien seed, but actually this packet of multiple seeds that come from the plant kind of glued together in this funky shape, so you'll often... If you plant one single seed, you'll often get multiple shoots out of it, and so you have to send them because if you let them grow, you close together. They won't grow well. They won't Buller, they won't grow well, and so sometimes the sin seeds here on the farm, we eat them like a micro green, which is essentially what they are, but this time I've been transplant with transplanting them. So I wanna get back to Japanese culture in two ways. Number one, I wanna ask you, we're talking about growing non-traditionally Japanese foods in Japan for your customers, which I love that you have a really... Just to point out the business party of a really specific niche, the Nour customers desires and then you serve them, which is really the essence of a quality business, that's a good business plan.
0:44:56.8 S1: Listen to your customers and then give what they ask for, but I'm curious if there's a particular Japanese vegetable that you've discovered along the way living in Japan that you didn't have exposure to, that's like a favorite of yours... Oh.
0:45:13.7 S2: Actually, pickling greens. I grew up a real mainstay in Canada in the summer food, and I'm sure your so border is like a quick pickle with Sister onion and cucumber in a near... Maybe a bit of sugar. And that was something like you literally make 30 minutes before you eat, so that was something that I knew of. And of course, people do. And so my image of people, I grew up in a quite a regional rural area of Australia at a time when it wasn't terribly multi-culture now, you can eat almost anything in Astraea, but when I was growing up, I wasn't exposed to a lot of ethnic foods so to me, people, if you had to say like Dara pickle, I would have drawn a deal pickle or a people doing or something in a vinegar, people coming to Japan, salt peoples are a really big deal on...
0:46:16.8 S1: I guess a version would be like ambush, right?
0:46:19.3 S2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:46:20.6 S1: Trades, probably one of the more common ones people outside of Japan might know, which is a salt Plum... A pickle Plum. Yeah, assaulted Pillay.
0:46:30.4 S2: And it's a mainstay of winter food, like people make 10, 20, 30 kilos of salt pickled vegetables, and in snow country, we literally leave the container outside. I did a barrel or traditionally, I wouldn't barrel now, often like a yellow, a plastic tongue, and then you leave it on the north side of your house where it doesn't get the sun, and you just go out there every time you're inside pickle container. Get low, you go and fill it up again, and the picnic is a big one pathogen icon, radish then pickling greens, which are very similar to turn up greens, I think. And so when I was watching a Netflix program on soul food and they made... No, completely blanking. College. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could call the green... It looks very similar to that kind of thing. Really long stops, and they actually do have a small rotten it dreams like they originally come from the same plant, but these are definitely grown for the Greens, and it's one of those things where every family has their little twist on the recipe, some people will put... You citrus peel in it, others, we'll pull it some graded rain during it, others might put some chilli peppers in it, and when I used to teach a retiree using with class and it'd be 10 women, and for our snack break, 'cause everybody needs to snack at 10 AM they pull out green tea and there'd be eight containers of pledges and everyone would be trying each other and...
0:48:24.1 S2: Oh, that's good. Or that's good. And to me, green tea, and I expect a sweet little... Something like 11 is the British tradition is you'd have something sweet for morning tea, but it's very common to eat pickles with your team or salt piles.
0:48:39.8 S1: So Sal Pickling is pretty much like a laptop for Mint, right?
0:48:45.3 S2: It's not... I don't think it's fermented, 'cause we make kimchi and things like that, but this is made late enough in the year that the salt is drawing the liquid out of the vegetable 'cause the vegetables are quite So lactoferrin, that's what I think of a crowd where you just take cabbage and you toss it in a lot of salt, and it breaks down to
0:49:08.7 S1: A sindhi eventually breaks down and it gets to sit, so it has a sour flavor that sorrow basically, you mix cabbage and salt and then you pack it in containers.
0:49:22.2 S2: Yet, this is not fermented, so it's literally... You get it fresh, you don't let it sit as long, I think because it's made late enough in the mean people leave it all winter, but I never get sour, it's definitely just saltire sting.
0:49:38.6 S1: I probably like that better 'cause I don't like this hour that often, and I was like... People ask me if I like pickles, I love to make pickles, but once they've aged three weeks and they start to get really sour, I'm not into it anymore, it's like I wanna eat them when they're like salty cucumbers.
0:49:55.8 S2: The on the opposite... When I used to live with some Koreans and when they said that their kimchi was too old and no good, I'm passive if my math guy from how cemented it is, that's my perfect one time, so we had a great... They would make it, eat it for like two or three weeks and then pass the leftovers to me, and I thought I had the best roommate ever. I'll say My favorite Japanese food.
0:50:21.1 S1: Well, there's much favorite the past year, I've really gotten into Japanese and other Asian radishes in all the fall and winter radishes, like shallow... Raised green and white ones. Yes, I love though, those are my favorite, my grit for the first time last year and fall in love with them, and I have such a wonderful zip and flavor, and some in just the range of colors and flavors of... I never knew I would be such a radish lover, but spring radishes are okay, but I love the fall radishes 'cause that's when around here we plant more of the Asian radishes and other cultural radishes, various kinds, but I also say, I've always had a love of... At least what I can access as Japanese food in America, and I lived in Hawaii for a little bit, so I had access to Haan Japanese food as well. My favorite has always been a really good... Shobha is my favorite. I actually have the whole pot in Sati, love to have a shop shopping party with all my friends and I'll go to the Asian market and get all the meats and all the Asian vegetables and noodles and a lot stuff for SHAPE shape.
0:51:36.1 S1: And I just love the shape. Shape is the word for the Swiss of the Maya. Yeah.
0:51:41.6 S2: There's a lot of... There's a lot of communal meals like that here, Nabis, basically Atkins, and again, they're like the whole family, you sit around the table together, and everybody is involved in the process of the cooking and the eating, because as the mushrooms get low in the pot, someone will add more mushrooms or... Okay, and I love that. It's a real event. The eating is part of the enjoyment... The cooking and eating together, and
0:52:18.2 S1: It's like... Yeah, I love that too. With shapes, I'll have my girlfriends over and I'll pull out the pod and it's like somewhere in midway in the process were like.
0:52:29.1 S2: I think I lost my mushroom or a parent is this, or can I have this noodles? Or did you put this in there? I forgot... Oh.
0:52:37.2 S1: I forgot I put that piece of meat in there, like Those little conversations like, No, go ahead, have it, I'll go put another one in or...
0:52:45.8 S2: I don't know whether you know the tradition, so after you've finished, everyone's eating and you get left with kind of a stock with like you say, top of it, so we do what we call schema, which translates as the finish or the tying together at the end, and some people just put food on news in like cooked on nodes, but my favorite is you put in a black ball of rice and some extra green onions and an egg that you've kind of mixed up on the E, and then you just let that soak into the liquid and you get like, it's not a result of, but it's like a rice soup, and I'm a horrible person in my family who everyone's like, Oh, should we put some more in like... No, you've all finished. It's not a time for the Shema, my favorite pot, and yeah, we tend Ellie
0:53:44.9 S1: Like need to revise how I was taught. Savior, our listeners, let's just... Since we went down this path, totally plan, let's talk about it 'cause it is one of my favorite foods of all time actually, like if I'm given a choice of all kinds of things, I will go for shopkeeper time, and I really got into it living in San Francisco, where there's so many options for Japanese hot pods, Korean hot pots. All the things... And my friend and I used to go for Shoppe shop all the time, So tropical is... It's a hot pot. And as I said before, shabby shave is the sound is named for the sound of switching meat.
0:54:22.8 S2: I guess it would be like switch to ISIS when you eat swish, swish.
0:54:29.0 S1: That's hard to say. Shapes, easier. Basically, it's communal, as Heather said, and there's a pot on a burner with a brass, and at least in America, there's various broth options, but the most basic is water and some combust. Right, yes, it's totally... I'm like describing the Japanese cultural tradition and you're the one... He lives there, so I totally am. And then you have all kinds of very finely sliced meats and fishes and vegetables, and you sit around the table and you put them in the broth and like the meats or sliced super thin, so they cook in a minute or two at the most, and then you take them out. And when I learned, you kinda had your own ball of race in front of you, and they're dipping sauces, so I always like ding the dipping sauce and kind of debit on my rice and then eat it, and then I might scoop up a little rice with the piece. So now we're back at the race conversation, and then at the end, Heather said he's sort of at the end, or I always did it in the middle 'cause I'm a noodle fine, but you can do different kinds.
0:55:34.7 S1: Sometimes there's good on style noodles, I've seen Roman style who's... I personally love to use the really clear, the clear gametes, Those are favorite, which I first was introduced to as Suki, and then there's kind of like... What happens is all these things that you're dipping, the vegetables and the meats create this flavorful super off and then at the end, as Heather was describing, there's different things you can do with it, although my experience has been world too full by the end to eat anything, that's
0:56:03.9 S2: Why you gotta pace yourself, that's why you get like a sabretooth
0:56:08.7 S1: Doesn't work here in the US, where they do all... You can eat Shabaab for a water.
0:56:13.0 S2: It does not work, and I just keep reading plates out, I think... And for people who don't know it, the biggest difference between Cobain, a regular hot pot is the food, you don't put all the foods in it once you're literally putting in what you're about to eat and sitting it around, so the foods are farmed agent than a normal hot pot, and it's quite a different experience. But like you say, you get... You have almost zero understanding of how much you've eaten because you only pretty... Get a math Fulani eating it, and there's no... If someone showed you the pile of vegetables that you just eat and you'd be like, No way.
0:56:54.3 S1: I use my two largest serving coders, one for the meningeal, and it's usually pouring over the side, and I often... 'cause I actually... I personally don't eat a lot of seed, so I tend to just use a very light vegetable bros, homemade vegetable breath as a start... As a base. But yeah, this last time I did it, I actually, I have some containers of the final breath, I froze 'cause I'm like, This is good stuff, I'm fine.
0:57:20.6 S2: I'm not gonna waste it, I'll freeze it and then I'll use it again. For Sartre, she teams rooms are great for vegetarians of people who are not being on a sea food flavor, 'cause they give such an amazing flavor and then after you're finished, you can chop them up and add them to the broth, but bringing the whole dry chiaki mushroom and it will slowly giving up the broth as you eat, so that's a... That's right.
0:57:46.9 S1: Yeah, some veal, you end up putting in waiting a little while before they're ready, like carrots and things, but I'll par boil them ahead of time to make it a little easier. But it was my favorite, and what I love about it is, if you make it a home, you can pick and choose what you do or don't like if you don't like I'm not... I love mushrooms, they don't really like, you know, pushes that much, so I leave them out or you know, I want extra cabbage or I have a different kind of green or you ever
0:58:12.3 S2: Work with what you have or what you do and don't like... And it's really deftly healthy, I mis-broad meat and veggies. There's really no one as no rich things that it's like... Especially during the Audi, especially for someone who likes the Asian radishes. If you peel your rabbis and then with the vigil, peeling slices, so you've got long ribbons on the road... Yeah. Nice, so good in chaperone
0:58:41.6 S1: Makes sense, 'cause I love... Well, my love of radishes started with Cook radishes, either steamed or roasted, so it would totally make sense that it'd be wonderful on the breath. So speaking of Japanese cooking, you've got a recipe for us... You actually kind of have two recipes, so let's talk... Let's talk about one or both of them. Well.
0:59:01.9 S2: I mean... Is something that I love to eat. I would have to say the year me So rice ball.
0:59:11.6 S1: Okay, let's talk about that.
0:59:14.6 S2: Your first bowl of rice after you finish the long process of harvesting and threshing and you've gotta eat straight white rice... No Topping, I think... 'cause to me, you've got to really soak in like we've done, 'cause there's so many potential pitfalls along the way, like a typhoon can and does regularly interrupt your plans. There's so many things. So when you finally got all your eyes in your sheds in your storage and you're eating, you being done, like you were saying to the rice polishing machines, which are like little ATM boxes, and you bring the eyes home and you cook it in your ice cooker... I feel like the first time you eat rise, you've just got to just have a mouse full with nothing and just be like... Another year, we made it. But after that, after that first wave, I don't actually eat a lot of plain rice, but as soon as you make... And I'm not actually a big fan of rice balls, there are like an absolute staple, I would say the rice bowl is the sandwich of Japan in that you can have super fancy ones or literally assaulted dried plum in a bowl of white rice with some salt on the outside is kind of the PB and J or Japan.
1:00:39.2 S2: Yeah, and they're actually really common in Hawaii as well.
1:00:42.2 S1: Oh wow. So when I lived in was when I first was exposed to anyone, Gary, and that's respond... You'll find them in stores, almost like a convenience store, grab and go
1:00:56.3 S2: To a rather kind of everywhere. I like that. I as well, yeah, I think actually, I think that the history of Japanese immigration to Hawaii is that it was a lot of farmers who went... Yeah, I think that they're definitely a connection, This is field food that you can take you... And traditionally, it was the assaulted Plum was also a preservative, so it was flavor, but it was also to stop the rice going back, but... Yeah, so I'm not a big fan. But these grilled mission put the plate in front of me.
1:01:34.4 S1: Yes. Oh my God, when you emailed me this recipe, do you remember what I told you... My email back to you. I don't... Sorry, you cracked open a childhood memory, the very first to use restaurant ever went to as a kid, we'd go to this place called East, and they actually had tables down at floor level, so you were a AAA, you took your shoes off at the front door of the restaurant, which in America is unheard of, and they have slippers for you to walk around and then to go to a restroom or whatever... Yeah, but they had me so young and I didn't know what it was. It was so good though. That was our fan, always order them like two or three plates of them for the table because they were the best, and I never saw them at a single other Japanese restaurant, if ever... I've never seen them since.
1:02:24.0 S2: And so when I saw that recipe is, Wait a minute, these are these amazing things, like I would get to go as an adult, young adult store.
1:02:33.0 S1: I would get them to go and nothing else, just the so delicious, so tall rice ball is basically... What is it? It's covert
1:02:45.6 S2: Has to be made with short grain rice, so this is something you have to make with an Asian rice because you needed to have slight stick togetherness, you... Yeah, you need to make it a race cooker or by the evaporation method on the stove, it won't work, like if you pour a cup of rising to a leader of water and old school site, you need to start with the star, the rice, and traditionally, I don't know many people who still make rifles traditional way because plastic wrap is just so convenient, but I do understand a lot of people want to avoid using plaster raps, traditionally, you would just wet the palm of your hand and start with very hot rice and you kind of put about a half a cup or it's literally the amount that you can fit in your palm is the size of the rice bowl, and you kind of crest your top hand onto the bottom hand, and then as soon as it's too hot to touch, you move your hand a part and in turn it a half turn in turn often, and if you watch old women make rice balls, they are machines, they are so fast, and every wise Ball is the same size...
1:04:05.9 S2: In the same shape. But for those of us who are not skilled in that way, what I recommend is get a square of plastic wrap just larger than your hand, and you can use just plain rice or if you wanna be a big fancy mix through some testing recedes or some sheaves Perla leaves finally cut through your rice, and if you put the rice in the middle of the plastic wrap and follow the Four Corners up, then it's very easy that it seems to be not as hot to the touch, and also it doesn't stick to your calm and you're basically making kind of a rounded Triangle, and this is really hard to describe in a podcast, if you check YouTube... I'm sure there's heaps of videos... Yeah.
1:04:58.7 S1: It's a triangle, but was kind of rounded corners
1:05:02.0 S2: And a rounded naturally by the shape of our Hayden I first made her... I suppose I definitely made this mistake. You're not pushing the Rise Together, the rise is already stuck together enough, if you squish it, you end up with a really heavy hard ball, which is not fun to eat, so you want there still to be some air between the rice, you're molding the rice rather than squashing it. Okay, so when you've got rice that is gonna hold together, that's all you're really going for is just to hold together, if you are not gonna make it, your rice ball is done, you could unwrap it and wrap some, or you see weed around it, or you could just pack it like that, but we're going to do the missile is...
1:05:52.7 S1: And you kind of mentioned before we get into the Muse girl one, you've kind of mentioned that you'll see them filled with, I guess, traditionally salted, pickle, plumb if something, but there's modern ones with a piece of fish or chicken or some babies
1:06:09.9 S2: Junior and May... And as Terai chicken, you can get the flavor of rain in rice with a half soft boiled egg. These are things that I think in a lot of countries, she'd be like, Oh, that's a recipe for fruit point, everything is salted and they're kept refrigerated until you eat at those particular ones, but... Yeah. What do you got? Salted Salmon, like a shaman flaked demotic greens. I was talking about people finally put people greens and mix those through just... It's really like saying what goes in a sandwich, I mean, and you want... But it can't be too liquid, so people put it graded cheese through because it will kind of melt into it, but yeah, you don't want anything to liquid and you don't want anything too big, otherwise the time you cover it in rice, it's unwieldy.
1:07:12.4 S1: That might be some of the ones I've seen in Hawaii or like that. I see there was a place in Colorado that did schist Le burritos with really large sheets of nori, and it was like burritos, I cut it in half. It's a giant sushi roll.
1:07:32.6 S2: When my kids were in elementary school and I would let them make their own lunch, it was always like, I'm like, No, we remember, you've got to be able to close it up again and you would get these massive rolls.
1:07:46.1 S1: Yeah, okay, so for the grilled me, so race ball, after you shape it, what you...
1:07:52.2 S2: You're now gonna unwrap the plastic wrap and you're going to put the mito on it, and there's all different kinds of Musso depending on again, on the region of Japan, koalas quite famous for a very lightly flavored, very light colored... It's called white Miss. There are other places to read, meandered missiles have completely, very strong salty flavors, almost like a Chinese black bean, saw some of the really throne ones through to, like I said, a very light one, I personally think this works better with anything but the really strong... The red miso and they're really dark miss, I think are too overpowering, so I would stick with anything, usually, whatever, so you can buy in a supermarket tends to be the regular SEO that will work fine.
1:08:53.9 S1: Yeah, I most often see like a yellow or the red mesenteric Ry store here in the US. Right. Mentees.
1:09:03.9 S2: You want a kind of Carolina ion, so traditionally, you would put two pats Musto, one part marini, and then as you mix that together, it has the dual purpose of making a little bit... The Miron is a sweet rice wine, so it's gonna have a sugary effect on helping to Caroline, it also just kind of loosens the miso, so the mamas not such a thick paste when you're spreading it on, you could definitely use sugar instead and maybe a touch of water to just try and like I said, depending on them, so some misses can be really thick and not very spread-able, so what you're looking for is just like a spread-able consistency, and then I only brush one side of the rice ball, like one of the flat triangle sides, yeah. Yeah, one of the flat trainees, and then when you put it in the friend, then it's very easy to do the second side, like that.
1:10:01.4 S1: You put a dry Fran or do you put a little oil or...
1:10:05.1 S2: I use a non-stick pipe, if you have a seasoned cation or a nonsectarian putting it in a dry ripen or... This is incredibly authentic. If you put a touch of Butte in, This is... My daughter started doing this, I think in when she was like 80 or 90, she got really into cooking and she came up with but so on a year and I was like, Oh, that's gonna taste terrible, you can't mix two food cultures, but... Oh yes, you can. But I would say to the first time you make them definitely just make them playing 'cause that's more authentic and then you know, you play with it, go for it, but I think the difficulty with making them on a dry ripen is they catch really easily, so you've got to keep the heat on low and kind of watch it because you don't... If you under cook it, you won't get that real cereals, but if you over-cook it, Bryant's like anything where you've got sugar and heat, like there's a fine line between you and... Oh, that taste burnt. So these are so good, 'cause once you do both sides, you have this crispy Carlton Willis crispy Carmelite playful outside, and then the soft luffy
1:11:29.4 S1: Rice on the inside, and they're so
1:11:31.9 S2: Good at... Good. One thing that these are not very... I would not recommend making the isps ahead of time, I think having the warm rice, 'cause you're not cooking it in The ripen, you're literally just alienate you need if you want or eat in the warm, I think is the only the best way to eat it and they won't heat through in the ripen, so I think these are something that you need to make just before you...
1:12:03.3 S1: Easy, you're making a lot of them. I can see prepping all the rice balls, but not refrigeration them.
1:12:11.6 S2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely state erasure at least. They're sold in the freezer section here to just mark a engine, they're getting
1:12:23.6 S1: More
1:12:24.1 S2: Or... Yeah, the... That you need to eat long... Yeah, and then I like to because they're to touch it because you just take them out the profit, so I like to put them on a key rack to just kind of get down to, like you say, while you're finished making the rest of them, and then... But this is not something that you would pack in the morning to eat at lunch time, so... Yeah, but one, you'll never be stuck. We've left over rice again, if you're getting to me, making and eating
1:12:54.8 S1: These... Well, I love this recipe, and in a moment, I'm gonna ask you a bit more about just the cultural differences for you and being Japan, and what that was like as a farmer, particularly in around food education. But before we do that, I wanna take a quick break and talk about the sponsorship of women in food, our local guilt Buffalo has been a wonderful support or women in food programming almost since the beginning. Video Series in 2020. Did you know that you can search for women own businesses specifically on Yelp, Support your local women-owned businesses by patronizing them in writing reviews, download the Yelp app now and use the filter for women owned businesses. Our best sponsors are the growing community of people who are passionate about food and supporting the diversity of women's voices in our food cultures, those sponsors are predominantly people like yourself, rather than companies that wanna sell you things, if you're not a sponsor of women in food, I invite you to become one simply by joining the women in food community, that's really all it takes. Access this community of food lovers like yourself to share an additional resources beyond the podcast to feed your curiosity and love of food, while also supporting the global community of women in food businesses, and in this group, we set intention for each week, we share what we're working on we do recipes, swaps, we share articles and stories and questions about food, and many of my past podcast guests are in the group and community, so you have a little bit more access to them.
1:14:30.5 S1: This is kind of a sense of what the women in food community is about. So whether you're looking for a recipe or a one-made food product or a new restaurant or help with your garden, this community is the place for that resource from women. So if you're interested in sponsoring this podcast in this way and becoming a woman in food community member, go check out women in food dot NET community. So either when we were talking the other day, one of the things you were telling me about was your journey of being sort of outside of Japanese culture, you had said to me you had three strikes against you, reader a woman and you were young. Yes, that's your words. And what I appreciate you sharing with me, and I'm gonna ask you to share with our listeners is how you found a path towards walking the line of respecting the culture you're entering into and yet also respecting what feels true to yourself.
1:15:41.1 S2: Yeah, I think if I could just give some background in most areas of Japan, farming is on a much smaller scale than most Americans or Australians would have... A lot of countries would have family-run farms, I would say are the majority here, and people live in multi-generational houses, there's not really a concept of retiring and moving to Florida finally enough, but there's people finish their career at 65 and then they will take up full-time farming. So there's always been... The every age of farmers is quite high here, even where the next generation down to the 40-year-olds are full-time farmers quite often, I will have an off-farm job, so there's a real mix of who farms and how they form. However, I would say that definitely in my experience, and I don't believe this is a typical... It tends to be men are the main farmers, women do a lot of the farm labor, but I would say farms are passed down from grandfather to son down, and it's still a big deal to have a son farming family. And what that tends to mean is the people who become quite powerful in farming communities are men in their 60s and 70s, and coming into that as a woman, I think I was in my late 20s when we first started, and I was a woman, I was young and I was not Japanese.
1:17:50.6 S2: So in a quite patriarchal, I love many, many things you put Japan, however, gender equity is not something people come to Doncaster very low on the world gender and it pre-index and it's so ingrained that a lot of people don't notice it. I think that's true of most people in their own culture, there are things that you don't notice, but expectations, and even among generations, when we first moved to her, my neighbors were so lovely and they kept bringing me things, and so I would make something for them and return it, and then the next morning they would bring me something and I said to my husband, I'm stuck in a gift giving like Vortex, When will we ever be equal... When will she ever just say Thank you. And that did... And he was amazed that I thought I would ever be on equal standing with a woman who was 40 years older than me and had lived in the neighborhood all her life, and I was like, Well, we own our house and she owns her house, and we both live in the neighborhood, so we should... We have the same standing. And he's like, Oh no.
1:19:06.2 S2: So I think there's a lot of hierarchy built into Japanese society, so when we first arrived and we started very small scale and then slowly we added more and more field, do I learn a lot from my husband and not thinking that I was the equal of... I definitely respected their experience, however, I had... I was working to overcome a feeling that what I do in my field is just as worthy and should be equally respected as what you do in your field, and my way of doing things would be different, very different in a lot of cases because Jae-Japan agriculture is a huge conglomerate, he that organizes insurance and banking and post-sales, it's a gomera, it works as a broker for, it sets the prices, it sells the chemicals, it gives the chemical, like the chemical input schedules, it does the registering and testing, so the majority of farmers sell through JA, which means they use all of the inputs that JA prescribes and I don't... And I had nothing to do with it. So my way was very, very different, and my neighbors didn't have a concept that there could be different, but equally...
1:20:42.3 S2: Right, which again, it's just a product of their education and their experience, and
1:20:48.8 S1: Your husband told you a piece of wisdom on how to proceed... Do you remember? I know what you told me.
1:20:55.2 S2: Yeah, it was... He's a very non-confrontational person. And when I said, I wanna take on this and I wanna do this, and he said We had an understanding that he would fully support it, but we had... We're not just going... Vegetables were growing relationships, and so he wanted to observe and not go out like a bull in a china shop saying, No, what you're doing is wrong, but just slowly and with as much as possible harmony with the people around us, that we would do our thing. However, that we would be respectful of the people around us as we do...
1:21:44.9 S1: Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing that you're actually talking about is all as humans, society, in whatever line of work we do walk the line between innovation and tradition, innovation and what's been learned over generations, and... I think about that a lot too. I get laughed at all the time where I live, I live surrounded by big agriculture or medium, big agriculture, vegetable farmers, a lot of corn and soy and whatnot, New York style, and... Oh my gosh, my neighbors laugh at me how much money I spend on a bag of poultry feed because I insist on organic and soy-free and all these things, and they're like, Well, there's stuff much cheaper, you're gonna have expensive eggs and even professionals... Market professionals said to me, there's no way you're gonna be able to sell eggs at six or seven, it doesn't... Which I can't keep my eggs on the shelf, I'll tell them now, so I'm doing something right anyway, but it is this thing of... There's old techniques that are of value to carry forward, like what we've been talking about with fermenting pickling and preservation, and there's reasons those things were valuable in those time, and then there's also whatever innovation and innovative things, and then there's also awareness that sometimes things seem innovative and then you look...
1:23:29.3 S1: And it's like people have been doing that for generations. They just call it something else, like what people call regenerative farming right now, it's like if you look at mentions cultures they have in farming, they've known this stuff forever, that's how they naturally farm long before us white people came along, and so it's like what you're describing I think particularly prevalent for us as farmers, but I think a lot of industries and places, people experience this as generations change and shift is how do we learn from and respect tradition, culture, wisdom that's been passed down for... Learned over generations, elder hood in our case, and then how do we also bring new ideas for it and innovate and grow at the same time. Right.
1:24:23.9 S2: And I think that's like what you say about old knowledge has been really interesting to me in that while I've had some issues with the 60 to 70-year-olds, believing that I was completely mistaken and it was my lack of experience that was causing me to do things the way I was doing them rather than a conscious decision, like you like to say, choosing your feet, like the way we choose to grow things that that was... We had done the reading, we had done the research, but we made this decision rather than, Oh, look at these people who just don't know how to do it, the one generation beyond that, because like I said, Japan has got really... People who live over 100 are not unusual here, and because there's not really a retirement culture, they can be in their 90s and still coming out to the field, of course, they're not massively efficient, but it's very important, and I think mentally and as well as physically, it's a very important part of their day. And I remember an old lady who was next to our rice field and she came over and saw my kids running around, my kids must have been like three and five, and I got them to collect all of the grains that 'cause every now again is like one stock of race that won't have been caught, and I told them to collect them all on...
1:25:49.9 S2: We'd see if we could make a bunch. And it was mostly to keep them out of my way, but I was really surprised how much they were collecting, and the old lady came over and she was literally be double, which is the... Was before the war, there was lots of nutrition issues and just because a lot of farming is done, like looking at the ground, there was a generation of women in Japan who had... Were very bent over, and she came over and she showed me and my kids like this old lady who literally shuffled, her fingers were so nimble, and she showed us how he was like, This is a flip on a tie and a twist, and she'd use the rice straw to tie off a bunch of rice, and I was really impressed that I said, Wow. And she said... She looked at me and said, That's nothing special. How do you think... We did it before they used the binder machine, and I was like, Oh... And then she was explaining that when she was a girl, her job was what my kids were doing as fun, but back then, literally every grain of rice was important to feed their families, and so the king's job at rice harvest was to run around and collect all the stocks and make bunches out of it, and hearing that and she's passed away now, but learning that from her, I feel like that tiny little...
1:27:12.9 S2: There's a connection between the old way and my way, I definitely don't wanna have... I feel by hand, but having seen how and knowing how to make a bunch and tied with rice, I feel really privileged that she shared that with me and that the kernel of knowledge is still alive because of her gift to sharing it.
1:27:34.4 S1: So, so beautiful. Oh my God, you just move on to tears, and I'm struck by... And other stories you've shared with me, I'm struck by how this kind of knowledge and wisdom and relationship to food is really interwoven into regular daily life, whether it's with children or with adults, and I think that that preserves a certain amount of wellness and it preserves a certain richness of culture, that cultures... I'm just gonna say like American cultures that have gone towards convenience and quick and the AD too, that a meal is just something to get through and get over, as opposed to like We're talking about shapes, right. Slowing down and enjoying a meal together and the whole act of it, that that's part of what... Not only preserves a culture, I think it actually fosters values and discernment and respect, care, kindness, awareness, mindfulness, so many things, and
1:28:51.2 S2: I... First of all, I need to say, definitely modern Japanese life for many people is a life of convenience, and there are so many convenience stores and convenience stores free you real foods here, but like rice balls and
1:29:10.1 S1: You see like vending machines with Susie.
1:29:12.7 S2: But I don't want people, I think sometimes Japan gets thrown up as this virtuous amazing paradise of health and nutrient, but I do think at the core, and not just a traditional life but of family life, and especially in the country, food education starts really young from three years old, most kids go to either a kinder or daycare, and your lunch is a big part of it, and like I say, lunch is not just unnecessary break to refuel, but the kids, they learn through eating, they learn about seasonality and they learn about balance, they learn balance. Not just carbohydrates and proteins, but also even the very... And appreciating, and they're taught what's called triangle eating, which is to eat a little bit from each dish, you don't eat all of your rice or all of your meat first, but you kind of... And it's very prescriptive, and I railed against it at certain times when I felt like just let the kids to be kids, but at the same time, now that my kids are in high school, and I realized that they've kind of soaked up an understanding... A Japanese kids could tell you. Sweet potatoes are in Alton food, chest natural on faster, I guess is a spring food, which fish, winter fish, just because their school lunch comes with a little announcement, today we're eating punk in and pumpkin comes from and is a real local aspect to it.
1:31:03.6 S2: And again, again, I'm in the country, so my experience is different, I'm sure from people who live in Tokyo, but I do know that the school lunch program is to national, and they're served a hot lunch that's nutritionally balanced and contains a soup... A vegetable side dish, I mean Dish, rice, and sometimes a fruit or some kind of dessert every day, and they're told... There'll be themes, we have international themes, they have things to do with a particular vegetable or a celebration, something in the Japanese calendar, there are certain...
1:31:42.1 S1: Cool, that's super cool and interesting. And that just becomes second nature, so then as an adult, that person and that child doesn't expect teams out of season one... Yeah, I just... It's not, you don't even have to think, Oh, well, that's not in season. I imagine that it becomes, for many, someone's
1:32:03.7 S2: A big deal of the first x of the season, so when the first cherry already... Or when the first water melons already. Everybody's excited. And it's the same with the... When you come out of the winter vegetables and the first spring greens, the first Neill be in the school lunch, and I'll talk about like the first crop of the... There are green houses here, and like I said, you can buy food out of season, but I think there's a really high understanding of seasonality. I grew up industry, honestly thought apples were grown, they're just always on trimesters
1:32:49.7 S1: In... We talk about that because I was listening to Alice Louise waters talk yesterday or two days ago, about her new book, We are what we are, what we eat, that's like her Food Manifesto, and it's a lot more, it's about food, but as it relates to creating our culture, which is kind of what you're talking about here, but there was a piece for... It was fun hearing her talk about eating seasonally is how you eat diversity, so it's not so much about diversity and every meal all year around, but it's like, yes, for two weeks this time of year, or three weeks, we eat asparagus, we spares every which way. And the asparagus is done, and you're kind of tired of it, and it takes the whole rest of the year by the time it's ready, and you're like, Oh my God, I can't wait for asparagus. I'm almost ready to be, I can't wait for tomatoes. And then I'll have tomatoes for weeks and weeks, and then I'll miss them in the rule of winter when they're not there, and I can only eat my can tomatoes, but then the first tomato again the next year, and it's a different...
1:34:05.3 S1: Like you said, a different excitement for the next flavor, and that's actually one way that we as humans living as part of nature or within nature, a wall around a diet, is that eating seasonally then throughout the course of the year, you get all the nutrients you need all the vitamins, all the array... To think their cycle... People think of it like, Oh, I need it once a week, or, Yeah, I need all the vitamins, and it's like if you actually really seasonally, you'll get the balance of all the things you need at the right time a year for your body, etcetera, throughout the year, and it's a year-long cycle.
1:34:46.7 S2: And I feel like seasonality is a huge part of Japanese food, if you eat castle, the very fancy 10-dish meals at a fan Japanese restaurant, it's a whole cuisine where the dishes that it served in and everything reflects the season and I think that's something that kids here... Like you say, they learn it very young and it's not in a... Someone just explaining from a textbook like apples are harvested in all them... It's really like, they're leaving. Yeah, I mean, the fish had season do something that... Yeah, they're sanitation season and where it's really exciting and I'm like, fissures to be Rome all the time. What do you mean? And then when I looked it up, I'm like, Oh, why do you know? Yeah, yeah, so it's interesting to me too, because I've encountered chefs here who asking you... I'll be like, I have radishes available. And they'll be like, Great. You have cucumbers too. I have a great idea. I'm like.
1:36:02.6 S1: No, cucumbers are not in season for another month and a half, it's rather season, it's early spring. Cucumbers don't come until later and they're like, Oh, it amazes me that chefs don't know what's in the season when, when they're using these products all the time. And I imagine that's not the case in Japan in the same way.
1:36:24.3 S2: And I also think I'm always amazed that out-of-season produce costs more and lacks the flavor... Oh yes, I don't like, Why would you wanna buy a tomato in December like... I'm like, at this time of year, I'm like looking at my tomatoes, these tiny little green golf balls and going, Come on guys, I'm like, I've got 85 ideas in my head or how I wanna eat to motors the study for market down the road, but I don't wanna eat that because I'm waiting... I'm waiting for the first to motto of the year, and I think my kids have only ever known that, and my daughter will be moving to the city for university next year, and I have a feeling it's gonna be the first time that she has an understanding of... Yeah, how lucky she was to go up with this kind of food culture, and I think it's all they know, and I mean, it's funny. The climate in Australia, in Japan is very different, so certain vegetables and fruit tastes different because we get a lot more rain here, so if you need a peach in Japan, you've got juice running down your arm incredibly messy to eat, if you made a peach in Australia the flavor is so strong, but my kids are like the peaches dry, it's not dry, but it's...
1:37:48.3 S2: Compared
1:37:49.5 S1: To CEOS, I'm gonna ask one last question. And we've been talking about Japanese culture in this entire conversation, which is lovely, and Japanese cultural foods, which is also lovely, one of my favorite cultures, not my own of food to enjoy, but I'm curious what your favorite food from your own heritage or culture is. I see, my mom is a great cook, and we ate a lot of Whole Foods back before that was a thing...
1:38:32.2 S2: My mom would make home Mukesh with eggs from our cooks and whatever vegetables she had in the garden kind of thing, so when I'm cooking food from home, I tend to... I guess what I now know is erected to me, but that I just thought was, my mom's Zaki and summer vegetable. I think, yeah, what I love students that celebrate what's in the garden now, but if I'm cooking, I love a Keith, which is not technically common here, and said, I think sells as meals. I could leave during the summer, there was like no to sell to the same... And I, in fact, because I over went to Kal, I can over Wendt here, and I like to keep my own seed, so I tend to really let it go, I've still got some of last year's Kale in the field now, and there was... In a month ago, it was literally no fresh vegetable out there, but Kalani would be... Today we're having kale with some roasted mushrooms, today we're having kale with dried cram reasonable, some veneer today where I'm like, I could make a salad, all this is raw kale, and then I was like, I kind of...
1:40:09.8 S2: There's a way of cooking in Japan when you're cooking a fry pan, but you put in a table spoon of water and you put the lid, so you start kind of a steam turrets all in one. And then I got into that and then I was like kale with an egg broken over it, so I think... I don't believe that the solid is the side dish I cut off and have the salad as the main... So salak and a rotator summer vegetable thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:40:40.9 S1: Cool, well, thank you so much for sharing your stories, your Prasad, that information about race with us today, I am so grateful to all our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode of women in food and got a bit of inspiration for your next meal. A last request, if you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're using to listen and give us a rating and review. It's a simple act. That helps us a ton. Once again, thank you for accompany me on this delicious adventure, drive me around the table for our next episode and get ready to eat