Sado - Cooking and fieldwork with Megumi

Today we're going to visit Megumi. She lives in a house owned by one of her friends, next to a dairy farm. She also has her own field where we're going to help her this afternoon. Fortunately, Megumi speaks enough English to have a good conversation with her. For the morning, cooking is planned. We're going to make Chimaki with ingredients from her garden and her friends' gardens. Chimaki are rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves and then steamed. The preparation is a bit like making risotto. When the rice is slightly cooked, it is transferred into the bamboo leaves. We cook everything in a kind of camping stove that burns wood smoke-free and gets extremely hot. As a side dish, we're making Fuki, a plant that looks like random weeds growing on the roadside. We have to harvest each Fuki stalk individually. Then they are rubbed with salt and cooked for a few minutes. Once they are done, all the stalks have to be peeled by hand. They are worse than peeling asparagus. Finally, they are fried and tofu cubes are added to the pot. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they still taste like random weeds from the roadside. But the Chimaki are really delicious. After the meal, we go to the field with Megumi. At first glance, you can't recognize the field as such because there is more weed growing here than anything else. She explains to us that she doesn't see the plants as enemies but as an infinite resource. With them, she can create small compost piles on which she then plants her vegetables. So we help her cut down the plants so that they don't grow too big and form piles about 2 meters long, which will later become a bed. It's important to not take too much from one spot and only cut about half of the plant so that it can grow back. After some time, the work becomes very exhausting, and it's impressive that Megumi does this alone two to three times a week. She's really grateful for the help, and at the end of the day, as always, you feel like you've accomplished something