pink lemons

Have you ever tried pink lemons?

I happened to stumble upon them when I passed by a tiny fruit & veggie stand recently.

They have a slight green stripe and some pink on the skin.

A bag with 7 were only 150 yen (plus tax)...I am not sure but think they were grown in Japan.

It was our first time trying this, they are puckery like "normal" lemons.

I love the slight pink color of the flesh and glad we got to try these.

lemons

Stumbled upon these “local”(Japan grown) lemons which I have a feeling are Meyer lemons because they aren’t too sour and the skin is smooth.

I think there were 4 or 5 in the bag and pretty cheap, 169 yen plus tax.

I remember about 10 years ago my friend Rona was looking for Meyer lemons in Japan and they were hard to come by.

It is nice that produce that are popular in the US is being grown here.

this and that

Found this assorted peanut snack, some peanuts are covered with a rice cracker shell, there are also some peas in there too, love it. 

Supermarket wood oven style pizza...loved the crust! and that this quattro formaggi (4 cheese) came with a little container of honey to drizzle on the pizza after heating up.

I do think they need to note that there is that container of honey included AND they need to put instructions on how to warm up the pizza...

The fence at nearby Kumano shrine is metal! it looks like a woven cloth, yeah?!

Bummed that I had to throw out 1 blood orange...

saw this interesting objet...the title of the piece is "toraboruta"

if you look carefully at it...it is a tora (tiger) that is bolted (chained up).

"toraboruta" is also the pronunciation of travolta, as in John Travolta...ha! 
 

The sunrises have been pretty spectacular...

I found taiyaki filled with sakura filling...stashed a couple in the freezer.

There are 2 more weeks for the State of emergency, but it seems that Tokyo has plateaued at 300 cases a day...hopefully we can get our number down even lower.

Japan has finally started to vaccinate but at the pace they are going the experts say it will take a couple of years?! 

Hopefully they will be able to get things moving...

Hope you are doing well, have a safe weekend.

blood orange upside down muffins

Since I have a lot more blood oranges, I looked online to see what I could make.

I saw an idea for upside down cake.

Since we don’t need a “whole cake” around our house, I used my favorite muffin recipe and ad-libbed.

I put 1/2 a teaspoon of brown sugar at the bottom of each muffin paper.

Then put in a thin slice of blood orange.

Scooped in the muffin batter and baked the muffins.

While the muffins baked, I squeezed the rest of the blood orange.

When they came out of the oven, I used a bamboo skewer and made holes in the muffins.

Then spooned some of the blood orange juice over them like when my mom used to make cakes and drizzle soda or jello into the holes......

The next morning, before heating the muffins up, I flipped them over and took them out of their muffin papers.

Love the color! so pretty, yeah?! like a jewel.

I froze the remaining 4 and we look forward to eating this again in the coming weeks.

makka nouen

Yesterday I ordered a box of  blood oranges from Tabechoku.

This is my 4th order from Tabechoku.

Makka Nouen is located in Hiroshima prefecture and the farmer was once a businessman.

10 years ago he quit his job and started farming.

The box I ordered was 3 kilos (about 6.6 pounds).

I wasn't too sure how many fruit would be in the box and was quite surprised to see each one wrapped in plastic wrap!

What a waste of plastic!

There were 25 orbs and all were different sizes. 

I unwrapped a few and we will work through the box over the coming weeks (maybe days)

I received a message from the farmer who said that he wraps each one to prevent the outside of the fruit from getting marked up.

I think he should invest in paper fillers instead...

Besides eating the fruit as is, I plan to make some blood orange infused vodka with the peel and also keep some peel in the freezer for baking.

Our numbers are continuing to go down though the number of hospitalizations has not.

We do have the variant virus (South African and UK) in Japan.

About 80 cases, 1 from South Africa and the rest UK and I hope they are carefully watching this....

The experts have also said that Japan has its own variant which came about some time last year.

As for the Olympics...the top, who was once Prime Minister of Japan has shown his "true colors" with sexist remarks...oy!

Japan has a long way to go with gender equality, hopefully this incident will spark some changes, no matter how big or small.

I personally feel Tokyo should cancel hosting the Olympics and use what monies they do have left to support the medical community and work on getting this pandemic under control instead...

Have a safe weekend.

supermarket finds

Yesterday it rained all day and the temps went all the way down to 3C(37F)! Some areas even got snow! (not ours though)

Anyway, today it is blustery and still very cold.

We enjoyed this orange called "Sun Queen".

The orbs are a little smaller than a tennis ball.

The peel is firm and the flesh super juicy.

The flesh was so juicy that we usually ate our orange slices over the sink.

The juice was sweet with a slight tart finish.

A conversation Satoshi and I had at the sink one morning was about playing with the peel as a "mouthpiece" when we were growing up...saying "cheese" and showing the orange peel in our mouth in place of a smile...did you do this growing up too?!

I think the peel would be nice candied, maybe dipped in dark chocolate...

I've also seen some people online making marmalade from this type of orange.

Do you have something similar where you live?

setoka

Recently "my taster" (Satoshi) picked out an orange called Setoka.

They were giving out samples at the market, so you know what he was doing...

These were super sweet! (though some have seeds)

I was impressed with this...

A QR code on their label...if you aim your smartphone at it, it should take you to see their You Tube video.

I added the link just in case your phone doesn't...this video is in Japanese and I hope there aren't any region restrictions.

I was also amazed with what the fruit goes through before being sold in our markets...

I'm glad we tried this.

supermarket finds

We tried blood oranges back in 2017, at the time, they weren't red when I had cut them open.

So I was excited when I came upon them again at the market recently.

They weren't too big...6 for 480 yen (plus tax)

Grown in Uwajima of Ehime prefecture, and if I read the pamphlet correctly, they are a cross between Tarocco and Moro varieties.

And they were reddish inside!

I squeezed all and only came up with 1 cup of juice.

Be careful as the juice is RED!

This was sweet with a hint of tartness.

I'm glad we got to try this.

this and that

Love seeing all the different produce at the fruit stands...like this huge lemon!

Grown in Wakayama it was only 100 yen (plus tax)!

I recently have been seeing beets, so I tried pickling it raw...yummy!

This particular variety was called Detroit Dark Red.

This other variety I found was called Golgo in Japanese, (Gorgo, not sure of the spelling) also known as Barbabietola.

Love the pink rings!

We ate it raw, pickled...

and roasted.

Saw this Rittersport on Rowena's flickr page and kept my eye out for it.

The stores haven't really been bringing in new flavors, but I'm glad I found it and got to try it...salted honey almonds & milk chocolate...so good! I didn't share...

Tankan, a type of citrus.

They look really ugly, but when you cut them open they are bright orange.

They don't have any seeds and they are really sweet.

They reminded me of the oranges my mom used to grow.

What have you been seeing in your markets?

juicy fruit

When I saw the label on these I had to take a second look.

I really hate katakana it is so hard to read.

A little larger than a tennis ball, these were indeed "juicy" and after looking online, they are a type of grapefruit.

I squeezed two for breakfast.

The juice is tart but not sour.

I think putting them into a salad might be nice too.

I'll keep my eye for them the next time I go to the market.

It's Friday. The past week our temps have been krazy hot and the humidity has also just started, hope the weather where you are is nicer.

Have a nice weekend!

iyokan

There are many times when my lack of Japanese knowledge creates problems. At the time they happen they are problems, afterwards, it turns out to be a pretty funny story.

Seeing the iyokan in the market recently reminded me of this story...

Awhile back, while I was in Hawaii, a relative called from Japan to say that she wanted to send a couple boxes of "iyokan", one for my Grandma and one for us.

("Iyokan" is actually a type of citrus, which I've posted about previously here.)

Since I didn't know (at the time) that what she was talking about was citrus, I heard "ii yokan", which I thought was "good yokan" (bar of sweet bean paste).

Thinking that the boxes were small, I told her to send them to our Osaka address, thinking that Satoshi could forward the boxes of yokan to us later.

A couple days later, I get a phone call from Satoshi..."there are 2 HUGE boxes of oranges (citrus)..."

I told him, I thought she said "ii yokan", he said no, "iyokan" is a type of orange....sigh.

Since I knew he couldn't send them to us in Hawaii (agriculture restrictions), I asked him to send a box to his mother and bring the other box to work.

Then I called the relative to thank her (without telling her my mistake, of course).

I still have lots to learn when it comes to Japanese.

Fast forward to the present...I made some muffins using the juice and zest of one iyokan. I also added a handful of pecans and dried cherries. This was nice with some earl grey tea.

And since I'm talking about citrus/orange, I wanted to share with you something I found at the convenience store, Orange M&M's.

These are not only orange in color but orange flavored too. It was interesting to see these white M&M's in the bag.

It's Friday here, hope you have a nice weekend!

moroccan carrot salad

Well, we got a new computer which means that I can e-mail and post. But, when I tried to hook up our printer...sigh.

The printer we have doesn't work with Microsoft Vista....I called the printer maker and they said that I'll have to buy a new printer because the model that we have will only work with Microsoft XP...sigh.

Oh, and I also figured out that our new computer doesn't have a disk drive (we didn't really check when we bought it), which means we have to get an external disk drive, so that we can access stuff on floppies (you may be rolling your eyes, but we still use floppies). Anyway, I guess I didn't realize how much technology has upgraded in the past 7 years...sigh.

Wanted to show you this salad. It was the first thing I made when I came back last month.

It is supposed to be a warm salad, but I tried making it cold. It was good cold, really refreshing.

Adapted from　"Body and Soul March 2008" : Serves 2
1 handful marcona almonds
salt
pepper
1 carrot
2 dried figs, cut into bite size pieces
1/2 dekopon (type of citrus), juiced
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/16 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon EVOO
couple sprigs of flat leaf parsley

Toast almonds for 10 minutes.
Grate carrot in food processor.
Whisk juice, spices and oil, then toss with carrots, figs.
Top with parsley and nuts.

NOTES: This recipe called for lemon juice, but since I didn't have any, I used the juice of half of a dekopon. It also called for pistachios and raisins, but since I didn't have any, I used almonds and figs.

I think I'll be making a lot of this in the coming months.

p.s. this is a dekopon, I've written about it before, here.