Bamboo shoots

It is the beginning of the rainy season. When we first arrived at Enca farm five weeks ago, almost every day was hot and sunny. We are in the Cordillera Mountains in North Luzon: the place with the coolest weather in the Philippines, so daytime highs were only around thirty degrees. During our stay the weather has changed. Now most mornings are sunny and hot, but in the afternoon clouds usually roll in and the temperature drops a few degrees. Many days it rains during the afternoon or night. When it rains it rains very heavily. I bet that the amount of rain that has come down here over the last five weeks is more precipitation than Calgary gets over an entire year. I'm sure that the rain gets heavier and more frequent over the next few weeks.

All this rain means that it is getting very green. Plants seem to spring up when you turn your back. In the last couple weeks we have sometimes walked through a part of the farm where we have walked many times in the past and it is so changed that I wonder if I have taken a wrong turn somewhere because nothing looks familiar. In the midst of all this growth, bamboo shoots are coming up all over the place. Bamboo plants grow in groves. It looks like many trees all clustered together, but underground it is one giant plant. Well when it starts to rain the bamboo plants send up new shoots. The size of the shoots can vary a lot and is dependent on the variety of bamboo. You likely have enjoyed eating bamboo shoots as a part of a stir fried dish at a Chinese restaurant. They are delicious. A few days ago we went over to Olive's house and found a giant funny looking thing on her table where she usually keeps some vegetables. We soon found out that this monstrosity was a bamboo shoot that had grown just outside Olive's backdoor. We are told that Bamboo is very strong: Olive had to cut off a second shoot from her plant because it lifted her table off the ground overnight.

The next day Olive showed us how to prepare bamboo shoots. When we touched to shoot it surprised us by having a fuzzy, velvety exterior. I don't know if most varieties feel like this or not. Olive took a giant knife to the shoot to peel off the outside, then she sliced the flesh into very thin disks. She told us that at this stage the bamboo was very bitter and not yet good to eat, so we tried a bite. It's true. Raw bamboo is very bitter and not good to eat. Olive put the bamboo in a pot of water and brought it to a boil then drained off the water and rinsed the bamboo. A taste test indicated that it would require a second boiling. Olive told us that some varieties of bamboo will be sweet after being boiled only once, but this one went back into the pot. After a second rinse the bamboo was sauteed with garlic and ginger and attacked along with a pot of rice and some chicken. Yum.