The season of sansai gathers momentum, one wild green giving way to the next. Tsukushi yields to watercress, watercress to warabi. And then, at the height of this brief and breathless interval, comes taranome

Foragers do not easily reveal their wild gardens. But if you come, I will take you. We will walk the hills together and gather what the season offers — handfuls of what others might overlook, what grows unbidden, what insists on being found.

Meals define the cadence of the day. They pause the forward press. They offer pleasure. A flicker of renewal. They restore us. 

in Japan, one prefers to hint rather than proclaim. A stolen glance. Scent whispered on the wind. That is what moves us. That is what lingers.

If Kuniko, my mother-in-law, were to write the story of her life it might read more as a menu than a memoir.  Kuniko was a young girl during WWII in Japan. One day she was told to evacuate from her family home in the center of town to her grandmother’s house in the countryside a […]