persimmon balcony garden breakfasts

Ingrediants: organic oatmeal, crystal salt, pure cream, one syrupy persimmon. That's all.

Though its the crunchy, sweet persimmons I love best, last week's hoshigaki and this morning's oatmeal have changed my mind about planting an the astringent one - its utterly wonderful, and I will order one tomorrow.


When left long enough to be syrupy and sweet, the astringency disappears, and if you are lucky, so does the stringiness.

Department store persimmons - 10 of these, or buy a nice big tree.

Now I'm remembering, my first ever edible 'balcony' garden was a sweet persimmon tree. It came to the sunny second-floor north-facing window of the old wooden apartment I shared with Shu Inagaki, my first few years in Japan. We would eat together on the tatami, at the window, and I would just reach out to pluck my wonderful desert after each meal, eating without even peeling.
As the years go by, more and more objects and events become enchanted with echos of good times. So don't worry about getting old, just make sure you find many things to savor along the way. Life's pleasures intensify with each year's overlays of memories, a consoling thought.