Rainy days has come in the eastern side of Mindanao Island (September)
and most of the abandoned /uncollected breadnut or kamansi are starting to fall
from its tree. Bored with the usual panaderia bread, our indigent helper started collecting fallen and over
ripe breadnuts on the roadside to be cooked as our alternative snacks. She mentioned that
this fruit is very much valuable to them as it an alternative to the common staple food in
the table at times when no rice or palay is available in the basket.
Since
it was already ripe and the flesh can no longer be used to make a ginataan
(dish with coconut milk), we collected the seeds, washed and boiled it. Eating the seeds was like tasting the common and
famous chestnut and almost similar to a boiled jackfruit seeds (Artocarpus heterophyllus). Consuming 5-10
seeds is actually sufficient to satisfy one’s hunger as it is heavy loaded with protein,
enough carbohydrates and little fats which is enough to sustain your energy requirement
to survive the day.

This
alternative staple food came from a single stemmed ever green tree that can
grow up to 100 feet tall. The large leaves range from 40-60 cm long and usually
with 4-6 lobes .The stem has a grayish bark full of latex when cut. The fruit
is ovoid with an average of 12 cm in diameter and less than a kilo in weight.
Seeds are rounded or flattened that averaged from 12-150 per fruit.
(Description is paraphrased from http://www.worldagroforestry.org/ )
(Description is paraphrased from http://www.worldagroforestry.org/ )
In
the Philippines, the flesh of the immature breadnut fruit is commonly served as
dish on the table. It is thinly sliced,
boiled with coconut milk, added with little salt and some available spices available
in the kitchen.
This breadnut is totally alien to me. I guess there are still many things to discover about food in our country alone.
ReplyDeletethese souces are taken for granted because of the "institutionalized food" .. --merely business ... If the gov's campaign is put into full force , there is no scarcity of food and prices will be stable as there will be alternatives for every Filipino's plate
ReplyDelete