shrimp and vegetables with tofu in a mind-blowingly flavorful sauce

What makes the sauce so mind-blowingly great? The usual suspects do. It's simple as can be with common items from your refrigerator and your pantry.

If your refrigerator and pantry are in Japan.

* sake

* mirin

* fish sauce

* soy sauce

* toasted sesame seed oil

In water. Mere teaspoons, and right there is unbelievable depth and range. It really is quite amazing. Combined in balance with very broad margin for variation and you're all what, what? How did I become a flavor-genius like this? I must show this to the emperor of Japan. 

Last night I saw a cartoon. A drawing of a Buddhist monk reading a card. The words below the picture read, "Not thinking of you." 

Another reader had to have the joke explained to him.

That reminded me of the joke about the Dalai Lama approaching a hotdog vendor in New York. The vendor asks, "What'll you have?" The Dalai Lama answers, "Make me one with everything." 

Now that right there is funny, but there's more.

The Dalai Lama pays with a twenty and waits for his change. The vendor doesn't give him any. An uncomfortable moment elapses and the vendor goes, "What are you waiting for?" The Dalai Lama answers, "I'm waiting for my change." The vendor shrugs and still doesn't give him his change, instead he tells the Dalai Lama, "Change comes from within."

A guy didn't get the joke and asked for someone to explain it. 

And that is funnier than the joke. 

But then someone said a long time ago a reporter told that joke to the Dalai Lama, who's a very good natured guy always up for a good joke, but something was lost in translation. The guy told a joke about the Dalai Lama to the actual Dalai Lama. All the American monks cracked up but not the Dalai Lama. He had to have the joke broken down but by then through translation it simply wasn't funny.

And that is the funniest of all. 

"Well, you see, Your Holiness, 'change' in English means coins for paper money, the leftover from overpayment. It's a double entendre, ambiguïté, Your Holiness."

"What?"