Weenie Royale & Mochi Memories

Here are two of our favorite articles on food in camp. The first was written by Soji Kashiwagi, the son of two Tule Lake incarcerees who has written and performed extensively about the camp experience with the theater group he leads, Grateful Crane Ensemble. It’s about his experiences enjoying and attempting to revive the mochi-making experience with his family in Loomis, California.

His article also has some great tips for preparing the perfect ozoni for your New Year’s party. Here’s the article, via Discover Nikkei.

NPR did a piece on food in camp back in 2007, in a piece called Weenie Royale. These are the types of recipes we love and are trying to gather, too: the hybridized foods that came out of camp and the postwar period and have endured to this day. There is no “authentic” or “correct” in this conception of Japanese American eating. There’s just food that tells a story and we want to hear it. Submit your stories to us here.

 

Stories & Recipes from Tule Lake: Recipes of Resistance

Please join our community gathering to hear stories from Nikkei formerly incarcerated at Tule Lake during WWII, as a part of the Tule Lake Community Cookbook Project. We’ll be inviting community members to submit recipes and stories to share on this blog and for the project.

The event will also include a cooking demonstration.

Download a pdf flyer here.

 

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2012

3:00 PM to 5:00 PM

BUDDHIST CHURCH OF SACRAMENTO

2401 Riverside, Sacramento

To RSVP, please email tulelakecommunitycookbook@gmail.com

Shikataganai

Both of my parents’ families were incarcerated at Tule Lake during WWII. My father’s family were transferred to Arkansas after segregation, while my mother’s stayed in Tule Lake until 1945.

A lot of what I learned about Tule Lake came from the Pilgrimage, because my maternal grandmother, Sadako Kase, didn’t talk in detail about the experience.  While I know it was a difficult time in her life, she never was one to complain – “shikataganai, ne?” It can’t be helped.

When it came to food, my grandma was a great cook! When I was little, she made me tempura and udon.

One thing she taught me to make is sukiyaki, which is the recipe I’m including below.

When I was cooking dinner at her house in Los Angeles, I remember coming back from the grocery store and realizing I had forgotten some ingredient. Since the Japanese market was quite a distance, I dreaded getting back in the car to drive. She would always say, “shikataganai” and either find another ingredient to replace that would work just fine or leave the ingredient out.

Sadako’s Sukiyaki

1/2 cup shoyu/soy sauce and more for flavor

2 Tbsp sugar

1 lb. sliced beef

1 onion

3 cups chopped napa cabbage

2 carrots sliced or gobo sliced

1 package enoki mushrooms

10 sliced shiitake mushrooms

1 cube tofu – chopped into 1 inch cubes

2 green onions

1 package yam thread noodles

1. Simmer the shoyu, sugar until sugar dissolves and then remove from heat. If you don’t have sugar, you can just use the soy sauce in step 3.

2. Brown slices of meat in a large skillet.

3. When meat is browned, add in onion, cabbage and carrots. Then add in shoyu sauce. Cook for 20 min.

4. Add in green onions, tofu, mushrooms and noodles. Simmer another 10 min. Add in more shoyu if needed for flavor.

5. Eat with steamed rice.

What

Cooking up some community

photo by Gabe Martinez

Thanks to Dana, Scott, Lisa, Ed, Gabe, Kim, Maya, Takumi and Akina who joined our first potluck and oral history conversation in Berkeley. As you can see from the above photo, we shared a yummy spread for dinner and brought a creative group of folks together to launch the Tule Lake Community Cookbook project.

At the gathering, we were inspired by all the food contributions to the potluck – misoyaki salmon, Japanese fried gyoza, sunomono and much more. As we shared cooking tips and cleaned our plates, we were reminded of how community is created over food. Many of us at the table recalled sharing snacks on the Pilgrimage bus to Tule Lake and exchanging stories with new people about our relationship to the camps. We also recalled stories from our grandparents or other nisei community members about the creative food concoctions in camp – brewing sake, grilling meat on the pot belly stove, using leaves to make salads. These and many more stories are the inspiration for this project.

So, how can you get involved? Right now there are two specific ways you can support this project:

(1) Conduct your own oral history interviews of relatives or community members whom you know are either associated with Tule Lake or have inspired you to be involved in the preservation of Japanese American resistance history. The Cookbook – Oral History Question Sheet includes inquiry about the person’s life as well as specific questions about their “food” experiences. You can email us here with your story, recipes and photos that we will post on the blog.

(2) Work with us to organize regional cooking potlucks involving former Tule Lake prisoners. Like our “kickoff” potluck, these gatherings will be an opportunity to meet other local community members, share food and stories. If you are interested, email us and we’ll work to help connect you with other local people.

As a result of these two steps, we envision collecting many stories and recipes to create a printed cookbook. We also see the continued building of community happening – in the same way that the Tule Lake Pilgrimage creates the space for people to share inspiring stories and form new relationships.

Many of you shared with us that you weren’t able to join the potluck but were interested in supporting! We hope you’ll consider conducting an oral history or helping to plan a regional cooking potluck! And stay tuned to the blog to read some of the oral history work we’ve already started!

Welcome to the Tule Lake Community Cookbook project

We are excited to work together with you to gather food and farming-related stories from the Tule Lake War Relocation Center community. Our first gathering is this Saturday, August 27, 2011 in Berkeley, California. We plan to have others around the country as we build our team. For now, we are gathering oral histories and recipes from the following time periods:

1. Pre-camp

2. Relocation and Incarceration (camp period)

3. Resettlement

4. Redress Movement

5. The Pilgrimages and Today

We welcome your thoughts, input and participation. Thank you for stopping by.

Stacy and Nina, Tule Lake Committee members

Tule Lake Community Cookbook (1)