Vegetables

Long Beans/Sitaw

Long beans or sitaw as we call them is in the member of the family of legume except they are eaten as green pods unlike other beans like navy beans or azuki beans. They are also called yard long beans or asparagus beans. I remember eating these beans cooked as adobo. It taste good and…

Gourd/Upo

Upo is one of my favorite vegetables. I practically grow eating this vegetable. My mom has a small garden in our yard and she always manage to grow upo by building a trellis for it to cling to. The trellis we call “palapa” is made of bamboo. It is build with four bamboo poles that…

Luffa Gourd/Patola

Patola is what we call the luffa gourd. There are two types of this gourd but I am only familiar with the one that has angles or ridges on the skin. This is the specie called Luffa Acutangula. The other specie must have been introduced in the Philippines at a later date. We call it…

Togi/Wild root starch

Togi is a root vegetable that most Filipinos eat as a form of starch much like eating taro or sweet potato. Believe it or not I could not find any reference for this tuber called “togi” in the Philippines even in the Wikipedia so I will not have an English name for it. Anyway, it…

Cucumber/Poona Kheera

Cucumber or pipino as we call it in the Philippines is my favorite salad vegetable. I also make pickle out of it. But I really don’t have luck in growing cucumbers. Last month, a friend of mine gave me some seeds which he said came from Sri Lanka. I immediately planted it and see how…

Mizuna

Mizuna is a Japanese green vegetable that is gaining popularity in the US. It is in the family of Brassicas which includes kale, rapini or broccoli rabe, broccoli and cauliflower. It is used mainly by Japanese in making soup for New Year celebration as sort of good luck. But its being used now in green…