Yes it’s controversial. Yes it’s against everything I’ve ever been taught, but when it’s there in the supermarket staring me in the face, I can’t resist the call. I wanted to try whale meat. I’ve wanted to try it ever since 1999 when the Makah were granted permission to hunt a single gray whale and eat it. And boy did I get flak for it. From my friends to my boyfriend I got loads of “I can’t believe you’re going to eat that.” Well what do you want me to do? Return the hunk of whale meat to the wild? No, it went into my belly (and my boyfriend’s too even though he claimed he’d never want to try it.)

The first problem I had with the whale meat was “how do you cook it?” Luckily, the World Council of Whalers has a Web site complete with recipes. And while Japan by no means relies on whaling  for “cultural, nutritional and economic sustenance” it has been  a part of Japanese culture for hundreds of years. Though, I found it interesting that although whale is no longer hunted “commercially” I was still able to purchase it at my local grocer. Someone’s making a profit on this meat and I don’t think it’s a scientist.

Long story short I cooked the meat and ate it. It was OK. It tasted kind of like steak, but was a lot more tender. I would prefer beef to this any day because beef comes with a lot less stigma and ire.

Pictures inside

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I bought a new rice cooker when I moved into my apartment and so far I haven’t really used it as much as I should. I got it at Costco and it’s a really great cooker. It comes with a timer I can set so I could set it up in the morning and it would start cooking the rice or whatever I put in there in time for dinner. So I did a little sleuthing around the internet and I found this Web site:

Recipe Zaar

It has a bunch of recipes all just for the rice cooker. It sure beats having to buy the book off of Amazon.

This week at the Evergreen a number of the editors have taken on a fad diet for a special dieting issue before Spring Break. Today I started my fad diet: the Asian Food Diet. I can eat nothing but Asian food for an entire week. I thought this would be a great way to eating Japanese food regularly again, which I haven’t done since I lived in Japan four years ago. I haven’t even finished the day yet, but I’m already craving cakes, cookies, pasta and all the other foods I can’t eat. I’m already tired of sushi, which I made for lunch and dinner today. I try to But maybe I’ll drop a little bit of weight. Oh well tomorrow should be better as I get into better foods and get back into eating Japanese food again.

In the meantime here’s some simple Japanese food recipes:

Sushi Rice:

2 cups short-grained white rice (note: you will need Japanese rice for this recipe. American rice is not sticky enough) 2 1/4 cups water
1/3 cups rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp. sugar

1. Wash the rice continually with cold water until the water becomes clear.
2. Let the rice soak in the water for at least 30 minutes.
3. Put rice in a pot and put on high heat letting the water come to a boil. Let it boil for one minute.
4. Turn heat to low and let simmer for 20 minutes.