Yasuko, Tony, and Sage, Brattleboro, VT

How many people does your fridge need to feed?
Tony: Three, technically. Sage breastfeeds, so he eats everything Yasuko eats.

What do you usually eat for breakfast?
Yasuko: A banana and toast.
Tony: I forget to eat breakfast but Yasuko forces me to eat a banana. But when we have time, we make good breakfasts. On weekends we’ll make scrambled eggs and salad, or something.

Is there anything you eat every day? 
Tony: Rice. Cheese. 

Every week?
Tony: Pizza.
Yasuko: Saturday is pizza night.
Tony: Yasuko works with our friends who make Chinese food at the farmer’s market. We take leftovers of the dough they make their buns with and we bring it home and make pizza with it every Saturday.

What item are you forbidden from purchasing right now?
Tony: We’re not really that strict, but we don’t drink soda. We like it but drink it and then feel horrible.
Yasuko: I don’t drink alcohol right now because I’m breastfeeding. And I don’t buy broccoli because I heard it makes babies fart, or apples because I heard it makes them fussy.

What’s the most delicious thing in here?
Tony: I love the Real Pickles sauerkraut in there. It’s made in Greenfield, Massachusetts, south of us. They were one of the first companies to do natural fermentation on any scale. There are like six people making it.
Yasuko: My favorite drink is the tea my mama friend made me called “chill-out mama tea.” My hormones get so crazy and I get upset so easily, so one day she made me this chamomile and rosehip tea. I drink it like a shot when I feel the stress come.

The most disgusting?
Tony: That prune juice has been in there for months. We bought it when Sage was constipated. 
Yasuko: The nurse said we could dilute it for him, but I tried it once and I felt horrible so I didn’t want to give him any.
Tony: We also have natto in there. She loves it. It’s disgusting.

The oldest?
Yasuko: The lamb.
Tony: We got half a lamb from my old coworker in 2012 and we’ve been working our way down to whatever’s left in the freezer. We thought we were moving so we gave away a whole bunch of it, but still we have some left. 

Anything you regret buying?
Yasuko: The rice vinegar. I bought it to make sushi with but it’s disgusting. I grew up making rice vinegar and I was just being lazy and bought this, and it tastes totally different.
Tony: My old work was next to a discount food store so I used to go buy lunchmeat and stuff like that after work on the way home. I would overdo it sometimes—we just threw some of it away. 

What's your guilty pleasure?
Yasuko: Lots of cheese.
Tony: There’s a lot of really good cheese made around here.
Yasuko: And we have so many friends who work at the cheese counter at the co-op so we get recommendations that are too good and then we love the stuff and buy too much.

Where do you do most of your food shopping?
Tony: We have a really nice food co-op in town. It’s within walking distance, so we’ll often meet after work to go shopping.

How much do you spend on groceries each week?
Yasuko: $60 or $70, something like that.

How often do you go grocery shopping?
Yasuko: Twice a week on average.  

What percentage of your meals do you prepare at home?
Yasuko: 90%. When we lived in Japan we went out more.
Tony: We wouldn’t even eat dinner until nine at night sometimes.
Yasuko: There were a lot of small restaurants we loved. And after taking a long train ride it was nice to just go to a little place where we knew everybody, eat, and then go home and sleep.

Is there anything in here that we would have found in your childhood fridge?
Yasuko: Miso, soy sauce, some dressings, wasabi, mustard. We drive to an Asian supermarket in Hadley, Massachusetts once in a while and stock up. It’s a Korean store but I can find Japanese stuff. Sometimes we go to Boston, too.
Tony: No, nothing. Orange juice, maybe? We don’t eat a lot that’s similar to what I ate as a kid. We made Swedish meatballs last week and we had to go buy the ingredients for that.

Tony and Yasuko play together in The Bad Spellers and are mainly occupied with parenting these days, but Tony is also a mental health substance abuse counselor and Yasuko is a Japanese teacher. He’s holding the dough for their Saturday pizza. She’s holding Tony’s mom’s South Carolina BBQ sauce and their son Sage. They live in Brattleboro, Vermont.