Lotus Roots with ground pork & Raising Teenagers

Another Japanese dish. I had lotus roots and Chinese chives in my fridge so I made this another popular dish in Japan. It is called "Renkon no Hasamiage". It means "Fried sandwiched lotus roots" or something like that.

Here is the recipe
Lotus root   about 4 inches
Ground pork    0.5lb
Chinese chives   about 5~6
Ginger               about a size of your Thumb
Sesame oil        1 table spoon
Soy sauce         1 table spoon
Rice flour          about 5 table spoon
Vegetable oil     1 cup

1. Slice the lotus root and soak them in water.

2. Cut chinese chives into small pieces and mix well with ground pork. Then add grated ginger, sesame oil and soy sauce and mix well.

3. Dry lotus roots and sprinkle little bit of rice flour then put the pork mixture between the two lotus roots slices.

4. Add vegetable oil into a deep frying pan and heat up the oil.

5. Mix some water and rice flour and dip the lotus roots with pork and fry them both side. (Sometimes, it falls apart so you have to very careful when you fry them)

6 Serve with rice.

It was bit of a challenge to keep them from falling apart but it tasted really good. The mixture inside is similar to the mixture in Gyoza. Lotus root is very crispy and I really like its texture.

My mom used to make something like this with eggplant. Instead of lotus roots, she used egg plant to sandwich the meat. This was my favorite growing up.

Anyway, it is totally not relevant to cooking but I just want to write about something which I wonder the other day. On TV, they were showing this parents who are having trouble with their teenage daughter. She was not listening to her parents and the parents were very frustrated.

I think it is always very challenging to raise teenagers but I thought it might be more difficult to raise teenagers in recent days because when I was a teenager, cellphone was not as popular as it is right now and nor the computers. It was more difficult to communicate with your friends.

Of course, many teenagers were difficult even during my time. Some of them were violent at home or at school and some of them were bullied and stuff.

I wonder how teenagers are these days. It is very convenient and useful to contact with your kids when they have their own cellphone but it also make them spend more time with their friends even when your kids are at home.

Currently, I don't know anyone who is Teenager or the moms who has teenager so I don't really know the common rules and I am sure that every family has a different rules but when do kids normally start to carry cellphones? and what time is a common curfew for high school kids? I am just curious.

I feel like I never had rebellious phase when I was growing up. (Maybe I just don't remember :-) hahaha) But I was always a good kid and never wanted to hurt my parents feeling. As a result, my parents did not have to be strict with me. Since I did not have rebellious phase, I don't really know how it is and I wonder how I would handle it when I have my own teenager someday.

I think it is very difficult because if you are too tough and strict, they will place a distance and will separate themselves from you but if you are too soft and does not interfere with their life, they will take advantage and will not respect you. Oh, it is a tough job.

Well, I don't need to think about those things right now particularly but I just thought about it and was curious about it.

For those of you who has teenage kids, it might be difficult right now but hang in there. I believe that kids will understand and appreciate you when they get a little bit older :-) But again, I never experienced it neither as a teenager or as a mom so I am not the one who can talk about this... until I experience it some day :-)