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Spring Time! Eat Fiddleheads!

Yes Spring! I love eating seasonally as it’s better for you and your wallet. Especially eating spring ferns really makes me feel the end of long cold winter, this little young buds coming out of the soil with full of energy, we shouldn’t over harvest it but eat with much appreciation for the share.

Fiddleheads are commonly eaten with lemon butter, or raspberry vinaigrette in North America. Now, how about with Umeboshi Butter!?

Umeboshi is a traditional Japanese picked plum. You can find pasted Umeboshi or whole pieces in a package in Asian grocery section at various super markets. It’s very very sour and salty that you probably don’t want to eat by itself, but makes great accent in sushi rolls and in salad dressing.

 

The Umeboshi Butter is very simple.

  • 2 tbsp of butter
  • 1 or 2 Umeboshi – chopped & pasted, or 1 tbsp of Umeboshi paste

Mix well and toss in the steamed or boiled Fiddleheads. I love salt, so I use normal butter, and sometimes even add a dash of soy sauce or Bragg sauce, but unsalted butter also works great.

Enjoy the beginning of Spring!

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My Favourite Dog Friends in Vancouver

Another thing I love as much as food is dogs. (and cats) As I was going through pics in my HD I felt it in need of sharing my faves to the world. These dogs are my friends’ and neighbours’, and I was allowed to spoil them and no responsibility like grand parents. Ah, now I am in Japan, I get to talk to my friends but not their dogs… I miss my furry faves.

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Prune Plum & Olive Salad

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Prunes, Cherry Tomatos, Olives

I make a lot of salads with fruits during the summer months, and definitely this prune plum salad is one of my most faves. Just before flying back to Japan, plums were coming close to the end of season and super cheap like $0.99/lb in Vancouver, so I had to take this opportunity, because I knew that I wouldn’t see the mountain of plums – everything is smaller and neatly packed in Japan.

Here’s the ingredients:

  • Prune Plums (not too riped ones)
  • Cherry Tomatos
  • Parsley
  • Olives (generous amount, mince some and slice the rest, so it sticks well with plums and look nice on the plate.)
  • Garlic

Dressing:

  • Lemon juice
  • EVO
  • S & P
  • Anchovy
  • Maple Syrup (yeah Canada, eh!)

Prune Plums in Japan is much sweeter, so might as well just omit Maple Syrup. Also a store brought French Vinaigrette works too! 🙂

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Happy Be-lated Canada Day!

Have you ever heard of Sugar Apples, native of tropical America, also commonly eaten in South East Asia, that don’t look like an apple at all, rather look like an artichoke?

I found them for the first time in my life at Granville Island’s Public Market on Canada Day. While everyone else were waving the Canadian flag, my eyes were so fixed on this fascinating tropical fruits. I decided to buy just one sugar apple.

“Keep in the paper bag, do not refrigerated, when it’s ripe, it gets softer and the flesh becomes mushy. Keep with bananas if you want it ripen fast. 5 dollars 65 cents please.”

“Wha!? #&*@!?”

Thai Sugar Apple01

Continue reading “Happy Be-lated Canada Day!”

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Westend – Vancouver, BC

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What if you are going to see behind the door is your own future, will you open it?

OR

If it is the future of our human kind behind the door, will you open it?

Just a little thoughts, it appears often in Westend.