MAKING NEW YEAR "MOCHI" AT ONTARIO MARKET
Jan
20
Grandpa Kay stood near the bowl and turned the rice in between poundings and was never injured.
At least two young men - Uncle Frank, friend George, or cousin Joe, who were in the basement kitchen of our ONTARIO MARKET grocery store having coffee and smoking after a 7am breakfast, ran up the concrete stairs, out to the back yard, lifted the top four boxes while grandpa took out the bottom box with the hot steamed, ready to pound, mochi rice.
Grandpa Kay then dumped the 4 or 5 cups of mochi rice into the water soaked “bowl”, dug out of an almost table-high 20 inch tree stump. The same young men grabbed home-made, hatchet sized, wooden mallets. They began a rhythm of taking turns pounding and smashing the rice as Grandpa reached in between strokes and turned the mass for evenness. Some of the elders, standing around, often broke into song, “Yo, Yo” to keep the pace even. As the mass of rice became a sticky ball, the older ladies prepared a long table covered with dry rice powder, in the room next to the kitchen. Grandpa ran in and dumped the big ball of mochi on to the head of the table.
Grandma Tanaka or Grandma Kobayashi, with nice calloused farmer hands, stood at the head of the table and squeezed off cookie sized pieces of hot-hot-sticky rice. Four or five young women, my mom’s age with aprons, took the balls, flattened each ball, gathering in the edges so there was a nice rounded attractive appearance and set them on trays. There was lots of gossip and talking going on, “Alice, when it comes time, just take deep breaths and push real hard at the end.” “Did you hear that Tom and Betty are getting married?” “Tosh is captain and the Notus High School basketball team is going to state in Boise.”
It was then, us young kid’s turn to take these pieces of mochi and lay them on shelves of long wooden 2 by 4s, on the far side of the room, to dry. Four or five-year-old cousin Don got the most praise, “See how Donald is arranging them so neatly? Donald, you’re going to be successful when you grow up!”
At the end of the day, some of the mochi pieces were wrapped around sweetened, smashed Azuki bean balls and given to us kids as a treat. But the best treat, the next few days, was Mochi heated so it puffed up. Then we dipped these puff balls into sugar and soy sauce, ummmm!
The week before New Years was the busiest time for the ONTARIO MARKET and mochi was one of the most important items. Us kids, growing up in the ‘40s, ‘50s & ‘60s, helped put the dried mochi pieces into bags for sale. My dad was part of the grocery delivery to the outlying farmers, the dozens of Japanese farmers in our Treasure Valley community on the border of Western Idaho and Eastern Oregon. A bag of mochi was part of each order.
“Mochi” means “to hold”; holding on to prosperity is symbolized with ‘OZONI” (boiled), mochi with vegetables soup. It is important to have an odd number of ingredients and never four, which means death. Most of us with Japanese Heritage, who maintain some of the traditions, never miss having mochi on New Years Eve or New Years Day.
