Once a month, I have to haul ass halfway across Tokyo to a posh neighborhood so that I can go to one of my many clinics…but whenever I’m there, I get to wander the aisles of a fancy grocery store nearby!
❤︎
As I mentioned in a previous post, I stop in to Meidi-Ya once a month, and browse the shelves to see what catches my eye. I always buy some root beer, because that’s a monkey I’ll never get off my back, and maybe a couple of American candies or cookies, but everything else is up for grabs…as long as I watch how much I’m spending!
On this trip, I noticed that they not only had a lot of reasonably priced (for Japan) vegetables, but their discount produce rack was almost overflowing! And most of the fruit & vegetables which get marked down in Japan are in kinda amazing condition: no bags of nearly rotting bananas or veggies with big bruises like you might find elsewhere…just produce which is more ripe and flavorful because it needs to be used within a day or two.
Today, I scored some really fragrant strawberries that clearly needed to be used by the next day—no problem for me at all! nom nom nom!—as well as some fresh broad beans / fava beans, two small bags of tender asparagus, a very wee handful of baby red radishes for Mr. Scout. And the crème de la crème of specialty vegetables…nanohana!
Nanohana is a seasonal Japanese green (I think it’s technically from canola, but it looks and tastes a bit like mustard greens), which I don’t see on menus very often, but when I do, it’s almost always (over)steamed as a very small side dish…but I got a hefty handful of my flowery little friends, and I have my very own way of preparing them! Hopefully, I’ll be able to make some in the next couple of days—and take some pictures—so that anyone who actually likes greens can see how I make ’em.
See you then! Have a lovely week!
my tokyo kitchen 
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