Wednesday, January 08, 2020

The Fragrance of Daikon

It was evening, and a light dusting of snow coated the front walk. Eager to be home, I opened the outer genkan door… and was hit with a wave of intense smell. Surprised, I looked around. A bag of plastic recycling that didn't get collected over the New Year holiday sat waiting on the floor--surely plastic hadn’t started to stink? But what else could there be? That’s when I saw a bedraggled plastic bag containing a shriveled daikon pickle balanced on the gardening cabinet, presumably an offering (or a prank?) from one of our neighbors. Keith followed me into the genkan. I pointed to the pickle. "Wow," he commented, wrinkling his nose.

Confident as we were that daikon pickles are supposed to stink, and trusting our neighbors’ pickle-making ability, we immediately brought it into the kitchen, cut up a bit of it and arranged it with a tea egg on top of our traditional January 7 okayu porridge. It was delicious.

We took the precaution of double wrapping the rest of the pickle before putting it away. And now there’s a bag of concentrated fart in our refrigerator.




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