Going nuts

We are quickly building a list of "things I never imagined I would ever do in Tokyo."  Today, was a big one though.

Who would have thought that my family would dig up peanuts in Tokyo for the first time?  My husband heard about a farm that invites community members (specifically kids) to come harvest various edibles throughout the year.  Today they were harvesting peanuts.  From the moment I first heard about it, I knew we just had to check it out.

We arrived at the field just before 10 am.  There were at least 20 boy and cub scouts running around, digging up peanuts in the field that had already been harvested.  It was a sizeable farm, with broccoli, cabbages, and several other crops growing happily.  I always ponder the location of these farms - closely surrounded by houses and apartments.  It is the land that someone refused to sell.  They clung onto it despite all the pressure to build something on it.

We paid at the little makeshift table the farmers had thrown together with milk crates and a sheet of plywood.  ¥1000 ($9) paid for 2 peanut plants.  I didn't know what to expect from 2 plants, but I figured it was more about the experience versus the actual take home.

Since we had paid first, we were the first people called up to pull a plant.  (The boy/cub scouts were helped separately.)  The farmer sectioned it off, and let my son pull with all his might for a moment.  Then he reached down and gave it a good hard yank to loosen it from the soil.  My son was then able to lift it out of the dirt, filling his boot with soil in the process. 

We hauled our two large plants across the field to an empty spot to remove all the peanuts from the roots.  It was easy to pull them all off and we made quick work of it.  We couldn't get over how large this particular variety of peanuts were.  We kept exclaiming "this one is the biggest!"

We brought them home and washed them.  I then got to work cooking them.  We were instructed to boil them on the stove in salty water for one hour.  Or, if we own a pressure cooker, we could cook them on low pressure for 7 minutes.  We decided to go for option number 2. 

After looking on the internet a bit, I was surprised that they told us to only cook the peanuts for 7 minutes.  But after doing it (I did steal the technique of using a steamer basket to keep the peanuts submerged), I realized that they were fully cooked and delicious.  They just weren't southern style boiled peanuts.

Sometimes things happen that make me wonder if I really am living in Tokyo.  Today was one of those.  It was so fun to see a plant that doesn't grow in Seattle and be able to harvest it's fruit (actually, it is a legume, but that isn't the phrase...).  Experiences like pulling up peanuts just goes to show you, this city is full of surprises.