Flour Power

Yesterday Sara and I made our own soybean flour. We were on an outing to the Open Air Museum of Old Japanese Farmhouses (quite a name I know). The museum was in the huge Ryokuchi Park, which seemed about three times as big as Liberty Park in Salt Lake. The Open Air Museum was pretty large itself and had a collection of relocated farmhouses from the Edo period (1600s - late 1800s) from all over Japan. Lots of thatched roofs, earthen floors, bamboo groves, and screaming crows.

Well along the path between the rice storehouse and the massive thatched farmhouse/silkworm nursery we noticed a little lean-to displaying old stone contraptions. The sixtysomething Japanese man greeted us and we decided to check the place out. Sara and the guy had the usual "Where are you from, how do you like Japan?" introductory chat. The guy then explained in half Japanese half English that the old stone contraptions were Edo era soybean mills for making soybean flour. He grabbed a few dried soybeans and demonstrated how the thing worked and said that for 100 yen we could grind a bag of soybean flour for ourselves. Sara goes nuts for this sort of thing so we jumped to it.

The top wheel had to be cranked slowly clockwise in order for the beans to grind properly and the man told us to only grind about 10 beans at a time. Sara and I each had our turns and ground all of the beans. Soybean Man helped us lift off the top wheel and sweep all of the flour into a bag. "Mix soy bean flour with... sugar... (demonstrating) put on gohan. Very good, sweet." Gohan means rice. Sounds yummy! Both parties bowed and thanked each other several times with multiple "Arigato goZAIMAS!"s and we countinued our old time Japanese farm exploring.