Grill, baby, grill!!

As the Christmas or year-end are upcoming, we might have some opportunities to hold parties where we can enjoying eating, drinking and talking with your family members, friends, colleagues.
In Japan we customarily hold what we call "the forget-the past year-party" at this season. The party is held literally to forget whatever unpleasant things, bad lucks and difficulties happens in the year.

Today my family held the party at my favorite Yakiniku ( grilled beef in the Korean style ) restaurant near my house.


Sliced strips of beef are served on our table with the special sauce.






At first, we enjoyed slice row cow liver as an appetizer with dipping them with salt and sesame oil. That is a favorite menu of my family.



We grilled the beef on a heated iron net, which is the Korean style.
"Grill, baby, grill!


Another source of our stamina is sliced garlics boiled in sesame oil.



We should not forget eating vegetables when we eat beef for balance of nutrition. That is "Kimuchi" or cabbages which are picked in hot chili based source.


-- from iPad

Making hot chili powder and oil

Do you want to use a new electric tool to test it as soon as you've bought it? Yes, I do!

We made hot chili powder and oil using a new electric blender which my wife bought.



After we've got rid of seeds from chilies, we put them a glass case of the blender and turned it on and then,,,,,?


Here is a hot chili powder!


Besides the powder, we made hot chili oil, which is my favorite condiment, with adding boiled sesame oil to the chili powder.




-- from iPad

Today's dinner

Today's dinner is a steamed chinese cabbage with sliced pork in a pot and a grilled komatunas. They are so easy to cook and the steamed cabbage is welcomed especially in a cold winter.






All you have to do is sliced cabbage and pork and put them into a pot.
If you layer sliced cabbages and porks as you see in the above photo, the appearance can be beautiful.



You don't need to pour any water. A plenty of soup comes out of the cabbage and pork! It's very delicious...



You can enjoy it with your favorite sauce or condiments such as soy-sauce with citrus juice.

-- from iPad

Harvesting and cleaning up all komatunas

Today my family and my daughter's friend went to my garden to harvest all of my first generation komatunas. The kids seemed to be delighted with the harvest.






My daughter's friend, who is 2 year olds younger than her, was eager to help my daughter cultivating with a hoe and my daughter taught her how to do it with demonstrating.

"Don't swing it too much or it will hurt you..."
"Ok, teacher."




The planting bed has been cleaned up after adding lime powder, rice bran and fertilizer for next planting.



-- from iPad

Today's harvest

My first generation komatunas, which had suffered low germination rate and poor growth, were at last harvested today. It took about 45 days since seeding those komatunas. I think the color of the leaves is lighter and paler than usual due to poor growth caused by less nutrition and less sunlight.
The second generation komatunas are well grown in a vinyl tunnel which can make temperature inside warm and gather much sunlight.

My wife will slice them and add them into Miso-soup.


-- from iPad

Today's harvest

Here is our today's harvest!
About 3 boxes of kiwi fruits and 25 persimmon fruits.

The kiwi fruits will be preserved with apples till they'll have been matured.

And some sweet persimmons were served on our table.



-- from iPad

Harvesting autumn fruits with my kids

Today my family visited My wife's father who lives with his family in Nara to help harvesting persimmons and kiwi fruits which are planted in his garden.

Unfortunately we saw less fruits on the trees than usual because the heatwave at this summer might affect the productivity of the trees according to her father.

There are 2 persimmon trees in the garden and the fruits are located on the top of the trees so I have to climb up to the roof of his house to harvest them.

The type of persimmon fruits shown above has a lot of persimmon tannin (astringent) so the taste is too bitter for us to eat! After harvesting them they are dried outside for a few months to get rid of tannin and we can enjoy dried persimmons.

Some persimmons are eaten by birds, mainly crows. They are so smart that they can recognize which fruits are sweet leaving bitter ones.....

The other persimmon tree shown above is planted behind his house and it is a sweet persimmon. Can you recognize difference between astringent persimmons and sweet ones? Sweet ones are more round-shaped than bitter ones which look like pointed-shaped.

As you see the above photo, we have to take a risk to harvest the fruits! There is no roof to go up around the tree but only thin brick wall and I dare to stand on the wall and use 'a long shaft nipper' to pick up the fruits. You see my daughter ready to catch them! No risk, No return. That is what my kids learned today, I hope.

Eventually we harvested about 20 persimmon fruits today. Some fruits have crack but that's ok for us to enjoy the taste.

-to be continued.

-- from iPad