Nihondras Day

[sythyry]

Nihondras Day (part 1)

After the haberdashery disaster, I flew home, over rooftops and through trees. I was rather tired of people watching at me, and grinning. Perhaps I shall go somewhere with more Zi Ri at some point soon.

Dubaille had, of course, bought a Nihondras Day cake, and he did, of course, share it with us -- us being Havune and myself, and Dubaille's children. But a sorry sort of Nihondras Day cake it was. A proper N.D. cake is swollen, bulging outwards before curving inwards and coming to a point, rather like an inverted beet. It is a large and generous cake, bigger than a Rassimel's head. It is fearsomely dense, made with dried apricots and dried cherries and dried prens and dried raisins and candied turnip and candied onion and candied illiocampus and candied apple. It is stuffed with almond paste.

Dubaille's mighty powers of Acquiring the Insufficient had produced a smallish cake, of a size which might have contented Dubaille alone but not even generously for him. It was lopsided, flat on one side and somewhat caved-in on the other; before the natural disasters, it might have been conical -- cooked in the mold for a springtime-cake I suppose. It was fearsomely dense, but more with bran and oats than dried fruit; and it lacked cherries, onions, illiocampus, and apple, and in their place had candied radish and dried melon. There was almond paste, but smeared casually on the outside, not as a stuffing.

Dubaille complained about his wife and his children. Earlier I conjectured that he negotiated with the Lady Quissenden to see his children rather than get a stipend. In fact, he had negotiated for both, but sneakily. Dawdry, who is Dubaille's older son, is the Baron of Noultevviam. Six times a year, including Nihondras Day, he recieves the rents for Noultevviam. Dubaille had written to the mayor of Noultevviam and told her to send the rents to Dawdry at our home. But they did not come there by dawn. At noon or so he asked around. Lady Quissenden had also written to the mayor of Noultevviam, and evidently bribed her to send the rents to Dawdry at her home.

Which I think was mean-spirited of her, as she scarcely needs money, and it would be particularly convenient if Dubaille were able to pay rent. I do doubt that Lady Quissenden is quite the ulgrane that Dubaille says; but perhaps the fault is not entirely his.

Nihondras Day (part 2)

Fortunately I have other Rassimel friends. Thery was not a bit unhappy to open the window for me, when I clattered my claws on it. She and Yarwain had had their cake earlier in the day, with Iska -- who had none of her own, not because she is not Rassimel, but because she is very foreign and her people do not even celebrate the invention of the oven at all. How odd. In any case, Thery and Yarwain had bought a proper N.D. cake, which meant that there was plenty left.

They also had a great deal of sympathy for me about the whole matter of Spirshash and Strenata and all. Though they laughed greatly about the puppet shows. I pried; I interrogated; I demanded!

It seems that, in certain basements, there are puppet shows, but not the sort that appear on city streets. These basement puppet shows are, not to put too fine a point on it, pornographic. The conjecture is that these shows, not the street performances, are the ones that Tillissa and Oostmarine despise Spirshash watching. Especially with Oonspath or me.

And Yarwain reminded me that he and Iska and I have to finish up that spraddled analysis of Durnokk's glass collection, and in not too long. The end of the term is approaching.

Nihondras Day (part 3)

When I returned home, we had had a Changing of the Rassimel. Dubaille and his children were gone, presumably on a quest for money. Tethezai was there, with Dustweed. And with a largish segment of her family's N.D. cake. Tethezai's cook does not simply make a proper cake; they make an extraordinary one. It must have been the size of a pumpkin when it was whole; it was solid yet not dense; it contained all the obligatory items, and dried sparrowberries, and candied shrimps, and butternuts, and candied petals of a species I did not recognize. It was stuffed with almond paste and sweet cheese.

Part of the extraordinariness was candied shrimps. Now, this was surely an extravagance with its teeth and claws to it: Dustweed, being Herethroy, cannot digest meat. Tethezai was fuming that never before was the family's N.D. cake graced with any meat -- after all, the whole point is that the cake be shared with everyone, even Herethroy.

Dustweed was not offended, or perhaps was very used to being offended; zie had simply picked the shrimps out and wrapped them in a napkin, and was feeding them to Tethezai on the bed when I got home. Dangerously cute, they are.

Comments

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Happy Nihondras Day to you, too! My you never hunger.

Forgive my ignorance; what are prens, illiocampus, and sparrowberries?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

And to you too!

Prens are tree fruits; illiocampus are big flowers with edible starchyhoney petals, and sparrowberries are little berries that grow on epiphytes that pretty much only sparrows conveniently reach.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

So cute! And the cakes do represent the relative abundance and generosity of the particular persons.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

If you aren't thoroughly sick of Nihondras Day cake, feel free to stop by. It's the nature of the bakery business that you must always have something left for the latecomer on a holiday, even if zie never shows. So there's a few extra.


Floosh!

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Living with a pastry based life form (Paka), and having a fondness for meat you can stick in a box and forget about while dong other stuff (oven bacon) - YEA for ovens. Very celebration worthy. I heartily approve.
We have Three such type cakes that I know of. All are made in the colder parts of winter, called FruitCake, Twelve Night and Mardi Gras. They are about a month apart. All but Fruit Cake have something Nihondras Day cakes lack, PRIZES AND GAMES! There are little toys and tokens baked into the cake which should be picked out, much like the candied shrimp. There is a Big Impressive Token, which makes the person who found it immediately the focus of the party. In the Mardi Gras cake, this also saddles the person who finds it with the responsibility of providing the party and cake next year. The Mardi Gras cake is also more luridly decorated in bright purple, green and golden yellow sugar glazes and is tooth rottingly sweet, while Twelve Night cakes tend to be a little more subdued.
Okay, actually Nihondras Day cakes sound a little like FruitCakes, which are actually a decade long process of sharing brandy flavors with each other by handing the cake over at midwinter every year, making polite noises, dousing the thing with more alcohol and leaving it sit until next widwinter. They are eventually eaten when all the candied fruits and nuts have turned into pure solid alcohol, on a dare, when a drunk can't find anything else and it is close enough etc. If even one year of dousing is missed, or a poor quality of brandy is used the process is ruined. So you can imagine the number of hideous FruitCakes being bandied about and eventually used for firestarters. Alcohol burns well, and candied fruit burning can smell very nice.
Um I can't believe I am talking so much about obscure annual cakes.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

[OOC] One of the years I worked for Seagram's, and therefore got gallons of leftover decent rum for free (the stuff that goes into Captain Morgam before they add the spices), we made holiday fruitcakes, with real fruit and nuts and good spices and all. They were good, and I ate a lot of them myself, even if everyone else was mostly dubious, and a small slice made Sythyry's author rather tipsy.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Sythyry listens, fascinated.

Bard purrs widely, delighted.

in defense of good fruit cakes

[hilarypoet.livejournal.com]

If you eat them about 1-4 months after the making, they are wonderful, if made well. In Yorkshire they eat thin slices accompanied with good whiskey. But it goes well with morning coffee too.
BUt then I also like most varieties of fruit & spice bread. I even like baking them.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

My favorite holiday cakes are the little traingular prune-filled Purim cakes, supposedly shaped like the hat the villain of the story wore.

My least favorite holiday 'cakes' are matzoh -- unleavened bread to make us suffer like our enslaved ancestors. MMMM!

There should really be a cake for the fourth of july... something that explodes in your mouth like a bomb. With shrapnel. Chili powder and pralines?

Re: in defense of good fruit cakes

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

OOC, I love fruitcake. I talked beetiger into thinking they'd be good Yule presents that one year. (Experimental evidence proved me wrong, though I enjoyed the two we kept for ourselves.)

But a good friend of mine growing up was from Yorkshire, and her family's fruitcakes were well worth eating.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard rolls Will+Storytelling+s20 to avoid introducing the Eclairs of Affliction into Vheshrame cuisine, and just barely makes it.]

Re: in defense of good fruit cakes

[wave-cannon.livejournal.com]

As a general rule, every year, I help my mother bake a fruitcake, or two...
Want to swap recipes?

[wave-cannon.livejournal.com]

I thought matzoh was a cracker, and not a cake.

[wave-cannon.livejournal.com]

There aren't any holidays where the food of ritual happens to be fruits sculpted out of sweetened almond paste?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

It's supposed to be bread. You're supposed to make sandwiches and things with it. This is, of course, impossible.

But, yeah, not really a cake, thus the scare quotes.

[secanth.livejournal.com]

We make Italian fruit cakes. Take dough, of the pie variety (pastery dough is too fragile), roll out very thin, apply liberal amounts of cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg, raisins, nuts, and roll into circles. Take about six or eight rolls, depending on size, and tie the suckers together into one large roll (after flattening one end slightly) and bake. They're marvelous.

Re: in defense of good fruit cakes

[hilarypoet.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I miss real King Cake. It's not a coffee cake, the way they try to market it in other states! :P Alas, MacKenzie's has gone under, though, and the only King Cakes left are Gambino's. Too much glaze :P