made food

Today I made soymilk and rice balls.

The soymilk was satisfactory, given my inexperience, but I’m hoping to improve. It took a few hours and seventy cents of soybeans to make about a gallon. Next time I will probably use less water, as it turned out a bit thin. The flavor ended up ok, although I had to use more salt and sugar than I expected (about two teaspoons of salt and nearly four tablespoons of sugar for the gallon).

The rice balls were also fine. I had more trouble figuring out what kind of rice I ought to use than anything else. Eventually I came to understand that the kind of rice marketed in the United States as “sushi rice” is about the same as the all-purpose rice of Japan, which is all I really wanted. I had nothing interesting to stuff the rice balls with (no pickled plums at the fancy grocery store!?), so plain carrots, cucumbers and some leftover red beans with spinach had to suffice.

I have also been playing kickball at a local park on weekends. Everyone involved is very friendly, and the weather has been cooperating more than I thought it would. I learned this weekend that a different group is trying to get a soccer game started earlier in the day on the same day we play kickball. Next week I will try to attend that as well as kickball.

During the week, work continues to take up my time. I commute about an hour (or more) each direction, and stay busy all day. Often I don’t manage to get out of the office for half an hour or so after office hours end.

I moved into a house earlier this summer. It’s very comfortable, and I enjoy the people I live with quite a lot. The rent is reasonable (although, of course, more than I would like to be paying), and the area of town is quite nice, despite being a long way from the office.