Malunggay or Moringa leaves are having good reviews not only as a healthy food but also a solution to reduce world hunger. I just learned that the leaves can be incorporated in the making of noodles or pasta just like spinach for added health benefits. You can mix the dried ground leaves with the rice flour for making “puto” or steamed rice cakes as a nutritious snacks for kids and adults alike. Why didn’t I think of this before?
Bataw or Lablab is a relative of the purple-hyacinth bean. It is a very versatile bean because you can use it in almost all type of cooking that requires beans. I particularly like to cook it stirfry with pork and shrimp. It takes a while before the seeds germinate after sowing but when it does…
Sweet potato leaves are considered as an everyday food in the Philippines. It is served steamed and teamed with a dipping sauce we call fish bagoong. You can also use it as a substitute for “un choi” or “kangkong” in making “sinigang” which is a sour soup. I have this sweet potato planted in my…
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…
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…
The popularity of kale as a cancer-fighting vegetable made me decide to plant some. I started with seeds and the variety is called “Toscano”. It is a plain-leaf type. Some kales have curly leaves. Some are called ornamental kales because of their different colors and mostly used as decorative plant in the garden. I have…
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…