Friday, November 23, 2012

Japanese yam aka 'Jinenjo' and the Beautiful Blog Award...

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...


This is how the tuber looks like...
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... 

Once again, thank you, thank you, for thinking of my blog...




Friday, November 16, 2012

Wild grapes...

Had a 'bumper' harvest from the wild grapes in our property...
All in all, 2.2 kilograms... whoopee...
This, compared to last year when I could hardly get any harvest...
Perhaps there is some truth in plants alternating between bumper harvest and poor harvest... no?
There is absolutely no need to take care of them...
All I did was to prune them down, and rather brutally at that too...
The fruits are just about 5 millimeters in diameter...
There is little flesh in them...
And the best way to enjoy them, I thought, was to turn them into juice...
Managed to make about 12 liters of delicious wild grape juice from them...
No additives of any kind... and with each sip, hmmm, the feeling of pure delight...