Today I spent most of the day chasing down items that I’m supposed to be sending off to customers… One of my vendors hasn’t been able to come to Seattle to me for a while and we finally met halfway, so that I could get some product samples and this week’s local and internet customer orders.
I’ve also been trying to get an item from another vendor of mine who was waiting for a container to be delivered and faced three days of delivery truck delays and complications. It then turned out that the item in question was not even on that container because the styles have changed so dramatically since the previous shipment. They sent me to another one of their customers that still had the old style in stock, which required another cross-town run.
Unfortunately, this and every other errand meant that I missed the cutoff time at Kinkos; since one of the items I had to ship was in fact the thing that I ran all over town after, this was tough to avoid. Anyway, I braved rush hour traffic to drop off the package at the south Seattle FedEx facility. Of course, this took 30 minutes longer than typical due to an accident blocking part of Highway 99.
When I got home, it was very late. I set out baking some bread I had started early in the day and oven-steaming some squash. I prepared a meal of ambiguous ethnicity.
Soymilk Bread with Caraway Seeds and Coarse Salt
In Japan bread made with soymilk became somewhat trendy, and, when made with a good, heavy, Asian-style soymilk, actually tastes quite nice too. A lot of breads are incorporating soy flour anyway, and I thought it would somehow work well with caraway seeds. I rarely remember to use my caraway seeds, so this half whole-wheat bread was a good opportunity. The result was nice; a dense loaf with a crackly, capricious seasoned crust.
Kabocha Soup
I used the other half of my kabocha to make a simple squash soup, with a little cream, pumpkin seed oil and toasted pepitas.
Tofu with Mustard Seeds, Sichuan Pepper and Sambal Manis
I pan-fried some tofu along with some sichuan pepper and mustard seeds, then seasoned with a bit of salt, a splash of soy sauce, and mirin. I topped each piece with some sambal manis, or sweet chili paste.