Category: Everyday Life

A gift in autumn

We got a bunch of lemon grass and two big sweet potatoes from the same person on different occasions.
He said that they were organically grown by someone!!
The lemon grass is taller than my height. The sweet potatoes are about 28 cm (11 inches) long.
All I can say is: it’s wonderful!

So, about this lemon grass.
Actually, all we knew was that it’s used in Thai cooking.
So we thought it gives a sour flavour to food. I feel ashamed.
It smells like lemon, which is why it’s called lemon grass. To give a sour taste to food, you have to add some lemon juice and so on.
So far I’ve only cooked two chicken dishes with the lemon grass, so I can’t write much. (We can’t restrain ourselves with nice looking food: we eat it up soon, so our pictures of the one dish are all of half-eaten food. We noticed after supper that we forgot to take a photo of the other dish.)
My research suggests lemon grass is good for chicken, tofu, and white fish. I’ll try more recipes soon.

The middle part of its stems we cut with scissors and made tea.
Surprisingly, the taste was much better than we expected!
I heard it’s good for poor blood circulation, indigestion, recovery from tiredness, and as an antibacterial agent.
That’s a nice match for us!?

We thought to use it in the bath. But we found that our cats love it!
They say it works as an insecticide, but it attracts cats?
Just in case, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t bad for cats, and I found out that cats like it.
Ours seem to like it more than the cat grass I grew for them. (Cat grass is a kind of wheat, about 10 cm high, that’s a necessary part of an indoor cat’s diet.)
They circled around me while I was cooking with it, and I was just about stepping on them: they got in the way!

Anyway, it’s completely useful stuff indeed.

We got the sweet potatoes yesterday. I’ve been wondering how I should cook them.

– YS, 20 October 2007

20 October 2007