About me and my blog

My garden in winter

Hi and welcome to "Miki's Garden to Kitchen". I'm Miki, a lady from Japan who loves gardening and cooking.  After living with my American husband in Europe and Asia for many years, I finally settled down to his family homestead in a wilderness area called the Pennsylvania Wilds with my international family, my American husband, a black cat from Belgium and a Maine coon cat from Hong Kong.

While living in Europe, I establshed a gardening club and wrote about gardening and life style for a magazine, which become my second career after working in Japan doing industrial marketing and completing graduate school in Brussels for European Business. Meanwhile I traveled all over the world and experienced different styles of cooking-- from Michelin star restaurants to street hawker food-- with different kinds of ingredients, including local vegetables.

Now I have 75'X35' vegetable garden, protected by a 7' high electrified bear and deer fence,  where I grow about 40 different vegetables so that I don't need to give up eating my favorite Asian vagetables in this rural area. Many  of my vegetables originate from Asia and are commonly used in Asian cooking. I also grow Western vegetables and Asian cultivars of Western vegetables such as a cold tolelant Japanese cultivar of Western cabbage.

Wherever I am and whatever language people speak, I believe that a sense of 'good taste' can be shared across the world. I'd like to share information and knowledge across the internet. Thank you for visiting here.



Miki from Japan 



My husband, Greg who built our cabin and cable car himself.



Kiwi from Belgium.



Towser from Hong Kong.

Kabocha for winter

It will be -15 degrees F (-26C) tomorrow. Nothing is growing in my garden. There are some vegetables hibernating under the snow, and the Kabocha I harvested last fall are in our basement. Kabocha is a general term for Japanese winter squash.  Unlike other vegetables, freshness is not important. In fact, it is better to wait at least one month after harvesting as this will increase the sweetness and rich flavor.




The Kabocha  in this photo was harvested on 15 Sep. 2014 and stored until 14 Feb 2015. Since Kabocha can be stored for such a long time, it was a precious preseved food for winter in Japan. We have a custom to eat Kabocha on the winter solstice. It is believed to prevent getting paralysis and colds.

I notice that Kabocha is becoming more popular in many countries,  including USA. I live in a rural area,  but I can sometimes find locally produced Kabocha at a big supermarket and farmer's markets. One thing I should mention here is Kabocha has many different kinds of cultivars which each have distinctive taste.  Grenerally Kabocha sold in the states is a cultivar with green skin and a rounded shape. These are sweeter than butternut squash.


The cultivar I grow every year is called 'Hokkori 133'. It's really nutty flavored with a dry texture and sweet. It's good for grilling, tempura, soup, and more! You can buy  these and other seeds from KITAZAWA SEED CO.



When the stem becomes cork, it's time to harvest.