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| Yomogi (Japanese mugwort) by bodhilens |
Recently a distant relative of mine passed away. She was my mother's older brother's wife's mother, who used to live near my family in Osaka. We affectionately called her obaachan (grandma). When I was a child, I remember her sometimes visiting us with homemade sweets, like kusa mochi (sweet rice cake pounded with cooked yomogi [Japanese mugwort]). Although
kusa mochi is available at some Asian grocery stores in Kentucky, I kind of missed fresh homemade kusa mochi. So this spring I bought a packet of yomogi seeds from
Kitazawa Seed Company (They sell seeds of Asian vegetables and herbs in California.) and sowed them in a planter. To my surprise (and the company's), they grew into at least three seemingly different kinds of yomogi. (See the photos below.)
To make sure that all the plants in the planter were indeed yomogi varieties, I read a lot of information published on the Internet. A gist of what I learned is that yomogi or Japanese mugwort usually refers to
artemisia princeps. However, several hundred varieties of
artemisia grow worldwide, and according to
some Japanese information, more than 35 kinds of yomogi grow in Japan, any of which can be called "Japanese mugwort." The good news is that they are all edible, although some are less bitter and more palatable, while others are more bitter and more medicinal. I sampled a few leaves and found them all fragrant as yomogi should and some more bitter than others as I had read. So I said to myself, "Fair enough," and harvested a bunch of young leaves, cooked them, ground them in
a mortar with a pestle, pounded them into mochi (rice cake) made from
glutinous rice flour sweetened with
stevia powder, and wrapped a spoonful of
anko (sweet red "azuki" bean paste) with the mochi. My first homemade kusa mochi turned out to be pretty good.
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| Black swallowtail by bodhilens |
While watering yomogi in my garden, I was reminiscing of obaachan and her kusa mochi, and a black swallowtail appeared and flew around me. She lingered for a while, so I was able to ask bodhilens to bring his camera and take a photo of her. Japanese say that insects can carry souls of the dead. I wonder if the butterfly was carrying the soul of obaachan.
