30 over pounds of cut up sugar cane sticksJust this Saturday, my parents held a housing association pot luck dinner with the neighbors. Once of the things we decided to provide was fruits, and lots of it.
We bought 10 kilos (22 pounds) of rambutans and we cut up around 15 kilos (33 pounds) of organic raw sugar cane, right from my parents' garden. Whooohooo!
The picture above shows how the cut up itsy bitsy sugar cane sticks looks like.
I have wrote about how mum used the sugar cane sticks to help us kids strengthen our gums in my previous post. But anyways, in the old days, people use to chew on sugar cane but I've not seen anyone do this anymore. I thought it would be a fun thing to bring to the table, and I was right. It was a hit! People have commented they have not chewed on raw sugar cane for ages and chewing on these yummy sticks do bring back fun memories for lots of people!
Anyways, it's really simple to make these little babies, but there's lots of elbow grease involved.
First, we have to chop down 3 long, large stalks of the sugar cane. Next, we have to remove the hard outer skin. You know how you use a fruit peeler to peel of an apple skin? Well, we have the same instrument, except it's 10 times larger and 10 times sharper to peel of the outer skin of the sugar cane. Then, we chop these suckers into small pieces. You've got to be really fit and strong to do all this cutting, which is probably why nobody does it anymore.
Mum, dad and I also bought lots of rambutans.
Hairy little rambutansRambutans are in season as well right now, so we thought we'd take advantage of it.
Juicy little morsels inside
The inedible tasteless seed inside the fruitRambutans were a hit as well. Hubby, the fruit bat confessed he ate lots of the rambutans while keeping an eye on the happily playing kids (the pot luck was held outside, in the large yard of my parents' house). Luckily, hubby loves fruits, so having the entire family eat healthful stuff is not a big stretch!
At first, nobody touched the sugar cane, and I was a bit worried that I made a mistake serving it. However, people started to pile the little cane sticks onto their plates after the main meal. They chewed on the sticks while chit chatting with each other. And after they were done, they tossed the chewed up cane into our ever growing pile of compost heap nearby.
What I learned from this pot luck is, people love fruits. And if you don't know what to bring to a pot luck, bring fruits! You don't need to cook it if you decide to serve it raw and neat. And there's probably not much preparation involved as well. For example, there's no need to wash the rambutans before hand. Ditto for bananas. Grapes are a gorgeous fruit that goes with any barbecue. Now's summertime, and everyone looks forward to having some watermelon.Those just need to be cut up into small chunks, and that's it. No need to be fancy unless you really want it to be. Fruits are very healthful stuff. Everyone would eat it, meat eaters, vegetarians, kids, older folks.
Very rare to find people who won't touch a single bit of fruit!
Jasmin
Come join my "Eat Raw Food Today" facebook group
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