Kudzu Blossom Jelly

It is that time of year again. The smell of Kudzu blossoms is everywhere, and the cheery purple flowers are hanging down like bunches of grapes. Bees are everywhere, and there is Eric, stripping kudzu blossoms with his right hand while catching them in a bowl held in his left.

The past few tries have ended up in Kudzu syrup, due to either a lack of pectin, lack of acidity, lack of sugar, or lack of skill (I think maybe all four..) This year I think it is different. I had a nice box of quality pectin, lots of sugar, and a real lemon to squeeze for juice.
This is a really small recipe- I want to make sure it works before I make liter upon liter of it. Since it is only 500 ml or so, I just used an old jam jar since the kids can eat that much jelly in an afternoon if not supervised. If you make lots and lots of it, follow proper canning proceedure and sterilize.

Here is how I did it:

1. Collect about two cups of kudzu flower petals. You can just strip them off the flower stalk into a colander or bag as you collect them. 
2. Wash the blossoms in cold water. I like to fill the bowl with water to the top to make the bugs float to the surface. Then I can skim them out. Bugs mean healthy kudzu, so don't freak out. I would probably freak out if there were no bugs... "OMG! Why aren't there any bugs? What is wrong with these blossoms?"
3. Drain the blossoms and return them to a bowl. Now pour 500ml of boiling water over them, and put the bowl in the fridge for 8 hours. 
4. Strain the blossom water into a kettle and throw away the spent blossoms. The water will look brown or gray. That is fine, it is not the final color.
5. Add 1/2 Tbsp of lemon juice, and the pectin. Stir and heat on high to a full rolling boil. 
6. Add 2 1/2 cups of sugar and stir and return to the rolling boil. Boil one minute more.
7. Remove from heat and skim off the pink foam.
8. Pour into sterile jars (or just clean ones if you are going to be refrigerator jelly people like we are) and cap. 
9. Cool on wire rack.
10. Enjoy.

Kudzu blossoms after steeping- Looks terrible now, right?

The liquid is not so bad of a color. Now to add some lemon juice and pectin...

Pink!

Ummm.... jelly! (I hope, let's see if it sets....)

Dandelion Coffee

Dandelion coffee. Is it just hype or is it really good for you? 

I am not sure, but I like it. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had dug up 4 good sized roots to make into dandelion coffee. 

fresh dandelion roots after washing

I washed them, and put them in a shallow woven bamboo basket to dry in the cab of my truck. After a week, the roots were brittle and snapped readily. I found out that this step is not really necessary, I could have just chopped the roots and began roasting right away. Live and learn.

dried dandelion roots

I snapped and cut the roots into pieces about 1cm long, and arranged them on a cookie sheet. Then I put them in the oven at about 150 degrees C. for about 30 minutes, stirring them up occasionally with some chopsticks. Soon the house was filled with a wonderful aroma. Who would have thought that dandelion roots roasting would smell so heavenly? 

When the roots changed color from tan to dark brown, I turned off the oven and let them cool. 

In the morning, I ground some up in my electric coffee grinder, put about one scoop of the powder in a regular coffee maker, and dripped out four cups. Smelled pretty good, but I didn't drink any. I put it in a thermos and took it to City Hall.

They looked at me pretty weird when I asked to have it tested, but they are good about this kind of stuff. 

When I came back in half an hour, they gave me the good news: My dandelion coffee came back clean!

No Cs 134/137 detected in dandelion coffee!

I do love it when I get negative results! The lab attendants and I then enjoyed some of the coffee together, and I refrigerated the rest to make iced dandelion coffee. That was amazing. The flavor is not so much like real coffee. It is earthier. Maybe a darker roast might taste more like the real thing. But the bitterness was quite pleasant.

The dandelion coffee had another thing in common with regular coffee. It is an amazing diuretic. My blood feels so clean now!

Now that I know it is clean, I can make larger batches and keep me drinking it all year round!

Planting Jinenjo (Dioscorea opposita )

I have no idea if I did it right, it is just an experiment.

First, I lay a piece of Moso bamboo I had split and knocked the nodes out of and checked the length.

Then, I dug a trench in the side of my garden bank and put the bamboo trough in it.

Then I filled the trench with soft soil, being careful to avoid any rocks or roots.

At the top of the bamboo trough, I put the top 15cm of jinenjo root my friend gave me, and carefully replaced the soil around it.

The theory is that the root will grow down the bamboo trough, and I won't have to dig a one meter deep hole next to the root just to get it out without breaking it.


**** 2012/05/06**** The embankment was destroyed by wild boars, and I am afraid the jinenjo were as well.

Three Leaf Akebia

Akebia growing in a friend's backyard

Just starting to split

Open it up and enjoy the sweet pulp. 

I love wild food. And this is one of my favorites! Akebi. In this case, it is an "Ishi Akebi" (stone akebia) as opposed to the "Murasaki Akebi" which is purple. Sweet pulp, seedy as a passionfruit. But you can just eat the seeds, no problem there. The only problem is that they grow so far up in the trees! I was lucky with this one. My oldest son was walking to the meeting place to go to school, when he stopped, pointed at the ground, and said "Daddy! Akebi!" Sure enough, there were two overripe ones that dropped off the vine laying on the sidewalk. So I looked up, and there were a bunch of them, some within reach! Hooray!

Akebi enjoy growing on the edge of the forest, which around here means along the roadside. So around this time of year, I keep an eye on the ground, looking for dropped fruit. Then I make a note of it, and know where to come back to in the future. 

Dioscorea opposita, or Japanese Mountain Yam

Dioscorea opposita 

My farmer friend down the mountain grew some "yamaimo" seeds two years ago, and as I rode by on my way to work, I stopped to watch him dig them out. That he gave me one was just a super lucky bonus!
I am kicking myself that I didn't take a picture of the whole root, which was as big as my arm at least. This thing was huge!
I peeled the root, since Mayuho can't touch it because it makes her itchy. But I am fine with it. So anyway, I cut the bottom third off, peeled it, and began to grate it over a mixing bowl.

It was beautifully gooey. Just wonderful!

Then we put some soy sauce in, and dumped it over a big bowl of brown rice. Wow, that was sooooo good!

Call them Cattails, Bullrush, or Raupo, they are Delicious

Typha latifolia or common cattail

Finally, The cattails near our house are starting to send up their flower stalks. So I got my good sandals wet (don't tell my wife) and harvested two of them and decided to give it a try, ala Euell Gibbons and his book- Stalking the Wild Asparagus. I harvested them when they were still quite young, about the thickness of my little finger  (that would be most people's middle finger size). The stalks are fibrous and tough as could be. It took a few minutes of twisting and tugging to finally get them off. Next time I'll bring a scissors or blade of some kind.

At home, I peeled off the husk, and tossed them in a pot of lightly salted water for 3 minutes. Then I fished them out, put just a little butter on them, and enjoyed them like corn on the cob. It was really good. Reminded me of avocado, but with a slightly grainy texture. The inside of the bright green immature flower was a very pretty yellow. Towards the bottom of the flower it was almost all stalk with just the tiniest bit of flower, but near the top it was wonderful and thick. I wonder if that wasn't the immature pollen up there... I offered some to my wife, and she took a bite but the texture disagreed with her. 

I will definitely be doing that again (but I'll leave the good sandals at home). 

The flowers in their husks

Boiled up and ready to eat. 

Crab

Eriocheir japonica - Mokuzugani (Japanese Mitten Crab)

Coming home tonight after work, I saw a black blob on the road in front of our driveway. I was about to nudge it with my foot when it moved! I jumped back a step, and then peered at it in the very dim light. Oh my goodness, it was a crab! I believe it was a Japanese Mitten crab, due to the size and the furry claws. Then as I hurried up towards the house to tell the wife about it, two wild boars foraging for worms in the bank of the neighbor's rice paddy exploded out in front of me and galloped through the woodlot and my garden on the way into the bamboo grove. If you have ever startled two wild boars from three meters away, your heart will beat four times a second for the next five minutes. Well, not really, but it does give you a start for sure.

I made it to the house, and told the wife about the crab. She said "Can we eat it?" I love this woman. So I went down to the road, stuffed the crab into a cardboard box, and brought it up to show to her. But it was just so cute, I couldn't eat it. So I put it back down by the road again. All's well that ends well.

April Showers Bring Orchard Flowers

I thought I would do a post about my orchard and what is flowering. Mmmmmm.... I sure hope that we get a good harvest this year!

A yellow cultivar of Rubus crataegifolius a wild raspberry of Japan

It is hard to see, but hidden in the garlic is a Actinidia arguta (hardy Kiwi)

My water supply. I stuck a hose in a small pool on  the creek, and let it siphon down. When I am not using it, it drains into the same creek.

A loquat Eriobotrya japonica, Cultivar "Tanaka"

My quince Cydonia oblonga is about to flower.

Asian Pear Pyrus pyrifolia Cultivar "Hosui"

Indian Blood Peach Prunus persica

Santa Rosa Plum Prunus salicina

Nectarine Prunus persica

Japanese Maple Syrup

I love maple syrup. But the price of it gives me some serious sticker shock. We could buy artificial flavor, indeed, we have in the past. But I just feel safer with something natural.
When I was a boy, my Grandfather tapped some local sugar maple trees one year and made some syrup. I wished that I had planted some sugar maples years ago, and went on wishing for syrup.
Then it struck me- my house is surrounded by Momiji- Japanese maples. Some of them two feet in diameter... So I decided to give it a try this year. I cut some bamboo pipes, cut a small flap in the top of a large plastic soda bottle, and bored a hole near the base of a momiji. Sure enough, out came a steady drip drip drip of sap. I tapped in the pipe, fastened a screw above the hole to hold the bottle on, and let it flow. In about 2 hours, it had about 400ml of sap! How about that!?! It was clear as water, and smelled a bit like watermelons. I brought it back to the house, put it in a pot on the stove, and boiled it down. I ended up with about 10ml of momiji syrup. It was fantastic! Sweet, and nutty- kind of tasted like hazelnuts.
Then I took the baby upstairs to put him to bed. While I was upstairs, MY WIFE THREW OUT THE SYRUP IN THE MEASURING CUP!!!!!
To be fair, it didn't look like much, and she didn't know it was syrup. Was still a heck of a shock though.

Kogomi = Fiddleheads = Delicious!

It is so nice to be able to get something for nothing. And in this case, I mean Kogomi, or as they are sometimes known in English, fiddlehead fern buds.　The species we enjoy the most are the Ostrich, or Shuttlecock fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris)

We have thousands of them all over the place, and for one or two weeks every spring, we have them for every meal.

The taste is a lot like spinach. I recommend putting some ponzu and mayonnaise them. Heavenly.