i went up to kotobukiya this morning (after stopping by the department to collect the new charles ross modernisation of the harrington orlando furioso) to buy groceries because of the weekend snow warning. salmon, i thought, for steaming with mushrooms, but somehow i managed to come home with tuna instead. last week i'd finally gone and bought a onigri box (my mother has been telling me to get one since my first year in college.) and while i didn't exactly know what i was going to do for dinner, i had put rice in the cooker earlier, so i thought i'd chop the tuna into little cubes and press them with my rice. how beautifully, strikingly red tuna is - especially beautiful against the pale melon-green of mayonnaise that has been beaten with wasabi. there was also a tupperware box full of sesame seeds that i'd shoved behind a bag of dried mushrooms. two teaspoonful of sesame seeds went into the bowl. something else was needed. i looked again and found a stray granny smith and a lemon. they didn't look like they were going to last the weekend anyway, so i had no second thoughts about chopping the apple into very tiny cubes and mixing them in with the mayonnaise. the lemon was squeezed over the tuna and then everything was mixed together. then i got out my onigiri box, filled it up with layers of rice and tuna mixture, and gaved it a good whack. out came neatly-pressed triangles for my dinner.

(and how very quickly they went down!)