Here’s the Beets and Barley salad that I made tonight: I prepared the barley in a rice cooker (cooking as for brown rice). Then I transferred it to a big salad bowl, and allowed it to cool, stirring it a few times as it cooled. Meanwhile, I used a very sharp Japanese knife to prepare chunks of blood orange, chunks of kumquat, diced cucumber and diced celery, and a very sharp peeler to prepare slivers of raw red beet. I mixed the above with the barley, added some raw walnut meats toasted three minutes in an ordinary toaster, and dressed with a bit of sherry vinegar, fresh ground black pepper, and some fresh tarragon leaves. No added oil or salt and it is to die for!
I prepared the beet greens separately, steaming them and serving with ponzu.
Chop kale into bite-sized pieces. You might want to use a nice Japanese knife. I used this one.
Rinse dirt off the kale, and add to a pot, with perhaps a quarter cup of water added to the drops clinging from the rinse. Apply low heat until tender.
Strain, grate a bit of fresh ginger over it, then add a generous handful of quality katusobushi, and drip a bit of quality tamari. Almost vegan, very good for you, and quite tasty.
First gathering of Japanese Film Buffs occurs Tuesday evening, September 27 2011 07:00 PM, in Santa Rosa. We begin with—what else—Ugetsu Monogatari, by Kenji Mizoguchi (1953). The year 1953 was something of an Annus mirabilis in film history—a year that saw important films by Bergman, Fellini, Ozu, and Mizoguchi. Japan had only emerged from United States occupation (and American censorship of Japanese film) in 1951. Mizoguchi is known for his theme of acceptance of what cannot be changed; for his strong female characters; and for the cinematography of his films. Check out the long crane shot establishing the hut of Genjiro (the story’s principle) at the opening (you’ll have to attend the showing; I can’t find an online clip to link to).
“Quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers,” said Jean-Luc Godard of Kenji Mizoguchi.
Successful corporate culture can’t be taken for granted. Toyota “unremembered” its cultural commitment to quality. http://bit.ly/lrf8HW
The problem isn’t that specialised companies lack the data they need, it’s that they don’t go and look for it, they don’t understand how to handle it.
—Hans Rosling, “A Data State of Mind“
Data enables market efficiencies. There should be plenty of business niches where most of the players have not yet noticed that market data is available, or have not yet figured out how to find the data and use it for decision-making and pricing. This represents a business opportunity. (Or lots of them.) A great deal of public data is probably productizeable, if appropriately interpreted.
That part of Japan devastated by tsunami three times/100 years. Utagawa depicted strange mixture of fire & flood 1896: http://bit.ly/hxHlmu.
