The Food!

Our trip to Nagno included lunch, breakfast and dinner. All were in the traditional Japanese style....which basically means small portions, no fried foods and little to no meat.

I think pictures are going to explain this part best, so here we go:

This was lunch on the first day.

Lunch on the first day was served at a small lunchroom style restaurant next to the temple we visited. We had a variety of tempura items, crawfish, apple slices, salad and some sashimi. Served alongside the main course was rice, miso soup and tea. It was all very good and very filling.

Wait, what's that in the silver tinfoil?

Yup, along with lunch we had crickets. They were served candied (with just a smidge of sugar) and then salted. Just so you know, the Japanese do not typically eat crickets. The Japanese are fans of novelty food items, such as instant hard candy you make using water and powder. Crickets are simply a fun novelty food and they enjoy seeing people's "ick" factor reactions. John and I both tried the crickets to say we did it. However, after looking at cave crickets (Google it, if you don't know) in my parent's basement for years I could not get over the fact it was a cricket. The first question everyone asks is, "How did it taste?" When eating something like this, it's not the taste that throws you off, it's the mental fact...you're eating a cricket. The taste was pleasing, almost like seasoned beef jerky. However, I could feel my stomach churn at the first crunch, so I chewed as fast as possible to get it done.

I didn't really eat this one.

Dinner was at the hotel and it was fantastic. Each place setting had two small grills. One was to grill your mushrooms and small cuts of meats and the other boiled a nice hot stew while you ate the rest of your dinner. This dinner did not have crickets, but it did have a shittake mushroom "stump." You harvested the mushrooms right off the stump, grilled them for a few minutes and then dipped them in salt and ate them. It was so delicious and the mushrooms were incredibly fresh. I have had shittake mushrooms my whole life and fresh mushrooms have a deliciously smoky and wood-sy flavor that the ones bought from the store lack. The best part was you could ask them to bag your mushroom stump for you to take home. John and I had our stumps bagged. If I take care of them correctly, I should be able to produce shittake mushrooms for up to seven years.

The mushroom stump.

Mushrooms on the small table grill.

The stew. It was so good.

The rest of the spread.

Enjoying our dinner.

The dessert was sesame custard. It was so delicious, even though it was gray.

The next morning we were served breakfast at our hotel. I still can't get my head around a Japanese breakfast, which is very similar to their dinner or lunch. Ours included a fresh piece of salmon, salad, rice, a barely cooked egg and hot tea. Oh, and we also had an udon stew, which is what you see in the picture covered by a wooden top. I guess that's why Japanese people live to be 110....the standard American breakfast usually includes many artery clogging options accompanied by sugar juice water.

There you go! That's our Nagano cuisine in a nutshell! I haven't even talked about the snow monkeys or onsen yet! I'll be posting blogs for the next couple of days!