Hear! Hear! Big reveal: our adorable Okinawan neighbour is most certainly an undercover Santa. So far answering the doorbell at random hours we've received: a whole pumpkin, an armful of some sort of wild spinach, a kilo of cane sugar, a bag of wild lemons, some natsumikan, a can of tuna, a can of some other fish, a package of fish soup, Okinawan cookie selection, 3 shell ginger plants, a box of raw cane sugar blocks, another half of a pumpkin, chrysantemum greens, freshly-made chrysantemum tempura, a pile of freshly harvested radishes, hokinawan azukibeans, chrysantemum mochi, concert tickets, an event invitation, a carry-bag, a meter tall citrus tree, Okinawan sugar-cakes, 2 cooling towels, a bag of yamamomo. And I'm probably forgetting something.
Out of those, the pumpkins, spinach, sugars and sweets have been consumed/preserved in easy-to-predict manners, fruit became teas and jams, ginger-babies are gradually growing under an onslaught of ivy on the only available squaremeter of soil, the fishy stuff has been stashed for lack of ideas and courage to consume, and the just-arrived chrysantemum pile is sitting on the kitchen counter as I'm typing.
I didn't even know that thing was edible! Well.. edible up to a point - there are apparently mildly harmful types, and while the flowers can be made into teas at any point (ah, right, this I did actually know, my once-upon-a-time Chinese roommate drank this stuff non-stop), the greens have to be very new, straight out of the ground. And even then, the fresh leaves are bitter as heck, supposedly super healthy and good for salads, but, yeah... Cooked in tempura they actually turn out to be palatable, if not in huge quantities. Even if there is probably no way I'd be willing to go through the effort of making any myself. Google does claim that it only takes 30 sek to boil the greens, but to mess with the hot oils and tempura flour (not to mention, khm, wheat troubles) - nah, I'll leave it. Even if there is now a high chance that we'll get to adopt a plant or a few in the next few days...
Cheers,
Hedi
