I am a bit annoyed that although it is the middle of November, I am still writing some posts about my stay in Japan in October. I really should hurry up! I try to post something I encountered in Japan that does not occur to me in England. And this was one of those things.

I like gardening and I particularly like growing something edible. I have tried planting various things and some become successful and some are completely failure. As I mentioned before I learnt that Okra/Ladys’ Finger is the biggest No-no plant in London and another I gave up even before trying is this plant.

This plant was in my mother’s garden. I was looking forward to being there when they harvest it. Do you know what this plant is?

I am very certain that once you see its root you will recognise it immediately. The seeds of this plant must be very familiar to you. So have you guessed what it is?

That’s right. It is a Peanut plant. Although they belong to the Legume family they are annual herbaceous and don’t grow to a tree. After its flower gets fertilised the stalk grows longer downwards into the ground and the tip of it starts to become bigger and becomes Peanuts by the end of summer. That is very weird!

I have been very curious to see the whole of this process myself but England is too cold to grow Peanuts and have never seen it. So when I went back to Japan at the end of summer I was looking forward to seeing at least the end of the growing process. I was luckily there to see how we harvest them this time.

My mother had only three plants and they were not looked after well in a top class care so it did not produce a large amount of nuts unfortunately. When all the nuts were gathered it was only this much!

A bit disappointing … And more disappointing thing was … I overcooked them. Completely! That was an unforgivable sin. I used a pressure cooker to boil them in salty water. I set a timer but I did not hear it ringing. Aaaaaaah… What a waste.

I heard that fresh peanuts are very tasty and you cannot stop munching them, however, ours were … soggy.

The Peanuts came in various sizes. It was interesting to see that there is a tiny peanut even in the smallest shell.

I hope to see whole growing process with my own eyes someday and I would set five timers to cook them properly and taste crunchy Peanuts!