I haven’t been motivated to write a post in the last week. In fact, I haven’t had much motivation at all. My back problems persisted. I was good for a couple of days, then the sharp pains returned for a few hours. Then I was good again for a couple of days followed by another set-back. I’ve been taking it really easy – resting, reading and not lifting or reaching for anything.

The situation is far better than it was a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t been able to play pickleball or engage in any real activity. I’m feeling pretty good today and I plan to give my weekly pickleball lesson at noon – I cancelled last week’s session.

One thing I managed to accomplish was making yakitori. Yakitori is a Japanese dish, typically made from chicken and grilled on skewers. It can be made from other proteins though. Yakitori can be seasoned very simply – just salt and pepper – or it can be grilled with a tare (TA-reh) sauce glazing. Tare can also be served on the side with the yakitori.

I made my tare sauce Friday afternoon. It involved combining a number of ingredients including soy sauce, mirin, rice wine vinegar, saki, brown sugar and chopped spices like garlic, ginger, scallions and black peppercorns. I combined the ingredients, brought them to a boil, then simmered them. Before I put the sauce pan on heat, I measured the depth of the liquid by dipping a wooden toothpick in it. The tare stained the toothpick, giving me a starting depth gauge.

I simmered the tare until the liquid reduced by half. This took a lot longer than I expected – close to an hour. I strained the liquid into a Mason jar, removing all of the chopped ingredients and refrigerated it. Tare can be kept refrigerated for a long time – some Japanese yakitori chefs keep adding to their batch of tare and haven’t run out in years!

On Saturday, I boned four chicken thighs. The new honesuki boning knife I mentioned in my last post worked a treat. But, cleanly boning each thigh to produce one continuous piece of meat was harder and took longer than I expected. I’m sure I’ll get better at it with more experience. I planned to make a yakitori called negima.

For this, I cut the thigh meat into squares of about an inch. I kept the skin on about half of the pieces. I skewered it with a one-inch cut of green onion between every other chicken piece. I also rolled up some of the peeled skin to skewer on the end for a crunchy bite called kawa.

Once I had the skewers cooking on the grill, I brushed them with the tare. You need to wait until the chicken is nearly done to avoid burning the tare.

Meanwhile, Donna prepared Japanese fried rice. You may wonder, what’s the difference between Japanese fried rice and Chinese fried rice? Mainly, Japanese fried rice is made from short-grain rice while Chinese uses long-grain.

She also sauteed shishito peppers to have on the side. We plated the food with some extra tare on the side.

My kawa didn’t come out crispy enough. I think I packed the skewers a little too tightly. It’s a learning process, but the meal was delicious. The tare was a real treat – the chicken was tender, juicy and flavorful and the fried rice was nearly perfect. I’ll keep working on perfecting yakitori.

Last night, Donna prepared an Italian dish for dinner. She’s been wanting to go to Cafe Roma, one of our favorite Italian restaurants, but with the covid restrictions we haven’t made it there. Donna made her marinara from scratch, added Italian sausage and served over sausage stuffed ravioli. Delicious!

So, other than food topics, I don’t have much to add at this time.

Our neighbors from Iowa, Dean and Janice, arrived yesterday. We’ve been next-door neighbors every winter for the last four or five years.

The weather has been a little cool, but more than bearable. Our daily highs have been mid-to-upper 60s. Overnight lows are very cool, dipping to the upper 30s or low 40s. We should see 68 degrees today with clear skies. The forecast through the weekend calls for abundant sunshine and daily highs in the mid 70s.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!