Friday, November 06, 2009

Holy cow!

It made me laugh when I read Megan and Heather's guess that the principal gave me sweet potatoes. The answer wasn't correct, but I would have been just as disappointed if I had been given a bag of sweet pototoes right now..... especially after today's activity. I decided that as next week's junior high school group has ALSO been postponed that I needed to dig up the rest of the sweet potatoes (sorry Keiko, I completely forgot that you wanted to help... maybe next year!). The first sweet potato I dug today turned out to be an absolute whopper! It isn't as big as the World's biggest sweet potato - that honor goes to a Lebanese farmer Khalil Semhat who grew an 11.3kg sweet potato in 2008, but it is pretty huge - 2.8kg. The smaller sweet potato in the photo is a fairly standard sized sweet potato....
In honor of the big sweet potato here is one of my latest recipes to try and get rid of some of the mountains that we have....
Sweet potato and apple cake
1. Mix together 100ml oil, 1 egg, 2 tablespoons milk, a little vanilla essence and 120g sugar. (I also add about 100ml of yoghurt...)
2. Cut one medium sweet potato and half an apple (NB - Japanese size, so probably one whole New Zealand apple!) into small cubes and coat lightly with flour.
3. Sift 200g flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt into the oil/egg/milk mixture and mix.
4. Add the sweet potatoes and apples and mix again.
5. Put into a square cake tin lined with baking paper (relatively small) and bake for about 35 minutes at 180 degrees celcius.
6. Eat!

As for the quiz... still no correct answers. Final hint and final chance to be in to win... last week I gave away/sold 60 of the thing in question, but still had plenty for us....

11 comments:

  1. My final guess is going to be eggs! Presents always seem to be some kind of food in Japan.

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  2. Chestnuts or apples? Sorry I am late getting into the guessing game. You said a year ago you would have been grateful but not so much now so I don`t know... I was going to say Christmas decorations until you said you had given away 60 of them so far!

    Oh and that is one HELL of a giant sweet potato. Massive.

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  3. oh darn, i bet it's eggs. oh well, i guess tomatoes. yikes!

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  4. EGGS - has to be.

    And that spud!! Shou was that size when I pushed him out the saloon doors.

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  5. Eggs sounds nice, but you said in your first post that it was to be secret from the rest of the school. I can't understand why eggs would be "secret". being the dirty minded guy I am, I can only think of things that I can't mention, and know are not the correct answer. (and I guess that you did not own, let alone give away 60 of what my dirty mind things about.)

    My second guess is that she gave you chicks.

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  6. Youchuu!!Beetle larvae!

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  7. Oooh must be a Nagano thing- I was thinking all sorts of unmentionable things too. Wondering what kind of a relationship you have with the Principal and what it is about you that she would single you out for a secret gift..... ;P

    That's a whopper sweet potato. The cake sounds fabulous. My neighbours make mashed sweet potato baked with stewed apples all through it. Very much like baked babyfood but the flavour combination is fabulous. I think caking it would make it much more adult!

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  8. EGGS for sure!

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  9. Anonymous3:22 pm

    pumpkin's

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  10. Anonymous3:23 pm

    daikon? Hm...

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  11. Anonymous3:25 pm

    ohhhhhh walnuts? Sorry.. can't think of anything else..

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