Golden Week is a time of beautiful greenery!

It is Golden Week in the world. It is Golden Week for me every week.
　At this time of the year, spring flowers have finished blooming and the green leaves on the trees are so beautiful that it looks like early summer. Perhaps it is because I am looking at the green leaves of the trees at this time of the year, but I don’t like the artificial green color of the trees.
　It seems as if the season is about a week early this year. Wild vegetables in the forests are in season earlier than usual.

Bamboo shoots seem to have passed the midway point at 5/1.
Boil them as soon as you dig them up.

Aralia sprouts are also a little too big, but they are good tempura and dressed with sesame miso.

Natural mitsuba can be found in the horsetail grass, where it does not get much sun, and is tender even when it grows large. It is fragrant and delicious tempura and boiled.

Like mitsuba, butterbur is tender and tasty when it grows in shady grassy areas where the sun does not shine. After preparation, boiled dish is the standard.

Young leaves of sansho go well with bamboo shoots stew and miso soup.
The blue berries in summer can be made into tsukudani (food boiled in soy sauce), and the red berries in autumn can be made into powdered sansho (Japanese pepper).

　The varieties that are in season now are daikon radish fruits and Chinese cabbage fruits. When the flowers are over and the berries are a little fatter, it is time to eat them. Daikon radish nuts taste a little like spicy daikon radish, the roots of which are eaten in winter. Chinese cabbage tastes like Chinese cabbage whose leaves are eaten in winter. Both are eaten raw in salads.