Today's dinner

The Menus of today's dinner are

1. Cabbage, daikon, carrot and sausages boiled with consommé soup
Soup coming out of the vegetables are so delicious than you don't need
to add any salt.
2. Salad of shredded cabbage
That is the best way to enjoy fresh and crispy cabbages, I believe.











-- from iPad

Leaves for compost

How do you deal with outer leaves of your vegetables? In my case all of them are buried in soil for composting.
Daikon's and chinese cabbage's outer leaves which I cut off can be good compost in a soil in a few month and the process can make the soil fertile.
Daikon's leaves can be pickled with salt and delicious but the soil in my garden is still less nutritious so there is worth "investing" the leaves.











You can see difference in colors of Daikon's leaves which had been buried a few month ago and new leaves. The old ones have turned yellow in a soil.

-- from iPad

Today's harvest

I'm planning change the layout of planting beds for spring-summer vegetables so I have to end up my daikons, cabbages, Chinese cabbages and komatunas in this month.
Luckily most of them can be harvested in a week but they are too much for us to eat up and if daikons are left in soil for long time, they will bolt.
I and my wife decided to share our vegetables with our neighbors.
In Japan price of vegetables in stores is higher than usual due to odd weather last year and I know "our products" will be welcome.




-- from iPad

Where are my photos!?

Now you are seeing all of my photos on my blog have gone saying 404 errors.
I was shocked so much when I found this situation and I apology for your inconvenience.

I use an application called "blogpress" on my iPad when I write comments on my blog and I found all photos which had been uploaded through the app have gone.
Now I seek help sending mail to blogpress and if you have the same problem with me and any solution, I would like you to share it with me.

The first harvest of 2011

Before my family visit my father in law for the new year greeting I went to my garden and harvested a cabbage, daikon radish, komatunas and Chinese cabbage. I brought all of them to him as the new year present.



The cabbage is smaller than I thought but in a beautiful shape since I saw less bugs attack against the cabbages than my Chinese cabbages. I have other 8 cabbages to be harvested in a few weeks so I hope they will become bigger. That is the first cabbage I've harvested so I feel it auspicious to harvest it during the new year holidays!







-- iPadから送信

Osechi - New year feasts in lacquered boxes

Many Japanese prepare Osechi-dishes, which contain various kinds of dishes in lacquered boxes which are designed for the Osechi. My wife cooked 2 boxes of Osechi and Zoni, which is a miso soup with baked mochi and vegetables.


Osechi consists of dishes which is shown below which have auspicious meanings and we celebrate the new year's day by eating the dishes.

from above left
1 chestnut boiled with syrup. The golden color of the chestnut is associated with economic fortune.
2 black soy beans, which represents wish for health.
3 bamboo-shoots boiled with broth. Growth of bamboo-shoots upward to the sky is associated with well growth in many fields like business.
4 carrots boiled with bamboo shoots in broth. Red color of carrots is seen as auspicious color.
5 boiled arrowheads. The sprouts coming out of them is associated with growth.
6 vinegar-pickled renkons or lotus roots. Renkons have many holes which you can "see through" the other side, which literarily means seeing or predict what will happen in the future.
7 sardines cooked in say sauce. In ancient days in Japan sardine was used as a fertilizer for rice so the fish are associated with a good harvest.
8 giant butterburs boiled in say sauce and broth. Butterburs in Japanese is homonym of wealth or good fortune in Japanese.


While preparing miso soup for zoni we baked mochis with an oven toaster.
Mochi get sticky and bigger when cooked so we sometimes have a trouble in picking them up if mochis combine with others as you see in a photo shown below.


It's interesting to know that different kinds of zoni soup are preferred in different districts in Japan. In Osaka white miso soup is preferred, which is sweet and mild taste while in Tokyo fish broth.


-- iPad

謹賀新年 - Happy new year

Happy new year, everyone! I hope the year of 2011 will be great to all of you.
I would like to start the first blog of this year by introducing how our family spending the new year holidays in Japan.

The first photos shows "Shimekazari" or a new year day's ornament to be displayed on an entrance door.



Mochi or a rice cake is one of important foods for new year holidays. We enjoy not only eating Mochi but also displaying it for celebration of a happy new year. The second photo shows " Kagami-Mochi " , one of important ornaments for the new year's day. But that mochi looks odd doesn't it? Do you think that is real?



The answer is that is a NOT real Mochi but a plastic-molded Mochi!
We used to display real mochi during new years holidays but easily get moldy so one of Mochi manufacture invented that plastic mochi and that contains smaller vacuum-packed mochis which we can deal with.

-- iPadから送信