Super Mario’s Grain Salad

Humans have no superpowers. There are no superheroes. We all know that by now.

But sometimes I’m skeptical, probably because there’s a part of me who is still in denial. Perhaps I was too young when I first watched “superheroes” on TV; it gave me an illusion of hope, that there must be someone with greater power to defeat the bad guys, and no matter what the crisis, they will always save us from despair, and everything is going to be okay.

But now I think about it, that was a pretty unhealthy expectation that I built for my impending future. In reality, bad guys are everywhere, and good guys have no “superpower” to defeat the bad guys. Some people create more fantasy, superheroes to be specific, to cope with our distorted reality. America created Marvel, Japan created Nintendo, and where are you from? Maybe your country created some original heroes, too. Mine created Super Mario, and I’ve been a huge fan of Mario ever since I met him when I was in elementary school.

When I first met Super Mario, I was sitting next to my brother, playing his very first Nintendo that he got from our parents. “Here we go!” Mario said when the game started. But back then I didn’t speak English, and I had no idea what that meant. To me, it sounded like some sort of foreign spell, and I was bewitched by its magic, until, you know, adolescence.

The world is often quite opposite from our “superhero” fantasy, and it’s been a devastating journey for me. There was a time I truly lost faith in humanity, and it made me so confused that I lost sense of who I was. Stay, or leave. Yes, or no. I asked myself for a long while, long enough to realize that maybe the answer didn’t have to be so binary; -because after all, it’s not the fantasy that is our problems; it’s our interpretation of it.

I wonder if you ever played Super Mario; because each time I play it, I get to have fun, I get to explore, I get to experience the sense of wonder, but I also get to fail. I get lost, I get stuck, and I get disappointed when I lose all the coins I collected for the future. I live, I die, and no matter how tired I am, I have to keep running by hitting a “B” as fast as I could, so I can finally reach my goals. It was a fantasy world that Nintendo created, but I still learned something more than fantasy, depending on how I look at it.

Just like healthy food could be unhealthy if you eat too much of it, superhero fantasy does the same thing to our mental health. It’s empowering, but consuming too much unrealistic optimism could be lethal, and make you confused. It’s the valance of each that we need to maintain, otherwise you would only become allergic to the real world.

I wanted to make a recipe out of my thoughts, and that’s how this Super Mario Salad was created. It’s gluten-free; because we are so allergic to the real world nowadays. It’s a bit heavy on carbohydrates, because our thoughts are like carbohydrates; always heavy, but one day they’ll become our energy. Also, I added some superfoods in this recipe for the sake of this “superhero” fantasy. I hope you like it.

1: Prepare the grain.
Put half a cup quinoa, 2 tbsp. flaxseeds and one cup of water into a small pot and cook until they become soft. It usually takes about 20-30 minutes.
At the same time, start cooking one cup of brown rice in either a rice cooker or another pot.

2: Make a Mario face.
After the rice is cooked, it’s time for the Mario making! Separate rice in two bowls, and put 4~5 tbsp tomato puree in one of them. We’ll use plain rice to make his face, nose and ears, and the red rice for the hat.
 3: Work on the details.
Tofu: make his eyes, logo on a hat, and the question marks on the magic boxes.Paprika: Make his “M” logo on the hat. Dried seaweed: Make his mustache and hair.4: Make the magic boxes, blocks, and Goomba.
Blocks: Cut tofu into small cubes and fry them in a heated pan together with soy sauce, miso paste and a bit of water, until they turn brown.
Goomba: Do the same, but cut the tofu rounder so it will look like a Goomba instead.
Magic boxes: Cut the tofu into cubes and fry them in the pan, and add 2 tbsp curry powder and a bit of water. Fry them until they turn yellow.5: Prepare the grain salad.
Cut ginger, thyme, and lettuce into pieces. Boil corn and edamame in different pots until they are ready then put it all together in a big bowl.
Then squeeze the lime; -the citrus flavor is an essential part of this salad, so squeeze it like you mean it.
Then mix well. It would look something like this.6: Assemble them together.
Put the grain salad on a plate. Make sure the plate is flat. This will help your Mario to stay on the plate easier.
Place the Tofu boxes below. 7: Time for some details:
First the blocks. Take the brown tofu and wrap thinly cut dried seaweed around it so it looks like blocks.
As for the magic boxes, cut a tofu into a question-mark shape, then place it on top of the yellow tofu cubes. Next, use a toothpick to put tiny dots of tomato puree onto each corner of the box.
8: Stars are made of… Starfruits.
If you ever played Super Mario, finding “the star” is kind of like a highlight of the game. So I decided to pick starfruits to make the star, simply because…. it’s so hard to find! *giggles* So, if you are frustrated that you can’t find starfruits at your nearest market, please know that finding “the star” is supposed to be frustrating. *wink!*
Just slice the starfruits and it will give you a perfect shape of a star. For Star’s faces, use cut dried seaweed (nori) on top of the cut starfruits.

9: Don’t forget the Goomba.
Place the Goomba’s face on the salad, then add the body using cut tofu. I made his face by cutting dried seaweed and just two tiny dots of tofu, as you can see in the picture. I know it’s not my best work, but I believe there’s a certain beauty in imperfection.
10: Set them all together.
All your hard work is finally paying off now. Congratulations, you’ve earned it! There you go, a vegan Mario Salad.
Vegan coin-block. Made of Tofu, with soy sauce.
Vegan magic box. Made of tofu, with curry.Quinoa, edamame, corn, flavored with thyme, and freshly squeezed lime. The taste of “superfood”.

Super Mario, superhero, superpower, and superfood. That’s a lot of “super”s, but I hope you get the message behind of this “super” recipe. *wink!*

 

 

Thanks for reading.

-Yuki