今日の夕食は、昨日のお鍋の残りにおうどんを入れたものでした。残りと言っても少しお豆腐が残っていたくらいだったので、明日、餃子を作る予定で作った種の肉団子とキャベツを足しました。普通はお鍋の煮汁に少しお醤油を垂らしてそれをスープにおうどんをいただくものだと思いますが、夫があまり好まないのでごまだれにつけながらいただきました。夫は長い間おうどんが苦手で、今もそれほど好きではないようですが、少しなら美味しいと食べるようになりました。お箸で掴みにくいのが一番大きな苦手な理由のようですが、もちもちした食感にもたいして感動もしないし、味があるものでもないので、日本人が思う美味しさは感じられないのだと思います。

Today’s dinner was Udon noodles in the left-over Japanese hot pot that we had yesterday.  I say left-over but there wasn’t much left other than some tofu and the soup, so we added some meat balls made from the gyoza filling that we prepared for tomorrow’s dinner and also some cabbage.  Usually, typical Japanese people would add a little soy sauce to the soup and have it with noodles like soup noodles, but my husband doesn’t like that type of soup very much, so we dipped it in sesame sauce like yesterday.  My husband used to dislike udon very much and he still doesn’t like it so much but he doesn’t mind it too much now.  He used to dislike it because it is very hard to pick up udon with chopsticks if you aren’t used to using chopsticks.  Also he doesn’t seem to appreciate the chewy texture of udon that many Japanese love.  Udon itself doesn’t have much taste of its own so what we enjoy is the texture and the soup, so it’s not something my husband would love, although he enjoys it enough now as long as we can dip it in something like sesame sauce.