Since I recently posted on how to make your own Umeshu, I thought readers might be interested to see what's available in a basic liquor aisle--and how much things cost.
The tall green bottle there in the photo is the best known brand, Choya--the one with several plums in the bottle and a wide mouth so you can get them out and eat them. Dr. Coyne over at WEIT just bought a bottle of the Choya to try, and paid about $12 at Binney's in Chicago. The price on the bottle in the photo is Y1000, or about $11 or $12 given the current exchange rate--not bad!! So Binney's, it would appear, has very reasonable prices:-))
Here's more of the Umeshu section of the liquor aisle. It comes in glass bottles, and also cartons and cans--straight and carbonated (umeshu soda is *good*!) The medium size white carton is "Sarari to shita umeshu", a commercial for which I posted the other day. It's not terribly expensive ($5-6 for a medium carton, $8-9 for a large carton), and umeshu mixes well with lots of things--soda, tonic, milk (for a yogurt-like drink), hot green tea, ginger ale, sour mix, and I'm thinking of heating some umeshu to steaming and mixing it with some of my sweet ginger syrup that I put in tea...
...as long as we're in the liquor aisle--here's a new one I saw today. Apparently Sapporo Brewery and Royce Chocolates have teamed up and produced some type of hops-based drink that incorporates chocolate (bitter)...
...and sweet...
...for Y260 a can, which I though was a little steep. And slightly weird--I can't quite imagine that beer taste and chocolate taste would...match.
If anybody is desperate to know what it tastes like, tell me and I'll buy a can--in the spirit of scientific inquiry, you know ;-))
UPDATE So...I went to get butter. Which I promptly forgot, as I remembered six other things I needed, prompting a call to my husband at 7pm asking *him* to pick up some butter. This is not the recommended way to stick to a budget. I did, however, get a can of Sapporo/Royce Chocolat Brewery-Sweet. And I did taste it. Not being a beer drinker under normal circumstances, I think I've gotten in *waaay* over my head in attempting to drink and describe something which is, basically, beer. Or...ale? Dark ale? A stout? Not Budweiser--not by a long shot. I could certainly taste cocoa (I think), but the oddest thing was having an extremely strong memory flashback triggered by the initial taste on my tongue...yet being utterly unable (still--this is the next morning) to recall the memory. Like having an important-looking light flashing desperately on the dashboard of your car, but not having the faintest idea what that light is for.
Back to the beer (beer?). At Y260 a can, I personally wouldn't buy it again--it just wasn't all that. Though, to be fair, it was in a can. Possibly a fresher version would be better, or more interesting. To be more fair, I should find a friend who likes beer more than I do to taste it and give an assessment. Gomen Nasai!
I stopped to look at this while walking through the Daiei the other day. I thought at first that my daughter would like it, but it's more like a dress...so maybe not. It resembles her "Attack Heart" sweatshirt, so I stopped to see what it said....
"The State of N.Y. is a state in the Mid-Atlantic & Northeatern regions of the U.S." heart.
Weeeeellllllll....almost. It's not grammatically incorrect (though they left the "s" out of "Northeastern")--quite the contrary, it's almost painfully grammatical. And textbook-ish, as though somebody lifted a sentence right out of their high school English textbook and (mis)copied it onto a T-shirt dress. It's a cute dress, with cute, sparkly hearts--it just that you don't normally find precise statements (with or without spelling errors) of the geographical location of the State of New York adorned with pink and white sparkly hearts....:-))
Walking the kids to school this morning, I noticed the buds were reddening on the weeping plums we pass on the way--when they bloom, I'll show you.
Prunus mume
...On the way to baseball practice last weekend, one of the plum trees I passed was already opening up. I nearly went backward off my bike looking up at the blossoms. So I got off and stood underneath to look at the flowers against the bright blue.
Raphanus sativus var. longipinnatus
It was cold this morning--I could see my breath. But it never gets so cold on the Kanto plain that the ground freezes--winter fields are planted with negi and hakusai and daikon (above). Daikon leaves can be put into miso soup, and the large, white root (can you see it in the middle of the picture? It sticks right up out of the ground) can be pickled or simmered or put into Tonjiru. If I forget, remind me to post a (very simple!) recipe for Simmered Daikon. I noticed on Wiki that there is a variety of seed that grows successfully in Southern England, so possibly there's a variety that grows in Canada or the States as well--if you can't get it at an Asian market in your area. Try it if you can get it--it's low in calories (3oz/85g=18kcal), yet filling, and contains 34 percent of the RDA for vitamin C.
It hasn't been too cold here, so the plums and Boke are starting to bloom a little early.
I'd never seen Boke before coming to Japan, so I had to pester people 'til I found out what it was called (boh-kay). Later I discovered that it's a flowering quince, which I'd never seen, but only knew the word form Edward Lear ("they dined on mince and slices of quince").
Boke can also be grown as bonsai...
Bushes with red flowers are common, but I love the pink ones... ...white and blush and rose pink all together. Somehow they seem more delicate. Fragile--like my grandmother's Haviland. Pink Flowering Quince would be a lovely china pattern, don't you think?
Stopping to look at this and that, I'd forgotten that I was supposed to return the community center keys--the reason, in fact, for walking this direction back from the school. Forgetful, I suppose, but, well, there you are. I hate to be rushed and have no time to look about me. Right--off you go, up the street.
...It's a smallish temple. The monk and his wife live in attached rooms around back. The cemetery abuts the mountain, up the steps and left around back of the temple. Most mornings the sparrows are there, but this morning I could hear nothing but the Hiyodori squeeling--hooligans that they are ;-))
I walked around back to drop the keys next to the milk bottles sitting on top of the mailbox. The big tree in back was a-flutter with Hiyodori eating berries that fell to the ground making small "thunks" that sounded as though a box full of Pachinko balls were being poured from the treetop....
After a bit, a dark shape darted out of the berry tree and over my head.
Somebody had had enough, I expect, and went to sit by himself in the now leafless gingko tree, ruffed head feathers just visible among the sheaths from which next spring's leaves will sprout. I remember full well the first time I heard Hiyodori--I listened for a good twenty minutes to raucous squeeling, unable to ascertain whether it was actually a bird I was hearing, or kids squeeling their car tires in the distance, or a large rubber something slowly deflating. Hiyodori are an extremely common bird in Japan and East Asia, but unknown in North America, which must explain my utter inability to determine that I was, in fact, hearing a bird. I'd never heard *anything* like the ruckus they made.
Forgive me for possibly boring you with another ginkgo photo--I love them so much, I tend to assume everybody else must love them as well and want to look at them as much as I do. If that's not the case, I must beg your patience.
I first remember seeing ginkgos regularly in college--my university had several scattered about the campus, and two large ones in the old crescent area of the campus. The two big ones were male and female, and extraordinarily stinky in the fall when the seed fruits ripened and fell to the ground. I didn't know 'til then that trees came like that--in two sexes, I mean.
A number of years later, after I became a German teacher, I traveled back to Germany--to Jena and Weimar, in fact, where Goethe lived in his middle years. There I discovered that Goethe, too, was fascinated by Ginkgos--and suddenly the cardboard-cutout literary genius,whose Faust I'd struggled to read bits of, became a real person. An interesting person--a person I suddenly wished I could know and talk to. I read Italienische Reise and learned how many different things he was interested in, how he studied geology, optics, biology--climbed Vesuvius, formulated a theory on optics, and hypothesized that Ginkgo Biloba represented the Urbaum (the "original tree", from whence all other species had sprung) many years before Darwin's Origin of Species. Many years, in fact, before fossils recognizably related to the modern tree were found and dated to the Permian (the Permian! 270 million years ago!). A living fossil. That just sends shivers up and down.
Goethe wrote a poem to his girlfriend, Marianne von Willemer, about the Ginkgo (click on the link in the caption above for the original German and several translations), attaching two leaves to the bottom of the page. This was roughly around the time that Ginkgos were re-introduced to Europe from China, hence (I assume) the exotic fascination they held for Goethe, and the poem's inclusion in the West-oestlichen Divan anthology.
...(end of digression)...
So if you're out and about, and you hear somebody squeeling "Hiiiii-yo! Hiiii-yo! Hiiii-yo!", rather like letting the air slowly out of a balloon, it's the Brown-Eared Bulbul. See his brown "ears" (the brown patches on his cheeks)?
...All that noisy-noisy and scruffy feathers sticking up all over his head--what a scalawag...:-))
(p.s.--You know, Goethe gave poor Marianne that romantic poem on the occasion of their last meeting--he never saw her again after that day in Heidelberg. What a scalawag ;-))
Per a reader request, I'm starting a series on The Vending Machines of Japan. I know that sounds like a coffee table book, but bear with me--I have been fascinated by vending machines here since the day arrived. Literally. I distinctly remember my first encounter with a vending machine at Narita. I was exhausted, just arrived, thirsty. Scanning the arrivals lounge, I spied a machine. Unfamiliar cans and plastic bottles, except for the Coke, and a great many more choices than I'd ever seen in a machine. I was thirsty, so I didn't want Coke....but what? I couldn't read. Anything. For the first time since age (4? 5?), I was completely illiterate--an odd feeling.
I hadn't any idea what to choose, so I simply chose a can with the prettiest picture on it, put in some money, and picked up the can.
Which I promptly dropped. Hot! A hot can out of a machine. Pulling my hand into the long sleeve of my shirt, I picked up the can again, opened it, and took a sip. Tea. Not black--some sort of green tea. Good--and warm.
Looking again at the machine, I noticed what I (in my jet-lagged state) hadn't before--that some of the prices had a blue background, and some were red. The tea I had chosen had its price listed on a red background--hot. Cold and hot. Now that I can read, I can see that it says right there "つめたーい" (tsumeta-i) and "あったかーい" (attaka-i), cold and hot, respectively.
L to R: pure green tea, royal milk tea, straight tea, lemon drink, soda, vitamin drink
At the time, I was astounded by the variety of drinks to be found in vending machines--machines that are *everywhere*. Sometimes every few feet. They contained 4 or 5 or more types of tea, an equal number of coffees, juice, sports drinks, yogurt drinks, vitamin drinks, and very little in the way of sweet carbonated drinks.
click on images to enlarge
Top row--mix juice, peach/mango soda, coffee,hot green tea, hot lemon tea, hot cocoa, hot milk and coffee.
Bottom row--hot cafe au lait, hot blend coffee, hot different blend coffee, hot another blend coffee, hot sugarless coffee, hot different milk tea.
And the next machine up the road will have a different offering.
The problem with having bounteous vending machines all around, is that when I go home, I'm *shocked* by the lack of variety in American machines. The machine above is a Coke machine--see all the tea and coffee? You could picket Coca-Cola offices and demand that they put into US vending machines all the good tea and coffee they've developed in Japan. "Non-carb drinks" they're called. They're so much better for you:-))
Click on that photo up there--the tea (in a pet bottle in this case) on the top row, all the way to the right, is So-Ken-Bi-Cha, the tea in the hot can with the pretty picture I had the day I arrived. My goodness, I love vending machines in Japan!
I liked o-nigiri the first time I ate one (I think it was kombu...),although I thought the nori was funny to eat--papery and dry. It stuck a bit to the roof of my mouth, just the way I imagined paper would (if I were given to eating paper). It didn't occur to me to wonder, that first time, how it was that the nori was dry and not wet from the moisture in the rice.
I couldn't read yet, so I think I just randomly picked one off the shelf at the combini (=convenience store).
I thought it was hard to open the package. I couldn't understand why I kept tearing the nori when tearing off the plastic--I was sure I'd seen people eating o-nigiri, just like the ones I was buying, wrapped in neat triangles of smooth nori. (Nori is "laver" in English, but doesn't everybody just call it nori?)
Then I noticed the numbers on the plastic. 1...2...3...duh. The plastic was pre-torn around the number one--what would happen if I started tearing at the one? Watch (Cici is camera-man this time):
When I finally got one of these open the right way, I stood there staring at the layered wrapper in one hand, and the crisp nori around the onigiri in my other hand.... and wondered who on earth had worked out how to wrap onigiri that way.
About the end of November, Koshi (my 4th grader) came home with an order form from school.
"Mama! I have to get one of these for school! Hayaku, kaite! (hurry--fill it out!)" These. One of these...what? Hmmm....another case. He has two other similar cases--second grade was a case with paints, a palette, and brushes (not Prang, either--they use acrylic paints in a tube from kindergarten). Third grade was the calligraphy set--brush pens, ink, weights, inkbox, a roll-up mat. I was ridiculously jealous of my own son for getting to have something that cool for school in the third grade. Iiiiii naaaa....
He picked out a dragon case (again), and I put in the money (Y2300--$25) and filled out the form, without really understanding what it was he was going to get or what they were going to do with it. When the set was delivered to school, he brought it home to show me.
"Neat-o, honey! What is it?" "Tools!"
Thanks, Koshi. I could see that they were tools, but I couldn't get from his explanation ("They're for art!") what exactly they were going to be doing with those.... hmmmm.....what *are* those? Exactly?
No matter--I figured I'd find out eventually. Parent-teacher conferences were coming up in December, and they always have out the things the kids had been making in art class.
And then he brought this home:
Wow! So *that's* what those weird-looking tools were for--making a woodblock print! I don't ever remember getting to make anything that cool in elementary school art class (iiii naaaa....). Or anything that difficult, either, for that matter.
...a closer look
...the claws...
...the teeth....
...the dorsal striping...
Can you see the red and blue paint staining the carved-out areas? All the fourth graders made prints, several, in fact, in different colors from their carved wooden plates. They were all displayed in the hall when I went for parent-teacher conferences:
All the prints were very detailed, and the kids had clearly worked hard on them.
A brief moment of sickening parental gloating:
(I thought Koshi's was the best one.)
Sorry. All done ;-))
Here's a closer look at those tools.
Yeah--that's exactly what I thought.
Those are *sharp*.
And every kid in the fourth grade has a set like that.
That's a lot of sharp.
They trust kids in Japan. They trust kids, because they know the children have been carefully taught how to be careful.
I noticed it before my kids were born, while teaching English in various language schools. All the jr. high and high school students I taught usually had a cutter knife in their pencil case. They used the cutter knives to trim down handouts so they could be glued into their notebooks, among other uses. I was always fascinated by how carefully every student I saw used their cutter knife. Remove cap and set aside. Push the blade out one or two notches--no more than necessary. Cut. Cut. Cut. Slide blade back. Replace cap. Put away in pencil case. *Then* glue the paper in the notebook (or whatever else). Under no circumstances do I ever recall seeing a cutter knife carelessly left out on a desk, certainly not left open out on a desk.
This was astounding to me until I had kids of my own, and *really* began to watch how the Japanese teach and interact with children. I can think of a number of examples off the top of my head, but I know that as soon as I hit "Publish", I'll think of ten other better ones. So since this post is getting a bit long...
I don't usually post Land of Cute twice in the same week, but we were out of coffee creamer (and something else which I can no longer remember). I sent my husband to the store. This is what he came home with:
Can you tell what it is? Start at the top--rabbit...dragon....snake.... the Zodiac! Well! I was utterly charmed. The chinese zodiac on coffee creamers! Last night I got the chicken (酉 とり--Tori); this morning I had the dog (戌＝いぬ Inu)
うさぎ (usagi) The Year of the Rabbit
Next cup of coffee--I want the rabbit...cho kawaii! He's adorned with a plum blossom, too. My oldest is a dragon (which means he'll turn 12 next year. Already?!). (辰＝たつ Tatsu=Dragon)
...I'm a 申(さる)--Monkey (Saru). Teddy (my itazura-ko) is the 午(うま), Horse (Uma), though it seems we ought to be reversed. Cici is a Monkey with me, as is my mother-in-law, which means that all the women in my husband's life are Monkeys...
I wonder if that says anything about him? :-))
My husband is the Boar (Inoshishi)...
Rat (Nezumi), Cow (Ushi), Tiger (Tora)
Here are the rest...
Which one are you?
(p.s.--I always wondered why there is no Year of the Kitteh. Legend has it that the Cat, who never woke before noon, was late to answer the call of the Jade Emporer. Historians have this to say:
"Most historians agree that Cat is not in the list since the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac were formed before Cats were introduced to China from India with Buddhism." (via Wiki)
The library is on the other side of the station from here, so we tend to reserve books online and only go once a week or every two weeks. I don't mind going that way, though, because there's usually somebody in the river--Kosagi or Aosagi, pintail ducks migrating through in the winter, sometimes cormorants.
The other day I came up out of the tunnel that goes under the train tracks to find that the concrete sides of the riverbank were being torn out and re-done. The open areas were carefully blocked off so that no one would topple into the river. Blocked off with these:
Why they felt that the stabilizers holding the poles should be shaped like winking frogs was not entirely clear to me. I also noticed that I was the only person who appeared to notice these 'tweet wittle pole-holders. The Japanese simply expect that their construction sites will adhere to a certain level of cuteness. When I lived up in Tokyo (just after getting married), I used to see the most adorable little...power shovels. I know-- "adorable" is not the adjective you usually see describing "power shovel", but, well, this is The Land of Cute. Power shovels must be two shades of teal with purple accents! I used to wonder whether high school girls were in charge of decorating the power shovels of Tokyo. The first time I saw one, I checked all around it--I was convinced that there *must* be a Kitty-chan sticker on it somewhere, and was mightily disappointed not to find one. I still think somebody vandalized that power shovel....
And those construction safety fences...you didn't think they only made frogs,did you? ;-))
A confession: I don't drink much. I'm not in any way a connoisseur of any kind of alcohol, so you may take this post with whatever size grain of salt you think is necessary ;-))
I'm no teetotaler, though--I like a glass of wine every now and again. I've never been much of a beer-drinker, however, in spite of the fact that I majored in German in college, lived in Hamburg for a year, and was a German teacher. The Rhine wines, on the other hand (especially Spaetlese)... And now I live in Japan, married to a Japanese guy--and I must confess (while I'm at it), that I have never been fond of Sake. Dreadful, I know. But my husband likes it even less than I do, so it's nothing to do with being a foreigner, at any rate. He, in fact, drinks even less than I do (if that's possible)--he turns pink like the Quick Change Tree after half a glass of beer or four sips of wine (a fact which I found irresistible on our third date...).
But I hadn't been here too long before I discovered something I *did* like: 梅酒, ume shu. Plum wine (or, liqueur, if you prefer). Best. Stuff. Ever. If you like sweet desert wines, that is, although I think Umeshu is somewhat lighter than port or sherry.
Prunus mume
I said "Plum" wine--but while they look mostly like a plum, Ume are really more closely related to the apricot, and thus are variously referred to in English as "Japanese apricot" or "Chinese plum". It is, for some unaccountable reason, my favorite of the flowering trees. Yes, I love the plum blossoms even more than the cherry blossoms. The photo above was taken last year--I'm waiting for this year's blooms...about the beginning of February usually (though unusually warm weather can cause an earlier flowering).
The fruit appears and starts to ripen in June, just as the rainy season starts. This is so predictable, that Chinese and Japanese use the same Kanji for "rainy season"--梅雨.... "tsuyuu" in Japanese--literally "plum rain". Summer before last I was out with the kids catching crawdads, and fell into conversation with some older people who were doing some volunteer work cutting the tall grass near the pond we were fishing in (the one up the road where I saw the Intermediate Egret). Somehow the conversation turned to Ume and how to make Umeshu--I mentioned that I was planning to try my hand at it. Upon hearing that, the very kind O-Baasan of the group pulled out a plastic grocery bag and put a kilo of plums from her own bag into it and handed it to me. Here is the recipe she gave me:
1 kilo green Ume
600g -- 1 kilo rock sugar ("Koori satou"= "ice sugar")
1.8 litres white liquor (or shochu, which may be the same thing)
1) Wash the plums gently in cool water, drain.
2) Remove the stems with a toothpick and pat dry with a kitchen towel.
3) Layer the sugar and plums in a large glass, seal-able container (the one in the photo above is 4 litres) --sugar, plums, sugar, plums--until both are used up (if you bought a whole kilo of sugar, you don't have to use it *all* up unless you like yours quite sweet).
4) Pour the white liquor in.
5) Seal and store for at least three months in a cool dry place. Pick up the jar and gently swish it around once a week or so, to keep things mixed up well. Stick a label on as to when you put it up, if you're forgetful like me.
That's it --enjoy! This is good stuff. Mine came out very strong, so I cut it with water or seltzer and put *lots* of ice in it. Very cold Umeshu with lots of ice on a sweltering day is not to be missed--it's very refreshing. In addition to "Ume-Rokku" (on the rocks), you can mix it and make Ume Sour, or Ume Tonic, or Ume Soda (my favorite!), or heat it and drink it warm like Gluhwein after a bath on a cold night. Both cold and hot Umeshu are popular drinks at Onsen (hot spring resorts). Even the stuff cold in cans out of the vending machines at onsen tastes pretty nice after a soak. (Which reminds me: don't let me forget to tell you about The Vending Machines of Japan sometime...)
You can make it yourself, but of course you don't have to--there are any number of commercial brands available, the best known of which is probably Choya. You can get Choya in the big, tall, glass bottle with some plums in the bottom, or in a carton, and recently in smallish cans, too. I think they all taste fine--here's the commercial for their new can version of さらり と した 梅酒 (sarari to shita umeshu--that's what they're singing in the jingle. Be careful--I get that jingle stuck in my head constantly):
Note: did you see how the girl who was working hard painting got annoyed at her friend who was relaxing on the roof drinking umeshu? See how she puffed out her cheeks? That means "I'm mad"--that's why I sometimes write "poochy cheeks" in parentheses in posts or comments. It means I'm mad or frustrated about something. There are any number of Japanese gestures that are almost impossible to stop doing once you've picked them up... (but that's a post for another time...)
And the plums after you've drunk all the wine? Mottainai! (Don't waste) 200g of pitted plum meat, 40 g of sugar (20% of the amount of plum you're using) and 1 lemon's worth of juice boiled gently with 2-3 cups of water will make you a nice Plum Jam. Oishiiiii....
p.s.--if you don't drink or like alcohol, you can make Ume Syrup using 500g of washed green plums and 300-500 of regular or light brown sugar layered in a glass jar with a lock down lid that vacuum seals. This only takes 4 or 5 days (swish it around once a day)--keep the syrup in the fridge and use it up within about 2 months. Mix it with water or seltzer or tonic--just like the Ume Shu. Enjoy!
p.p.s.--the title of this post is a word play on "Ume" (plum) and the slang way to say "umai" (good/delicious), which comes out "umeeeeee" (final "ay" as in "day" sound drawn out for as long as you think necessary to convey the proper level of deliciousness). You wanted to know that, right?
I keep meaning to post about things you can put in an o-bento lunch, but a combination of things (dirty kitchen...) keeps forcing these posts onto the backburner.
But a request for more food posts, an available camera-man (Koshi), and my noticing that the kitchen was relatively clean today, means that you get an o-bento post! I'll show you the one of the very first things I learned how to make when Koshi started Yochien: Usagi Ringo! (Rabbit Apples)
Why bother cutting apples into shapes? Why not just put a whole apple in the lunch bag?
Blasphemy! This is The Land of Cute--you're not allowed to put boring apple slices into a lunch box!
The first couple of times I made these, I got the cut right, but Koshi complained that they were brown by the time lunchtime came around. He didn't want to eat them. What to do? Right--ask a mommy friend. The nice thing about living in company housing is that there are so many other moms hanging around downstairs waiting for the buses, watching their toddlers play--very easy to collar somebody and demand to know how to keep cut apples from turning brown, a feat which clearly everybody else but me had mastered. When my friend told me how to do it, I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it myself.
Dip the cut slices in salt water. That's it. Really. You can put the slices in a ziploc or in saran wrap if you want to, but it's not necessary. The slices will stay white and fresh (though not cold) inside a bento lunchbox as is. In fact, a scientific experiment is in progress as I type this to prove to you how effective this stupid pet trick is--I dipped one rabbit apple in salt water, and did nothing at all to the other rabbit (apple). Time-lapse photos are below the video:-))
To make the rabbit, cut an apple into eighths and v-cut out the core. Turn the apple length-wise and cut a deep V, point towards the end of the slice (picture the rabbit's ears flattened back against its head), then cut off the peel starting at the other end of the slice up to the point of the V.
See the rabbit shape--ears flattened back against his head?
It's probably easier if you watch me do it:
See? Easy! Also, cute. And, a reasonable amount of apple for a 3 or 4-year-old starting kindergarten--much less waste if you give her two rabbits that she eats all of instead of half an apple she takes three bites of and throws away the rest. Desho?
The Experiment:
The apple in its nylon plastic sleeve to avoid bruising (the amount of plastic used in packaging here is horrific....)
2:52. The apples are cut. The apple on the left (orange plate) is the control. The apple on the right (green plate) has been dipped in salt water. Warm or cold water--makes no difference. (I stirred the water with my finger. If that fusses you, use a spoon or a chopstick.)
...an hour and twenty-three minutes after being cut...
...the control apple is starting to brown. The saltwater apple is still white.
(Please excuse me--I'm having an insane urge to say "Relax! It's Palmolive!" No idea why.)
The control apple on the left is clearly starting to brown due to oxidation. The saltwater is clearly preventing oxidation of the experimental apple on the right...
(I don't have a deep Carl Sagan voice, but you're welcome to imagine one here;-))
Below is Koshi's first O-Bento that I made--not with Usagi Ringo, because I wasn't sure yet how to fit them into his lunchbox, but with Himawari Gohan (Sunflower Rice) and Tako-San Weiners (Octopus Sausages)... but those will have to be for next time:-))
