So having an organic vegetable delivery service forces you to cook all kinds of vegetables you might only associate with senior citizens or other countries. I've had to find recipes for jerusalem artichokes (more like a potato if you ask me) chard, beets, and other unidentifiable leafy plants.

Yesterday's deliver included rainbow chard, which is only edible, in my opinion, if it is mixed in a dish with shrimp. Thus today's stir fry ('itame' in japanese) was born.

Shrimp/chard itame
rice
carrot/wakame/tofu miso soup
tamagoyaki (rolled omelette japanese style)

I shelled my shrimp in advance during nap time and chopped a few cloves of garlic to flavor it with as it sat in the refrigerator, waiting. I of course also preprogrammed my rice cooker to have the rice done at 5:30 (we eat early).

Around 5pm, I used chopsticks to briskly stir four eggs, two dashes of soy sauce, and two dashes of mirin (sweet cooking sake, you can use plain old sake with some sugar) together in a bowl. I put a little vegetable oil in a pan and started to heat the pan at about medium high. I poured in the egg and tried to get it uniformly (let's face it though, I have little patience and no attention to detail, it was lumpy) covering the bottom of the pan. Then, using both my chopsticks and my spatula, I carefully flipped over one edge, rolling it about three or four times until I reached the other side, so that the whole thing resembles a rolled cake. Then, take it off the heat right away so it won't dry out.

I chopped a carrot and put it in some water with some dashi to get the miso soup going. After a few moments, I put some vegetable oil in a wok and started that heating. I added some dried wakame and tofu to the soup, then turned back to my heated vegetable oil and dumped my shrimp and garlic mixture in there. As the shrimp turned pink and curled, I quickly roughly chopped two leaves of chard. After the shrimp was done, I put it in a bowl and put the chard in, still damp from washing. After a few good stirs, I added two dashes of soy sauce and two dashes of mirin (sound familiar?) and let that steam/cook for a few moments. I added the shrimp back in and cooked it until the hard bits of chard were softened.

Finally, I plated the shrimp/chard itame and added miso to my soup by using a large spoon to scoop out the miso, submerging it in my soup, and using my chopsticks to dissolve the miso into the broth while still ON MY SPOON.

In terms of time, the prep for this took longer than the actual cooking. Mia tried one piece of chard and said "yuck." She ate the tamagoyaki, rice, and miso soup, so I was happy. Maika, still sick today, took one bite of shrimp, two bites of tamagoyaki, spit them out, and then proceeded to eat all the tofu from her soup.

Naoto liked the chard.