Brazil…

How’s everybody doing? Not going insane yet, I hope. After all, it has only been 6 days, the Movement Control/Restricted Movement Order, almost but not quite a week yet.

As for me here, I am getting on fine – been busy catching up with all my gardening. The weeds and grass sure wait for no man so I am never short of things to do. As for the food, we are fine. We are well stocked with fresh and frozen foods, canned, dried and preserved foods, instant noodles so much so that I do not think we will need to go out at all.

I told my missus to buy vegetables that could last – cabbage can keep for a long time, bitter gourd should be fine, beans like long beans, French beans, ladies fingers are all very durable and anyway, should we run out, there is the Brazilian spinach…

…growing in my garden. It’s very easy to grow. You just stick the stalks in the soil and it will flourish in no time at all.

I harvested the ones in this plot…

…just a week ago to give to a friend and the other morning, I harvested half of the ones in another plot, still quite a lot left.

It has a lot of health benefits, this Brazilian spinach. According to this website, they include:
1. improving immunity system
2. maintains eye health
3. strengthens bone
4. helps maintain the digestive system
5. prevents constipation
6. helps in smoothing blood circulation
7. prevents anemia
8. prevents premature aging
9. overcome gum problems
10. binding calcium
11. a good source of Vitamin K
12. can fight against cancer

It is not as thin and soft as the cangkok manis…

*my miserable cangkok manis struggling to stay alive*

…though and just like the cangkok manis, one would have to tear the leaves prior to cooking and because it is thicker and harder, one would need to tear it even more. Incidentally, we only take the leaves, not the stems and definitely not the stalks.

We cook it the same way as the cangkok manis – with garlic, egg and a bit of salt and msg (my missus uses oyster sauce)…

…and yes, we love it!

Now I’m regretting that I got rid of all my sweet potato leaves as they were growing out of control. I guess everyone was getting sick and tired of it so nobody bothered to go and harvest them to cook. Well, if the need arises, I still have my ulam raja and daun pegaga that we can eat with sambal belacan and that Thai-style dish of minced meat fried with Thai basil leaves is actually very nice.