Spy Shopper--Eat All Your Mums!

That's right--flowers!  And I'm not in a flower shop, no, nor the florist section of the grocery store.  I'm in the vegetable aisle--and those are chrysanthemums.  For eating.  Really.  It says so right on the package:   "Shoku yo giku"...eating use mums.

beautiful just to look at...

Remember when I wrote about chrysanthemums?  The beautiful row of yellow ones I found out on a walk?  On the other side of that empty lot was a house with the friendliest Irish setter I've ever met.  Falling into conversation with the dog's owner (a very kind O-Baasan who cut persimmons off her tree and sent them home with me), she told me that the mums I was admiring were edible.  The same kind, in fact, as the ones I sometimes saw in the store.  She thought these, however, had gotten a bit too big.  The man who planted them, she said, had let them go a little too long, and now they wouldn't be so good to eat. She recommended tempura, I think...

Full disclosure:  I have never eaten them myself!  Or cooked with them, because I haven't taken the trouble to seek out a recipe.  Of course, you do see small yellow chrysanthemum heads adorning sashimi, along with the shiso leaf and wasabi--but that's not the same as cooking with them...

...I have, though, eaten the leaves "Shungiku"--you can see them in the bag there, next to some hakusai.  They're displayed next to each other because you can put both kinds of greens into Nabe--a one-pot dish of simmered greens, carrots, mushrooms, tofu, and fish or shrimp or meatballs or other protein.  Warm, tasty, easy, and fast to clean up--what's not to like?

...and since they're only Y198, I think I may just get some the next time we have Nabe...