Cold days have come back.

 After warm days through last week, which could remind us of spring coming soon, severely cold days have come back to Osaka where I live. I expected my potatoes, which were planted 2 weeks ago, would have germinated but actually they have not yet.

 My spinach are also growing slowly due to the cold temperature with about 15cm leaves. They've grown enough to be harvested but I'm not satisfied with the size of them

 The growth of my onions are so remarkable that I can see their purple bulbs growing in soil. 

 The green leaves of my onions also look healthy and I expect we can harvest them in the beginning of May.

Recipe collection vol.5 / Pasta in cream sauce with spinach and sliced bacon

Ingredients for 4 people:

・Pasta / 300GR

・Spinach
・Sliced bacon
・Sliced onion / using a half of an onion
・Butter

・Milk / 150ml
・Cream / 100ml
・Consomme / 5GR
・flour / 2 spoons
・Salt and black pepper

1 Cut and slice spinach, bacon and onion.


2 Grill sliced onion, bacon with butter and brown them.


3 Add 2 spoons of flour and pour milk and cream slowly into a pan with stirring them to avoid lumps.

4 Add consomme into the sauce. Don't use it too much or the taste would be too salty.

5 Sprinkle salt and black pepper on the pan

6 Add spinach into the cream sauce


7 Add boiled pasta into the sauce and stir it well.


8 Serve a dish and enjoy it!


-- from iPod touch

Planting potatoes with my daughter.

 Today I planted seed potatoes with my daughter, who loves potatoes so much. It's still cold in Osaka but I learned from my experience of growing potatoes last year that I should plant them earlier. Because my last potatoes, which were planted at the mid of March,  should have been grown in soil for longer time. I strongly hope my potatoes should be bigger than last ones.

 As I mentioned in my last blog of potatoes, I prepared potatoes in a popular way in Japan before planting them. Cutting into a half and Covering the surface of potatoes with ash powder.

 Cutting the potatoes and putting ash powder on them was my daughter's assignment.  She was so curious about the way of the potato's preparation asking me many times "Why do I use ash?" .

 After I told her where the potatoes should be planted, I left planting them to her. She remembered how she planted potatoes with me last year.

 My daughter was so reliable that I guess you might think "What did her father do? Didn't he exploit her, did he ?" Well, I'd better show you how I worked today! I wrapped the planting beds with bunches of straws for keeping them warm and moist. Because the air in Osaka during winter is so dry and cold and frost is also expected till the beginning of March.

She seems to love watering even in a cold winter saying, "Dad, please let me do it!"
I believe her efforts can contribute to the bumper harvest!

Simple recipes

 Today my wife cooked thinned out pak choi and daikon radishes.

 The pak chois were small but very tender and easy to cook so she simply stir-flied them seasoning with only salt.

The daikon redishes were also so small since I failed to thin them out properly. So my wife grated them to make "Oroshi-ponzu" , or mixture of citrus say sauce and grated daikon radish, which is one of popular sauce among Japanese and go well with deep fried foods. When we grate daikon radish, we always use a handy grater shown below. I don't know that kind of tool can be seen in your country but it's very useful to grate vegetables and fruits.

 The Oroshi-ponzu added to pork cutlets. I believe the combination is perfect! The refreshing taste of the sauce goes well with oily deep-fried cutlets.

Homemade compost

My wife stores perishable trash like tips of vegetables and leftover in a vinyl bag to make compost. Today we found them well fermented and I put them to my gardening plot. It looks ugly but the smell was not so bad.

The compost was so sticky that I had to make it smooth by diluting it wit water in order to distribute it to wider range in my garden.

Some vegetables were not composted yet so it looks like a curry sauce?　Well, you know it's not eatable!

I don't know how effective the " compost solution " is but it's organic fertilizer so making compost at home can give me a hope for pursuing more organic gardening, I believe.