Female Pumpkin Flower

Artichoke is perennial vegetable that belongs to the thistle family of plants. The edible part of the plant is the bud before it opens into a flower. The immature florets in the center of the bud is called the “choke” but its not edible. You have to remove it from the base called the heart,…

Beans sprouts from Mung Beans-(Phaseolus aureus) – came from the seeds of the plant we call munggo or”vigna radiata”. These plants have long been cultivated in India, China, Thailand, Philippines and other Asian countries. Japan on the other hand cultivates soy bean sprouts(glycine max) and they call bean sprouts “moyashi”. In the Philippines, beans sprouts…

Water chestnuts are synonymous to Chinese cuisine. They are the ones that makes water chestnuts popular all over the world except we only see them mostly in cans. Once in a while you will see them in Chinatown but you probably will not recognize it because they look like the corms of certain flowering plants…

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…

This is arugula seedlings after a few days of sowing them in the garden bed. They grow faster than lettuce. I like them in salads with different kinds of lettuce to add zing and interest to the palate. It has that distinct peppery flavor almost like radish or wasabi that makes the salad greens more…

The bittermelon plant in my garden really took off so fast because of the recent rains that we had. I actually had been gathering the fruits as well as the leaves which we use in soups like mung bean soup and chicken tinola which locals call Chicken Paraya. I have done a little research on…