What is super sweet, the source of all sugar and the food that I grew up chewing in Jamaica?
YES, the one and only SUGAR CANE.
My sister and some of my friends headed out to the home of a friendly couple at my church. They have a LOVELY and LARGE garden where they grow all kinds of plant life: lemons, oranges, pomegranates, pineapples, sweet potatoes, garlic.................I mean, a ton of stuff. The husband is 86 years old and literally maintains the entire garden by himself.
By. Him. Self. I know!
They have about 3 acres, I think. Now the crazy thing is how much he knows about all the plants in his garden...............................bromeliads, succulents, bougainvilleas, staghorn ferns...............the man is a walking encyclopedia of plants................and............let me repeat, he is 86 years old. AMAZING! He was the cutest thing. He used to be a teacher so he would identify a plant along the tour and when we passed it again, he would ask, "What's the name of this plant again? I just forgot. Do you guys remember?"............like he really forgot after over 40 years. He was not slick. :) but I absolutely learned a lot.
Check us out, being one with nature:
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| Amigas :) |
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| We seem to like this lemon tree! |
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| When I'm happy, I start to dance. That's what plant life does to me |
So we get a nice little tour of the entire garden and before getting the call (by his wife) to come inside to eat lunch we stopped right in front of some stalks of cane. Ahhhhhhhhhh, it made me so happy! And of course the next thing he says makes perfect sense. "Yeah, a friend of mine brought this up from Jamaica and I planted it and here it is, still growing." My family is addicted to sugar cane. Every time we go back to Jamaica, that's literally first thing on the list to bring back to the states. So my sister and I took some home..........................and we devoured it. But, of course, before you can devour this amazing creation, you need to free the soft stalk from the hard covering. This is where a machete would show up and get the job done. All I had, however, was a butcher knife so I made due. Hey, gotta work with whatchya got. Handling big as hell knives is nothing new. My mother and 83 year old "G" of a grandmother still chop things at the back of the house with a machete. So, what do you expect? :)
You cyan tek Jamaica out of me!
And then this sugar cane ended up being airport food.
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| Contrary to my solemn staring at the sugar cane, I really was in heaven! |
Oh, a BOMB day it was!
Can't remember the last time I had sugar cane! Used to eat that all the time when I visited my grandparents as a kid. Good memories..great post!
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading, my friend!! And yea, absolutely...sugarcane always brings back good memories.
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