Not Just Ninjas

Yesterday we held our second English Club meeting at the high school… both the students and i have this unspoken understanding that it’s not really English Club, as no one really speaks much English or wants to (trust me, I tried). What we all agree on is that we want to eat tasty food… which basically means I get to make 15 high school girls cook me whatever I want, all paid for, as long as it takes less than an hour. Yes!

Yesterday we did a macaroon/s’mores double whammy. If I have my way, these girls will never be hungry again for dinner on Tuesdays. We were missing an electric mixer for the egg whites which go into macaroons… so the girls took 2 minute shifts and whipped those puppies up by hand for like 20 minutes. THAT is dedication, my friend. I wasn’t sure how the macaroon thing would work out, as we kinda had to wing it… but in the end, everyone agreed we had achieved tastiness. The language of food…. is universal.

The s’mores were a big hit too, although less so the song (in English) that I tried to teach them to get them to feel the summer camp vibe. ;) Extra bonus: many Japanese marshmellows (which are tiny and incredibly cute… they’re like the size of a nickel) have a delectable fruit center, which added an extra dimension to the smores extravaganza. I think we all learned something new from the experience. Me? I learned that roasting marshmellows on chopsticks over a burner is an excellent approximation of a stick in a campfire.

Later that night, Chris and I were wandering around Jusco, our grocery store, and were graced with a surprise visit by 3 of my girls… I don’t know their names or what school they were from (I have like 1,000 students all together!), but we jumped on the opportunity and asked them for help shopping. We were looking for ingredients to make shabu-shabu, so we asked them if we had all the necessities… we were trying to find chicken stock, but the best we could come up with in Japanese was “chicken water”. Needless to say, this resulted in mass confusion, and no chicken stock was found. Instead, we ended up with some dubious looking dried kelp (seaweed?), which we are supposed to soak in water to make a basic broth. We’ll let you know how that works out.

Talk about your win/win situation: the girls get to teach sensei something, and I end up with dinner. Thanks for the help, y’all!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.