Dear Diary: I Enjoyed Some Sustenance This Morning

I personally call this my Bread pod

This is just called a "Kamatsile" in my language but English speakers call it a Manila Tamarind which actually is not native from manila nor it is a Tamarind. It is a bean pod where the pods make this white firm sometimes sweet and sometimes a little acrid flesh that surrounds the black seed.

It is sweet when very mature and goes very soft and juicy if picked in its perfect mature state. These ones are not quite very mature enough and actually not really ripe enough but it is hard to pick the ones that are really ripe because the birds and the bats if not the worms could get first unto them. Plus the ripe pods would be so blown out after being so ripe as they get big and rupture their own pod skins.

My grandmother told me that she was the one that planted the trees where we once get our free Kamatsile treats. Today those same trees are owned now by the people who claimed the land where the trees were planted as they had put enclosure around it because those trees were planted at the river dike where my grandfather also worked to develop.

But most of those trees are free to get some pods from because kids make money out of them and sell it to buyers like my mother so I could get to taste them once again.

This is just a boiled sweet potato. Very good to eat if you do not have much food to eat. Iit provides a good carbohydrates and vitamin A and quite delicious. I just missed the orange variety with a plump and succulent vine and leaves because the varieties that I see today have a much thinner vine and a relatively tougher stem and leaves.

I also like this tuber as fried as well with a sugar dip and together with your favorite drink it is a great food that will give you energy but of course we need some variety with our diets and carbs alone won't be sufficient enough for our nutritional needs as we also need some protein, fats, and minerals.