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...

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...

Red shiso...

My missus bought a red shiso plant some years ago...

And for all the following years, they have been self-seeding in our potager...

They are part of the mint family, so they have 'relatives' like the basil, sage, lemon balm...

Flowers are rather minute and quite pretty...

There are not many ways to use this herb...

I sometimes make juice out of it...
And occasionally, I boil them to use in our baths...  

The Japanese folks use them (together with salt) to preserve plums...
Of course, we do likewise too... with plums from our potager....

Akebi aka Chocolate vine...

This plant is a novelty... native of Japan...

The Japanese folks call them 'Akebi' while the English speaking world labels it 'chocolate vine' because their flowers seem to smell like chocolate... 

We are very lucky to have these vines growing wildly in our property...

Ours is the three-leaved variety as opposed to the five-leaved ones that can be found in the nearby hills...

The fruits do not look attractive when green...

However, they take on a very pretty pinkish-purple tone as they ripen...

At the same time, the fruit splits vertically from top to bottom, revealing a whitish pulp....

Birds love this flesh as we sometimes observed empty fruits that are either left dangling on the vines or have dropped onto the ground...

We carefully split open the pulp and were pleasantly surprised to see the insides being quite 'intricately designed'...

The taste is faintly sweet... the seeds can be quite bitter if chewed on...

Just out of curiosity, we tried cooking the skin with some miso sauce...

The taste was slightly bitter and some Japanese folks say that it goes well with Japanese wine (sake)...

Pumpkin 'art' and the two loofahs...

Pumpkins are believed to originate from North America...
The Japanese call them 'kabocha', which rhymes with Kampuchea...
Apparently, to the Japanese, the pumpkin came into Japan from Cambodia, hence the name...

Our pumpkin harvest is not too bad this year...

All in all, we manage to harvest seven fruits of this 'Ebisu' specie...

With no scissors on hand, I just ripped the stalks off from this pumpkin...
And woah, do I see a 'bird' here?

And this one... a little monster flexing its muscles?

Now, the loofah is supposed to originate from India...
We grow both types...
The pictures above shows the Egyptian loofah which is rather smooth-skinned...

I observe that it flowers in the morning...

The second type is the angled loofah...

They seem to prefer flowering in the evening...

My sweeto haato prefers the smooth-skinned Egyptian... better taste, she says...
Rather unfortunately for her, our angled loofahs were more productive this season...
Perhaps, 43 angled loofahs compared to about 30 Egyptian loofahs...
In any case, we usually make soups out of them...