By July. The shiso on the balcony is at its peak — fragrant, abundant, the leaves the size of my palm. Every time I brush past it, the smell stops me. Fumiko's apartment. Fumiko's kitchen. The smell of being loved in a language that doesn't require words. Three years since she died. Three years of making her food. Three years of reading her handwriting and hearing her voice in the characters and cooking from the translations and improving, always improving, the way she would have wanted: not arriving, not perfecting, just improving. Forward motion. The doing of the thing slightly better than last time.
I made shiso mojito — a non-alcoholic version, muddle shiso leaves instead of mint, with lime and soda water and a touch of simple syrup. The drink is green and bright and tastes like summer in Japan and summer in Portland simultaneously, which is the taste of my life: two places at once, two seasons at once, two cultures at once, the neither-and-both that is not a deficit but a cocktail, a blend, a thing that could not exist without the combination.
The book draft is complete. Twelve chapters. The agent has it. She will send it to publishers. The sentence "she will send it to publishers" is so far from the woman who wrote her first blog post at two AM while nursing that I cannot hold both in my mind at the same time — the exhausted new mother and the woman with a completed manuscript and a literary agent — and yet both are me, five years apart, connected by miso soup and grief and the chipped bowl that held the first and will hold whatever comes next.
Miya asked this week: "Mama, when are we going to Japan?" The question has become a refrain, asked every few weeks, with the persistent hopefulness of a child who has been promised something and intends to collect. I said: "When you're twelve." She said: "That's a long time." It is. Seven years. Seven years of cooking and writing and growing and saving and waiting. But the promise holds. The promise is a seed planted in the soil of her expectations, and the seed will grow, and the shiso will still be here, and Japan will still be on the other side of the ocean, and we will go. We will stand where Fumiko came from. We will bring the recipe cards. We will come home and cook.
The shiso mojito taught me something I keep relearning: the most honest drinks are the ones that don’t apologize for holding two things at once. That blend of green and bright and neither-and-both has me reaching for other drinks built the same way — this Eggnog Chai Smoothie is exactly that, a Western classic and a spice-cabinet full of the subcontinent swirled into something neither tradition invented alone. Fumiko would have tasted it, made a face I couldn’t read, and then asked for more. I take that as high praise.
Eggnog Chai Smoothie
Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 5 min | Servings: 2
Ingredients
- 1 cup eggnog (store-bought or homemade)
- 1/2 cup strongly brewed chai tea, cooled completely
- 1/2 cup whole milk or oat milk
- 1 cup ice cubes
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon, plus more for garnish
- 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1/8 tsp ground cardamom
- Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Instructions
- Brew the chai. Steep one chai tea bag (or 1 tbsp loose-leaf chai) in 3/4 cup of just-boiled water for 5 minutes. Remove the bag, let the tea cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until cold —rsquo; at least 30 minutes ahead, or use ice-cold leftover tea.
- Combine. Add the eggnog, cooled chai tea, milk, ice, cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom, and nutmeg to a blender. Make sure the chai is fully cooled before blending so the ice doesn’t melt unevenly.
- Blend. Blend on high for 45—rsquo;60 seconds until completely smooth and frothy, with no visible ice chunks.
- Taste and adjust. Taste the smoothie —rsquo; if you want it spicier, add a pinch more cardamom; for more sweetness, add 1 tsp honey or maple syrup and blend briefly again.
- Serve. Pour into two tall glasses. Dust the top of each with a pinch of ground cinnamon and a scrape of nutmeg. Drink immediately while still frothy and cold.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 195 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 8g | Carbs: 25g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 90mg