Togi/Wild root starch

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…

After a week or so, I’ve been seeing cucumber flowers. I can’t wait to see what it looks like. That’s why it’s important that you label your seedlings to know what variety it is. In this case, I don’t know because a friend of mine just gave me the seeds. Anyways, pollination is important, so…

Chili or sili as we call it have different forms and shapes. Some are hot and some are not. The intensity of the heat from a chili pepper is measured in Scoville heat units. Habanero peppers are rated as the hottest, but before habanero and even before the Scoville measurement, I think we ranked our…

Taro plants are commonly grown here in Hawaii but it seems hard to find if you want to make your own laulau. So I decided to give it a try and plant some. The root or corm is actually given to me by a Tongan friend because that’s all she have in her garden. I…

I took this picture of mangoes when I went on vacation in my hometown Iba, Zambales. This is the real mango that we know of. The rest we call Indian Mangoes. But we also have a type of mango that is huge compared to the regular variety and we call it “Dinamulag”. The word came…

I always plant Okra in my garden. It is an indispensable ingredient in the famous Filipino recipe called “Pinakbet”. I actually just cook that today. I gathered enough eggplants, bittermelons, okra and winged beans today that compelled me to make pinakbet. I also gathered some tomatoes which is also an important ingredient for pinakbet. I…