Japan Story Food

Japan Story

  My father never ate Japanese food.  I never had rice except in rice pudding.  A proper English diet consisted of roast beef,  roast chicken or turkey, roast lamb or lamb chops.  And for dessert, plum pudding, rice pudding and mince pies. We ate in the dining room, a small room off the living room where the amah-san or her husband brought us the food they had prepared according to instructions.  

When we had lamb chops my father would, on occasion, throw a chop bone  under the table.  Then he would say very loudly,

"Bad boy, Brownie!" 

Brownie, of course, had come running up at the smell of meat and seized the chop bone.  We heard a growl from under the table.  Brownie was not about to be parted from his prize.

"Bad boy, Brownie" I said in my loudest voice.

"Grrrrr" from under the table.  

My father knew how to have fun.

On another occasion he had a tantrum.  Our cook had decided that a rack of lamb should have the white paper frills with which the French decorate their chops.  He did not know that my Father disliked French cuisine as much as Japanese.  

" I do not want lace panties on my food!" my father roared. 

He was a voracious eater, but never gained weight.  He burned up any  excess calories in nervous energy.  He was  very upset that I did not eat as much as he thought would sustain me.  

"Eat up your food!"  was a constant admonishment.

My mother was more diplomatic.  When the 'starving children in China' line didn't work she would coax,

"Eat up that piece of (whatever), or it will get lonely."

Not being able to think about eating another bite I would cut the food in half, then triumphantly point out that there were two pieces now and therefore they were not lonely!