While walking the hills near our home one day two or three years ago, my suweeto haato suggested that we harvest the 'jinenjo' (自然薯 literally, 'natural yam') that were growing in the wild...
We, more like I, dug at one plant, and boy, it turned out to be heavy duty work...
'Jinenjo' is a climber... perennial... native of Japan... scientific name, Dioscorea japonica... common name, Japanese yam or glutinous yam...
We took back some 'seeds' which I believe are actually 'fruits' that grow on their vines...
We like to joke that they resemble 'small potatoes' growing in the air...
This is a close-up of the 'little potatoes'... diameter varies from half to one centimeter...
The Japanese folks call them 'mukago' and they combine very well with rice... so much so that there is a term call 'mukago gohan'... 'gohan' being rice... the taste is really very good...
Their flesh is white in color and they have a very high viscosity (?) level, that is, they are very 'sticky' or 'glue-ish'....
Lovely, lovely vegetable... as we can enjoy both the 'fruits' and the 'tubers'...
I'd like to dedicate this post to Ash of 'Houris in the Garden' who graciously nominated my humble blog for the Beautiful Blog Award...
I am most honored and would like to thank her for the gesture...
However, I would like to ask Ash to forgive me because due to time constraints among other things, I am not able to fulfill the several things I should do in order to accept the award... one of which is to pass the award onwards as requested...
