Homesick Granny
Oyakodon is perfect comfort food for when you’re far from home and miss your mom.
Greetings from Germany, Snackers!
I wasn’t going to post while on vacation, but Veedat and I came across something tasty.
Granny lives in Münster, and I’m visiting to help her move. Two summers ago, she became a widow, and the house is just too big for her to manage. Anyway, while packing boxes, the three of us came across a stack of old love letters penned by my grandparents while they were finishing their degrees in different countries.
One caught my eye because it didn’t look like a love letter. It looked like a recipe.
Speaking of grandparents...
Ancestry.com gave us a free trial and a couple of dollars to plug their site.
I knew Granny’s family was from Japan, but what Ancesrty.com discovered was that one of my distant relatives on my grandfather’s side was a famous Dutch rat catcher! In fact, Okkes is an old Anatolian surname that roughly means one who hunts.
Which honestly feels appropriate.
Veedat is related to an Eastern European count! 🧛🏻
If you’ve ever wondered where your family story begins—and how that affects your dinner table—Ancestry makes it easy to explore your history with billions of historical records and DNA insights.
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Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to continue the hunt.
When I asked Granny about the letter-recipe, she looked at the aged stationery, and as she did, a sad smile crept across her face. Granny didn’t say anything. She simply handed me back the paper and headed toward the kitchen.
Dear Mama,
It’s not the studying that’s hard. It’s the loneliness. The women I’m boarding with make faces when I cook. I overheard one say my cooking was smelly. They’re nice enough, honestly, but their boyfriends are rather intimidating. I don’t always feel safe in our flat. I miss you, and I miss home.
Tonight, as I was writing this letter to you, I found myself crying alone in my room.
But then I remembered something you would do that always cheered me up.
The letter continued with a list of ingredients, all of which I recognized. But before I could put the pieces together, I started to smell the answer.
The name of the dish translates literally to Mother and Child, and the ingredients are simple: chicken thighs, green onions, scrambled eggs, emulsified together with mirin and soy sauce. The mother (chicken) and child (egg) are then laid softly over a steaming bed of white rice.
Oyakodon is perfect comfort food for when you’re far from home and miss your mom.
So you see, no matter where you are in the world, as long as there’s food, you can be reminded of the people you love.
I myself am getting a little homesick, and I can’t wait to start reporting again.
Stay hungry.
Yours always,
Anna Okkes
