Kiwi bird Pukunui passes away in Japan, leaving no more Kiwi bird in Japan

There was news report in Japan that the last remaining kiwi, named "Pukunui" passed away in Japan. 

The original source describes that "The national bird of New Zealand, Kiwi. In Japan, Tennoji Zoo (Osaka, Japan) was the only zoo with kiwi birds. The last kiwi at the Tennoji Zoo, Pukunui, was announced dead on 5th August 2024". 

BuzzNewz (Japanese site) 

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/3b03b6f52869b8762358bb8077f73d9b5cabbbe5

Oh no!! NO KIWI birds in Japan. 

While animal enclosures at zoo is a topic for debate for animal ethic reasons, it is also true that animals from other countries are a wonderful way to educate people about different countries. For example, Japan pays a significant amount of "rental fee" to China each year to have Panda in Japanese zoo. I imagine kiwi birds were sent to Japan too as embassedor to culturally connect Japan and New Zealand. 

Pukunui, the kiwi bird which passed away, was 36-year-old. According to Sankei news, Pukunui was a female kiwi bird, born in 1988 in New Zealand, arrived in Japan in July 1991. 

Original article Sankei News (Japanese) https://www.sankei.com/

This is such a long time ago and I had no idea that kiwi birds live so long. Pukunui was paired with another male bird "Jun" which had passed away at 42-year-old, in July this year. So two were a pair for a long time together, and died almost together. 

This is apparently equivalent of 70-80 year-old human. Staff at Tennoji Zoo must have looked after Pukunui and Jun very well, to live well until the old age. 

Wild life conservation is a very important matter and keeping the native animal (e.g. Kiwi) in captivity in another country may not be possible. But As a Japanese, it's a little sad that Japanese children will no longer have options to see Kiwi birds in Japan and hope that there are other opportunities/means for them to learn about amazing kiwi birds their home country, Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Chestnut Picking Season In New Zealand!

The day is getting shorter, and temperatures are starting to drop in Auckland.

That means... Autumn is here!

Autumn means all sorts of yummy autumn harvests will become available... including chestnuts!

So we have been looking around for chestnuts, and found some places we can go to pick fresh chestnuts.

When is the Chestnut Picking Season in New Zealand?

Chestnut picking season in New Zealand is autumn, around mid-March to mid-April.

It may change depending on the weather for the particular year, but usually mid- to late-March is a good season for them in North island.

And... chestnut picking season is actually quite short compared with other fruit like citrus, only lasting about a month, or sometimes only a few weeks.

So if you want to pick your own chestnut, you got to be keeping close eyes on these chestnuts trees once the end of summer approaches... otherwise, they might all fall and be gone before you even notice them!!

If you want to go pick your own chestnut at established chestnut farms, starting collecting information once March begins!

Where to Pick Fresh Chestnut: Local Parks?

So where are chestnuts trees.... ?

Some people have chestnut trees in their garden. You can also find some chestnuts trees in public parks and reserves.

We found some chestnut trees in our local, west Auckland park: Tui Glen Reserve！

Tui Glen Reserve is an awesome park for children with a lot of outdoor play toys.

But this park also has a few chestnut trees, and they were starting to drop chesnuts around February.

This is a bit early than typical chestnut.... may be due to warm Auckland weather?

Some of chestnuts are really small, but some are edible size.

You cannot find that many, but if you are lucky enough to find some on the ground, they are sweet and yum!

Some small chestnuts found at the Tui Glen Reserve

You can always checkout the foraging map available online (see walnut article http://en.japakiwidaisy.com/2018/02/fresh-walnuts-picking-season-in-new.html).

There may be some known chestnut trees in nearby parks and public domains.

Chesnut Picking in New Zealand: Farms?

If if you want to pick your fresh chestnuts, in a large quantity enough to enjoy them... the best place to go is your pick-your-own chestnut farms!

There are a few places around, where owners have opened up their chestnut-farm for people to pick chestnuts and purchase them.

There isn’t a chestnut forest in the middle of Auckland... but comes close! Some places are only about one-hour drive from Auckland.

Here is a few places I found on the internet...

In Clevedon：Chestnut Charlies

http://www.nzchestnuts.co.nz/

Address：291 Monument Rd, Clevedon, Auckland 2582

Phone: 021-182-3030

Between Auckland & Hamilton, near Rangiriri：Chestnut Ridge Farmstay

http://www.chestnutridge-nz.com/index.html

Address：40 Moorfield Rd, Te Kauwhata 3782

Phone：027 250 0941

Could not confirm this place is still operating, but there’s one in Waiaupa: Chestnut Farm

169 Percy Millen Dr, Waiau Pa 2679

There may be other places not listed on the internet.

Many places sell chestnut you pick, at a good whole sale price (some times as cheap as 2~4 dollar per kilo!) .

Most places also ask you to bring your own bags for chestnuts.

Chestnut shells are very spikey so you might choose to bring gloves and good shoes, and even a tong to pick chestnuts with.

When you are making a plan for chestnut-picking, make sure to contact chestnut-farm first, to ask them about their open days (when chestnuts are ready), cost, and what to bring.

Once you know where and when to go chestnut picking, keep a good manner at the chestnut-farm, and happy picking!

Chestnuts in shells – spikey!!

You will be so happy after picking big chestnuts... yum!

Buying Chestnuts

If you do not care about picking up your own chestnuts, you can always purchase them.

Some Asian fruit & vegetable shops tend to sell them around chestnut season.

They are sold at much higher price than when you pick your own though.

Some chestnuts sold at shops may have been stored for a while and become a bit dry.

You need to carefully check chestnuts for how fresh they look, how dry they are or if they have any mold on them, before buying them.

In addition, sometimes people sell chestnuts from their farm/garden at local market or on trade website like trademe.

If you are lucky to find chestnuts for sale in these occasions, you can buy fresh chestnuts at very reasonable price.

So it is worth keeping eye out for chestnuts for sale around March ~ April.

How to Store Chestnuts

Freshness is very important for chestnuts; they are perishable food.

Chestnuts can be stored in the fridge for a few weeks easily; storing chestnuts for two weeks after picking them is said to actually improve the flavor of chestnuts.

But after that, gradually chestnut will go bad...

So what if you picked heaps of chestnuts and want to enjoy them over a long period of time?

Well for a long term storage, you may wish to freeze them in the freezer.

There are a few different ways of freezing chestnuts,

１．Freeze as is (in hard shell)- not very recommendable

First is to throw chestnuts in the freezer as is, with hard shells still attached.

While it is easy just throwing chestnuts in the freezer, it may be hard to peel them after they defrosted.

So I personally do not think this is a good idea...

２．Peel shells first, then freeze them – recommended

Many people freeze chestnuts after peeling outer shells and inner skin.

Peeling chestnut is a bit of tough work, as chestnuts shells are hard.

But once you peeled them then freeze them, it is much easier to used after you defrost them.

Over a long time of storage, your peeled chestnut may start to dry out, or change color.

To prevent this from happening, some people sprinkle in a bit of sugar in the same freezer bag as peeled chestnuts before freezing.

Sugar will lightly coat the peeled chestnuts, and help them stay good in freezer.

３．Cook Chestnuts in Syrup & Freeze – recommended

My favorite way of storing chestnut is first cook chestnuts in syrup (with a lots of sugar), then store chestnuts with plenty of syrup in freezer bag.

Even if you store for a long term in a freezer, chestnut will not dry out as they are inside syrup.

Thick sugar-syrup prevents ice crystals from forming and keeps chestnut in a good condition.

When it comes to eating, you can simply defrost them and enjoy them as is!

So We Picked and Ate Our Chestnuts!

So we already enjoyed some chestnuts we collected by going around parks...

First, we peeled shells off from chestnuts we picked.

Chestnuts skin is really hard, so it helps if you first soak chestnuts in hot water for a while; this softens outer shell.

I boiled a jug of water, and poured hot water onto chestnuts (raw), and left it until the hot water cools down enough for me to touch.

Then peel chestnuts with a sharp knife.

Still mostly raw – just softening skin by pouring hot water over them.

Once you peeled chestnuts clean, you soak them for 15-20 minutes in water with a pinch of salt.

This helps remove a bit of alkaline flavor (bitterness) from chestnuts. – an optional step (as chestnuts taste good as is), but supposed to make them taste even better.

Peeled chestnut

This time, I cooked chestnuts in a syrup.

In brief,

1. boil chestnuts in a pot of hot water with 1TBS of added vinegar – for about 15~20 minutes at low heat or until chestnuts are cooked.

2. drain and discard water – cool chestnut in a bowl.

3. place chestnut in a pot with water just enough to cover chestnut.

4. add sugar, approximately half the weight of chestnut (200~250g for every 500g of peeled chestnut)

5. cook at low heat for about 10 minutes – sugar will dissolve and water will become slightly thicker. Be careful not to burn the chestnut – or brown the syrup – cook at low heat!

Oh no, Burned it for the first try... still yummy though

Try again, this time successful sweet chestnuts in syrup! Yum!

Chestnut Picking in New Zealand Summary

• Chestnut picking season in NZ: Mid-March ~ April
• Chestnuts trees in parks/ or chestnut farm!
• Freeze them to enjoy them longer!
• Chestnuts in sweet syrup ... yum!

Hopefully 2018 would be another great year for chestnut picking....

Happy Chestnut-picking & eating!

Dairy-Free Ice Creams Available in New Zealand

Our son has had food allergy to certain kinds of food ever since he was a baby.

One of food he is allergic to is cow’s milk.

When he was a baby, he was so sensitive that his skin would flair up whenever he just touches anything that contained milk.

Now he is a school-age child, he has grown a lot stronger against dairy products (after actively trying treatment at a hospital), and he can now take some contamination-level cow’s milk in his food.

But still, he avoids eating any kind of food that contains raw-milk or cream – like typical ice creams.

So when it comes to desert like ice cream, I am always looking out for some dairy-free options for my son with dairy-allergy.

Dairy-Free Ice Cream Range in New Zealand!

So I was delighted when I went to my local countdown and found that they had new products on the ice cream shelf.

And those were all dairy-free!!

Photo below is a section of ice cream shelf dedicated for specialized, dairy-free ice cream range.

All these ice creams in above photo are dairy-free!

While some have writing “may contain trace of....”, my dairy-allergic son was able to eat them without any problem.

Awesome SO GOOD brand ice creams!

On the left of the phot is a product named “So Good Almond” from the famous SO GOOD brand that sells variety of soy-milk and related product.

These SO GOOD brand ice creams are made from mainly soy milk, instead of cow’s milk.

The So good almond ice cream has chocolate flavor, and includes some almond flakes that adds crunchy texture and nutty taste to it.

There are other kind of ice creams from SO GOOD brand, including vanilla favored soy ice cream and more recently, caramel-flavored soy ice cream.

A variety of Like Licks ice creams!

Next to the SO GOOD ice cream is the “like licks” brand ice cream range.

They come in variety of flavors too; Almond & raspberry, Oat & chocolate, Soy Hokey pokey.

Hokey Pokey!! Cannot talk about ice creams in New Zealand  without Hokey Pokey!

So my son was so happy when I bought this Hokey Pokey flavor ice cream that he could eat!  Thank you Like Licks!

Like Licks Ice Cream... Yum

So here is Almond & Raspberry flavor....

And here is the Soy & Hokey pokey!!

With this much variation of ice cream flavors available in dairy-free range, children with food allergy to cow’s milk now has a plenty of options for their ice creams in summer.

If you buy several kinds of ice creams, you could hold a mini-ice cream party or ice-cream shop at home!

The only problem is that they are quite bit more expensive than regular ice cream made from cow’s milk.

Small container (~500g) cost 8 dollars and up... (and on special!)

But I remember days when these dairy-free products were difficult to find on market. My son could not enjoy any commercial desert.

So even if they are a bit pricy, I still appreciate the fact there are now so many kinds of dairy-free ice creams available from just a local supermarket.

Let’s Buy Some Ice Cream Cones too!

Well, ice creams on cones have something special about them, don’t they?

So let’s pickup some ice cream cones too...

And they are cheap, compared to the ice cream themselves.

You can also pickup some 100s&1000s from baking section of supermarket, to sprinkle on top of ice cream to add a special touch.

By putting three different flavored dairy-free ice creams together with cone...

Woooow, awesome, isn’t it?

This will surely satisfy anyone who love ice cream but cannot have dairy-products!

The above ice cream combo sure made my son’s day special.

Check the Ingredients Carefully

Many of dairy-free ice creams use almond, soy, or coconut milk as a main ingredient to replace cow’s milk.

So if you or someone is allergic to one of above product, unfortunately you would not be able to eat them.

You should also carefully examine the ingredient label on the ice cream package, to make sure you know what ingredients are in the ice cream.

Some people are not very fond of soy-flavor or coconut-flavor, although they can eat them.

My son is not so much of a fan of coconut-milk flavor, although he loves soy milk.

So he was happy with soy-based ice creams from SO GOOD brand, but did not like some of coconut-based ice creams.

My experience so far is that, chocolate-flavored ice creams are easier to eat than vanilla flavored ice creams, as chocolate flavor masks the characteristic taste of either soy or coconut in the dairy-free ice cream.

So our usual first pick of dairy-free ice cream that we never tried before, is chocolate flavor.

So that’s what we found in our local supermarket for our with food-allergy.

I hope in the future, even more of this kind of dairy-free, or XXXX-free products become available that people with food allergies can enjoy with other people.

Fresh Walnuts Picking Season in New Zealand!

Time passes so quickly, February 2018 is almost over.

In New Zealand, it is end of summer now, and is a season for fresh walnuts.

Have you foraged this season’s walnuts yet?

Walnuts Picking?

Yes walnuts!

They can be roasted to eat as is, or can make an awesome addition to any baking foods like cookies, muffins or cakes.

Alternatively, roasted walnuts can be added to salad or stir-fry.

They are rich in vitamin E and unsaturated fat, making walnuts really healthy food for our body.

But when you have been only buying bagged walnuts out of shell, we tend not think about where they come from.

Walnuts are seed (or core) part of green fruits that grows on a walnut tree.

When the fruit matures, green fruit naturally drop from the tree.

As the fruit start to get rotten, the inside (walnut shell) becomes exposed.

At this timing, if you visit your local walnut tree, you can pick many natural, fresh, organic walnuts from under the tree!

And this season is usually around February in New Zealand.

Where Can I Find Walnut Tree?

Walnuts tree can be found in various places in New Zealand.

Some people have them in our garden, but if your garden doesn’t have a walnut tree, then try looking for one in...

• Parks
• Roadside
• Car parks with lots of green areas surrounding it
• Garden of churches and chapels

Walnuts tree typically grow really tall, so you are unlikely to find a walnut tree in a small park.

If there is a large park with many deciduous trees, you might find walnut trees, too.

Around February, walnuts trees would bear some green fruits, about size of kids’ fists on the tree.

Some are found fallen on the ground underneath the tree.

So looking for a tree with green fruits on it or underneath it around February may be the easiest way to spot a walnut tree.

Once you are used to finding a walnut tree, you will be able to spot them by looking at tree shape, skin and leaves.

Also, there are some “foraging” maps available online. You might decide to use these as a guideline to find our first walnut tree.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/84570132/foraging-in-new-zealand-how-to-find-free-fruit-in-your-city

As long as you adhere to basic manners and good practice, there should not be any problem picking walnuts off the ground.

But hurting the tree or shaking the tree to access fruits on the tree should not be tolerated.

Also, even if you spot a good walnut tree, if it is on someone’s private properly you must not access it without asking for a permission from the owner.

How to Pick Fresh Walnuts

In the right season, walnuts fruit will naturally fall – so all you have to do is pick them off the ground.

Green fruit on the left is the walnut fruit.

If walnut shell is fully exposed without any fruit, then it may have been there on the ground for too long.

If the walnuts feel very light or shell is very fragile, and it is most likely already rotten inside.

If the fruit outside walnuts shell is fully intact and really firm, then the fruit may have fallen prematurely and inside walnuts may not be very tasty.

Apparently, a good walnut is the fresh walnut shell with fruit still adhered on it, but the fruit outside is starting to rot and turned black.

But I guess, you just don’t know what comes out of the shell until you crack it open...

We picked ours with either some fruit attached, or fully exposed ones as long as they feel heavy and hard.

Try squeezing walnut with hand, if they crack easily then it is definitely rotten inside.

One thing to be careful is that, liquid that comes out of walnut fruit stains your hand brown.

They do not come off easily even after washing our hands with soap.

So if you do not want your hands to get dirty, you might want to use vinyl gloves to prevent the liquid from touching your skin.

Likewise, you should not wear your new, favorite cloth that you do not want get stained on.

Picked Some Walnut –!!

So we came home with a bag of walnuts from our local park.

Some looked quite fresh and had just fallen off the tree, while others looked like they had been on the ground for a while.

The park we went to had more than two walnut trees on site, and each tree produced walnuts with difference sizes.

We believe that we were a bit late for the season, as many good ones were already picked, and many rotten ones were left on the ground.

Some with fruit on, look really clean when outside fruit is taken off.

There are some tips and ways you can clean your freshly picked walnuts on the internet.

We washed ours in a tub of water and scrapped any adhered fruits from the nuts manually, using brush.

We then dried our walnuts under the sun for a while.

Look some are huge! I think they are from different variations of walnuts.

We just picked and prepared them like above, but we plan on cracking them open next, and either roast the content to eat them, or use them for cooking.

You could roast walnuts while they are in the shell, but this time we prefer to crack it open first so that we can get rid of rotten ones and select good ones for eating.

In our regular life, walnuts come unshelled in a plastic bag from the supermarket, normally.

So it was quite a new experience picking and washing our own walnuts. Our children enjoyed it too.

Now, it would be perfect once we manage to make a yummy walnuts cookies from these... !

Planting Walnuts to Grow Walnut Seedling...?

If you get a hold on fresh walnuts from the latest season, it may be fun to keep some for planting next spring.

Walnuts break out of dormancy and germinate in the spring after experiencing the cold winter.

So if you want to plant some walnuts, keep some good looking walnuts wrapped in wet paper, put them in a plastic bag and store in the fridge, then plant them into a pot next spring.

According to some sites on the internet, fresh walnuts has pretty good success-rate for germination.

If you keep several walnuts in the fridge for next season, the chance is that you will see at least one germinating and growing.

You need to be careful if you decide to plant walnut seedling into your garden, as a walnut tree grows into a very large tree in years time.

Walnut trees also produce and release a type of toxin from their roots, that prevents other plants from growing.

So while it would be a great fun to plant your self-picked walnuts in pots and watch them grow, you might want to keep them in pots and not directly planted in your garden.

We kept a few walnuts in our fridge to plant next spring.

It would be a fun experiment to do in the garden with children!

Summary

• February - Walnuts picking season in New Zealand!
• You can often spot walnuts trees in public parks
• Be careful picking walnuts trees as they can stain
• Keep some for germinating experiment, but planting directly into a garden requires some thought

Some people sell fresh walnuts from their garden on Trademe or on a road-side market around February so keep eye out for them if you want locally grown organic walnuts.

Happy walnut picking/buying/eating!

How to Make Japanese Dango：Sticky rice ball dessert with Sweet soy sauce

Spring has come to New Zealand！

Cherry blossom blooming and warm whether… perfect day for “Hanami”, meaning cherry blossom viewing picnic!

Often in Japan, we eat “Dango”, rolled bite-size rice cake on skewers, as sweets complementary to cherry blossom.

So after seeing all the cherry blossom last week, I decided to cook up some Dango on skewers.

Main ingredient, glutinous rice flour was available from local Park’nSave supermarket, in Auckland, New Zealand.

Ingredients for making Dango

In traditional Japanese cooking, dango is made from Dango flour, which is a mix of glutinous rice flour and non-glutinous rice flour.

This time round though, I made dango from 100% glutinous rice flour.

They are also easier to make. This way, resulting dango is softer and stickier than traditional method.

What we need:

For Dango

• Glutinous rice flour
• Water
• Large size pot
• Bowl
• Spoon
• Skewer or chopstick (to stick dango with)

Mitarashi sauce

• Soy sauce
• Sugar
• Corn flour

Red bean paste (Anko) also goes well with dango. These can be purchased from Asian supermarket or made from azuki beans.

Glutinous rice flour was purchased from a local Park'n Save. These were located in the international section.

This is the glutinous rice flour I used this time. They are produced in Thailand.

1 bag contains 400g of glutinous rice flour and only cost NZD1.70. Cheap!

There were two similarly labelled bags of rice flour; blue label and green label.

We purchased the green label bag because the ingredients described was “glutinous rice”, which is more suitable for making dango.

Nutritional and ingredient information on the package.

In Japan, you make dango from either “dango flour” which is a mix of glutinous rice flour and non-glutinous rice flour, or “shiratama-flour” which is 100% glutinous rice flour that has been washed in water.

“Shiratama-flour” is more expensive due to added processing process of washing glutinous rice flour in water, and results in really soft, sticky dango.

I used the same method for making dango from “shiratama-flour” with glutinous rice flour above. It worked well and resulted in very soft, yummy dango.

How to make dango (sticky rice-cake ball) from glutinous rice flour

１．First, combine water and glutinous rice flour and mix well.

For each 1 cup of glutinous flour, you need roughly 1/2 cup of water.

However, you need to mix and adjust the amount of water to achieve the right consistency.

Ideal mixture will have smooth texture and can be rolled into ball-shape, without sticking on the hand.

If you add just a little too much water, the mixture will be too soft to make a ball.

Steps for making the mixture right is to;

add water –>  mix really well –> if too powdery, add a table spoon of water –> mix well… repeat adding another table spoon of water…..

Mixing well in between is very important.

Even when you initially feel  “Oh it is so powdery, perhaps I should add some water?”, after mixing really well, the moisture will spread through the mixture and make it moist.

So don’t be hasty to add more water, before mixing and kneading well.

Even after kneading, if you feel it will not become one big mass, then add one table spoon of water at a time, and mix again.

In process of kneading. There was not enough water so I added another table spoon of water.

Ideal consistency to achieve is that the mixture is firm and smooth, but does not stick to your hands.

Even when you squeeze with your hand….

Mixture will not stick to your hand.

２．Once right consistency is achieved, roll into bite-size balls.

Roll mixtures to make a bite-size balls. It is quite fun part of making dango.

If you have children with you, get them to help you roll small dango balls.

Note if they will become soft and squishy after cooked. So if you are concerned about choking hazards, roll them into small sizes, or slightly squash the ball-shaped dango to make slightly flattened shape.

３．Boil a pot full of water, and cook dango-balls for a few minutes.

Fill up a medium size-pot with water and bring it to boil.

Once hot water is boiling hard, lower the heat to medium strength.

One by one, gently place dango-balls into the boiling water.

They will all sink to the bottom of the pot first. As they are cooked, they will slowly start floating to the top of boiling water.

Half of dango balls are starting to float to the surface.

All floating on the surface.

４．Boil for 1-2 minutes then move them to cold water

Once your dango balls have floated to the top of boiling water, cook further 1-2 minutes, and they are ready to be taken off the heat.

Just wait till all of dango balls are floating, then wait for 1-2 minutes. In the mean time, prepare a bowl of icy water.

Then scoop dango balls and move them into the ball with icy water to cool.

You only need several ice cubes in a bowl, as you only want to cool dangos and not freeze them.

５．Dango balls are cooked and ready!

Drain icy water and dish up your dango balls with your favorite toppings.

Topping for your Dango: Mitarashi (Sweet soy)? Anko (Azuki bean paste)?

So your dango is finished and ready to be served with your favorite topping.

One idea is to simply sprinkle sugar or sugar-mixed with soy powder over dango.

Alternatively you can prepare other toppings; this time, I prepared Mitarashi (Sweet-soy) and Anko (Azuki red bean paste).

How to make Mitarashi (Sweet Soy) Topping

Mitarashi sauce, or sweet soy sauce for dango can easily be prepared from Soy sauce, sugar and corn flour.

Mix 2 Tbs soy sauce and 3 Tbs white sugar, 1 Tbs of corn flour with 80ml water.

Then repeat the following steps：

• Mix really well
• –> heat in a microwave for 30 seconds
• –>  mix well –> heat in a microwave for 30 seconds ….

Repeat this process until the mixture becomes transparent and thickened.

You may need to adjust the amount of corn flour to achieve right consistency to suit your preference.

As for Anko (Azuki bean paste), You can either buy pre-made azuki bean paste, or you could try to make yourself.

How to make Anko will be explained in different article, though.

Decorating Dango with Skewers

Now you are ready to decorate dango, you can stick them in bamboo skewers.

Cut a few millimeter off the tip of skewers to make the sharp ends more blunt. (Safer for children)

Just by being on skewers, they look yummier and more professional, don’t they!?

Mitarashi(Sweet soy) dango, finished!

Anko dango (on chopsticks) ready!

Dango made from Glutinous Rice Flour were very Tasty!

This was the first time I used Thailand glutinous rice flour rather than Japanese rice flour, but it was a great success.

Just as a reminder again, the rice flour used was the green packet with Glutinous rice as the main ingredients.

Kids loved dango too!!

Eating Mitarashi-dango and Anko-dango, it feels as if we never left Japan.... Even more perfect if served with a cup of green tea!

In the future, it would also be great to serve dango with some soy-powder (= Kinako) and brown sugar syrup, as well.

(These can be prepared from pan-fried soy beans and brown sugar, respectively)

This time we used glutinous rice flour as the main ingredient, but you can also mix some glutinous rice flour and non-glutinous rice flour to make more firm, hard dango.

Related Articles:

Enjoyed cherry blossom? Enjoy cherry leaves too!

How to Make Kara-Age, Japanese Style Deep Fried Chicken

How to make Mochi, the Sticky-Rice Cake! 

　

Japanese Matcha Set

Japanese Homestyle Cooking

Growing Perilla Purple (Red shiso) in New Zealand

Spring has come to New Zealand, and I started on this year’s vegetable garden.

One of plants that I am really looking forward to harvesting is Red Shiso, or Perilla purple.

Red Shiso: A Great Traditional Japanese Herb

In Japan, people like making sour, pickled plums called Umeboshi.

They are such a bright red in color, despite of young plums being green or pale yellow.

The reason why they have such red color is because, plums are pickled with additional ingredient: red shiso (Perilla) herbs.

Red shiso herb has purple pigment, which turns very bright red when mixed with acid.

So when red shiso is used in combination with sour ume Japanese plums (that have very acidic juice), it produces that bright red color.

Red shiso themselves have very nice, original fragrance that matches well with Japanese dish, raw sashimi or rice.

So I wanted to grow my very own Red shiso in my garden, hoping that I will be able to harvest my own red shiso to use for cooking.

Red shiso is called by various name. See this wikipedia page for Shiso herbs. –>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiso

They are sometimes called Perilla red or Perilla Purple.

Growing Perilla purple from Seeds: Watch out for birds!

So I picked up some Perilla purple seeds from Trademe.

In general, Perilla plants grow very well in full or half shades, and are not very picky on soil conditions either.

They do prefer well-drained soil, though.

They are energetic and supposed to be quite easy to grow.

However, their seeds take a while to germinate; approximately 10 days ~ two weeks for germination.

Germination requires exposure to sunlight, so you cannot bury seeds too deep and cover completely with soil.

You need to sow them shallow, and cover them with only a thin later of fine soil.

This sounded rather tricky for me, so I decided to let seeds germinate on wet tissue papers, then plant them into small pots once they start germinating.

Two weeks waiting and watering seeds for germination is very long….  especially compared to my cabbages and beans sprout really quickly only after 2-3 days!

It took nearly one month for perilla seeds to germinate and produce small new leaves.

I decided to bring pots outside, now that seeds have started to grow 2-3 cm tall ….. but this was a BIG mistake.

One morning when I came out of the house, many Perilla purple seedlings that were growing in my pots all disappeared!

Did they all die and melt down over night…. ? No.

It is most likely that bird outsides ate them all.

Even in Japan, birds like sparrows love Perilla seeds and sprouts.

I mean, even humans eat Perilla leaves and seeds, so they will be some delicious treats for wild birds.

Come to think of it, I did hear many birds jumping close by the window this morning…..

So my first attempt to grow Perilla purple from seeds, failed and I wasted a whole month….. orz

Trying again!! Growing Perilla Purple!

So I decided to try again.

Perhaps this time, I will grow them to be a larger size plant indoors first, then take them outside.

Perilla purple seeds germinating on wet tissue papers; it takes two weeks to get to this stage.

Some main new leaves starting to come out…. 2-3 cm tall.

Plant size reached 10cm… Leaves are much larger now too!

Too early to relax just yet, but I replanted the into larger planter.

Planter is placed under our room where we regularly hang washings and put other outdoor items, so hopefully birds will not come near it.

Perilla plant is still young and small, but when you pinch an end of a leaf, you can smell its characteristic fragrance…. yummy smell!

When plenty of leaves are ready for harvest,  I may use the to make Shiso-drinks (Perilla tea), or perhaps salted-perilla red flakes that tastes great on rice.

I just cannot wait for them to grow larger and start producing more leaves for harvesting!

Enjoyed cherry blossom? Enjoy cherry leaves too!

Spring is here in New Zealand.

Until about last week, cherry blossoms around Auckland were in full bloom. So beautiful!

But when cherry blossom flowers finish and trees start to learn green…. you might wan to go back to cherry blossom tree again.

Because if you want to make edible pickled cherry leaves, now is your chance….

Spring Gardening with Children: Best Vegetables to Grow with Kids

Every year, we plant some vegetables in our garden at the start of spring.

Even when we only had a small space in our garden, we had in our garden to place planters and pots, to grow some vegetables.

Children love sowing seeds and watering. They love it even more when plants start to grow day by day.

And they get a real excitement and a sense of achievement when vegetables are harvested in their own little vegetable garden!

Growing your own vegetable is the best way for children to learn values of food AND get them to start eating more vegetables!

But looking after a large field of vegetables can be  a hard work at the same time as looking after little children.

So I chose below a few best plants I like growing with children. These can be grown in a small space and are easy for beginner gardener.

Choice 1: Radish

Radish are perhaps the easiest and fastest grown garden vegetables.

Small red radish can be harvested in 30 days after sowing seeds in warm season.

You do not need much space to grow these radish; a long planter can accommodate two rows of radish easily.

After sowing seeds, they start germinating after only a few days, and they grow fast day by day.

Because they grow so fast, children do not get board of watching and watering them everyday.

One thing to be careful though, when the base of the radish plant start to become round, children get more and more urge to pick them.

So when they start to say “I think they are ready, can I pick them!?!?”, you have to stay firm and tell them to wait.

While growing radish is a real exciting experience, not many children would say “I love radish! Radish are my most favorite food!”.

One of the best way to eat radish with children is to cook them in a miso soup. You can wash and chop up both radish root and leaves, to eat the whole thing.

You can also make a pickled radish by slicing radish root and marinating them for a few hours in some sushi-vinegar. (Sushi-vinegar is mild and sweet so many children can eat pickles using sushi-vinegar).

Mixed radish from our vegetable garden last autumn.

Choice 2: Cherry tomatoes

Growing vegetables in your garden costs some money for fertilizers and seeds. So often it is cheaper to buy vegetables rather than growing them.

But out of many vegetables, apparently tomatoes are easy to get the value back.

This is because tomato plant if grown right, bears many fruit over the summer and the retail price of tomatoes being more expensive than many other vegetables.

Especially easier tomatoes to grow is cherry tomatoes.

Their fruits are smaller and faster to mature. It is fun to watch them flower, grow in size and start to change color in the sun.

Growing well! Pot-planted cherry tomatoes.

You can grow cherry tomatoes from seeds, but they can also be grown from seedlings.

Some grafted tomato seedlings are very strong against disease and especially easy to grow.

So you may like to buy grafted tomato seedling from a local gardening store; better seedlings to start with, easier and more successful it will be for beginners.

Note that some type of tomatoes grow like a tree or mini-bush, while others will stay pot-sized.

Depending on the space available in your garden, you should choose the type of tomatoes or cherry tomatoes to raise.

Choice 3: Strawberries

Kids love strawberries. If you plant them, you can enjoy pick-your own strawberries in your very garden!

Strawberry flowers are white with round petals, yellow in the middle. So they are very nice to watch.

As flowers will bloom one after the other and it is a great fun for children to watch the middle part of strawberry flower enlarge gradually, eventually starting to turn red.

They are easy and fast to mature, so children will not get bored; instead, they will be checking them every day, saying “are they ready yet!”

Strawberries are grown from seedlings that are available from local gardening stores.

You can grow them on a field, or in planters and pots.

In New Zealand, you can enjoy strawberry fruits growing from spring till summer.

If you plant one- or two- strawberry seedlings, you will not have enough strawberries to feed the whole family, but will be enough to enjoy watching them grow.

If you want to get more serious and grow enough to eat, you apparently need 5x plants per person in your family.

I found the following website useful for learning how to grow strawberries.

 https://www.palmers.co.nz/top-10-tips-for-growing-strawberries/

Finally, if growing strawberry yourself is not right, how about picking your own strawberries in a farm?

There are many ”Pick your own strawberry" farms throughout New Zealand. They usually are open to public people to pick their own strawberry over the summer.

Choice of Tree: Citrus (Orange, Lemon, Mandarin)

If you want to grow a fruit tree, easy and highly recommended are citrus trees.

They are relatively easy to grow, and once the tree reaches certain size, they will bear many fruits.

Some fruits trees like blueberries require two or more of different types of trees to be planted together to bear fruits. But this does not apply to citrus.

Citrus flowers are white and small, but very cute in appearance too.

If you plant lemon tree, you can make lemonades with children using lemon they picked themselves.

Or you can just eat it fresh if you plant a mandarin or orange tree. Either way, children love picking fruits off the tree!

Small seedlings are weak against insects, so do look after them properly when you just planted a seedling.

Once my friend had a mandarin tree completely stripped off leaves by voracious caterpillars.

Small citrus trees for planting are available from local gardening stores.

Make sure to purchase a seedling tree from proper gardening store; grafted seedling grown by professionals start bearing fruits much earlier than a random seedlings that have grown from fruit seeds.

Spring Gardening with Children＊Summary

So above are my favorite and recommendation of plants for gardening with children.

• Choice 1:Radish
• Choice 2:Cherry tomatoes
• Choice 3: Strawberry
• Choice 4: Citrus tree

I think the key points for picking what to plant when you are trying to enjoy gardening with children are:

• Easy to grow = kids can help, less chance of sad failure
• Fast to grow = kids do not get bored watching plant grow
• Edible and Easy to eat =Good education for kids to learn where food come from

I also grow some herbs in my garden. While I personally love them, herbs all look the same “green” and this does not interest children very much.

Sometimes I pick them and let children smell, and they say “nice smell!!” but that’s about it.

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