BEBUT’S TRAIL XIX: Taro Tendrils

WHEN YOU ARE KEEN on exposing people to creative cooking using unfamiliar ingredients in an outdoors setting, it is just second nature for you to rise up from your comfort zone and heft a bag for the woods. Today, August 20, 2017, I would walk with seven others on the same route I walked last week - “Heartbreak Ridge”. Our destination would still be that shed in Sibalas. It is now a spot well-loved by the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild.

One of those who would hike up the infamous hill is the not-so-little Titay anymore. She will be with his dad Aljew. Titay have grown into a beautiful dalaguita - an adolescent lady – and how time flies. Also braving the bare hill are Bonna, Jhurds, Theresa, Jingaling and Glyn. We left the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish at 08:30 after acquiring the ingredients for our noontime meal from its side market.

It is now 09:00 and it is very warm here as was last week. I am worried about Titay so I gave her my elastic headwear to shield her head, face and nape from direct sunlight. She begins to tire when she reached the steel tower and her dad has to goad her gently so she would overcome the last hump. Beyond there are bush and woodland and a shaded trail where many birds found refuge.

 

I bought this time two bundles of jute leaves (Local name: saluyot) which I preserved upside down and covered in loose layers of parasol tree leaves (binunga). I also acquired several pieces of okra, a few green pepper, onions, garlic and two bundles of vine-like taro root tendrils (takway). The main ingredient would be the young taro sprouts which I plan to cook in two different dishes.

If you have 230 grams of taro sprouts, if boiled, it provides you 3.22 g protein, 165.6 mg calcium, 0.92 mg iron, 1534 µg vitamin A, 0.05 mg thiamin, 0.18 mg riboflavin, 1.45 mg niacin and 48.30 vitamin C. It provides you energy with 110.40 kcal. (Source: Cooking Smart by Blecenda Miranda-Varona and David Arsulo Varona, Philippine Publishing House, 2005.) We have about 1,200 grams of that.

It can reduce high blood pressure, controls blood sugar levels, protects the skin, prevents different types of cancer, enhances digestion, increase circulation, prevents heart diseases, improves vision, boosts immune system, strengthens muscle and nerves. It also contains dietary fiber, which plays a very important role in the digestive system. Consumption of this can increase our gastrointestinal health. It also prevents diarrhea, cramps, constipation, bloating, excess gas, and improves the overall health of the body.

We arrive at the shed in Sibalas at 10:15. This wooden structure is built at the instance of Jhurds, currently Camp Red’s head shed, and with the assent of Luceno Labrador, the lot owner. Camp Red helped in reforesting the place with fruit, hardwood and indigenous species. The shed would host outdoors seminar someday but, for the moment, it sufficed as a place where we do “dirt times”.

As on previous occasions, the shed becomes the center of a few hours of camp life. The split log seats are there to give spartan comfort and respite to the tired limbs while the wide center table gives convenience to those who would prepare the food prior to cooking. The table is now accommodating the food ingredients and the tools for cooking. The men among us proceed to forage dry twigs and firewood. The ladies stayed to process meat and slice the vegetables.

Fire begins to blaze by the time Aljew’s firebox and my Swiss Army wood burner were set up. A pot of water is boiled first for that beautiful thought of a coffee drink. I took care of another pot for rice. One of the ladies, Bonna, watched the cooking on my behalf while I busy myself with the taro sprouts. You have to peel the outer layers first as it would cause itchiness on your tongue, gums and throat. It has a substance that is common among taro species.

It would be painstaking work. You have to use the edge of a blade lightly so skin will be stripped away and there are around twenty of these long stalks, which measure around two feet each. As you work on these taro part, you would notice that the color of dark purple adhere to your thumbs and fingers caused by the natural dye that is found on the insides of the skin. When done skinning, you chop the stalks about 2 inches long each.

On the other front, an earthen hearth is prepared for cooking the marinated meat on glowing coals. Aljew and Jhurds help each other that there is sufficient firewood to make this possible. Titay watched all these and sometimes would sidle by her dad and asked a few questions. Aljew taught her how to safely use a knife, chop firewood and feed wood on fire. This is another aspect of Titay’s ongoing education into a better adult that his dad envisioned of her. He is training her in this unconventional setting.

Half of the processed taro stalks, I would cook as a soup. I would not use any meat ingredient (subak) to achieve taste. The taro is the main ingredient and it has its own special taste, which is enhanced by the addition of jute leaves, sliced onions, salt and black pepper. It is a traditional Cebuano fare called bas-oy (vegetable soup) minus the meat.

Sliced okra is mixed with the other half of the taro tendrils. Garlic, sliced onions and green pepper are sauteed first before the taro is dropped into the strong-smelling oil that is simmered a bit. Care is observed not to stir the tendrils while it is cooked for a few minutes so it would not release a substance that causes itchiness. When the texture becomes brown, the okra is mixed to the fare and stirred while soy sauce is added.

On the other hand, the marinated meat took time to cook. Everybody waited. At 13:30, we got our meal. For the rest, it is their first time to taste young taro tendrils. I am used to its slimy appearance but, once you get to like its taste, you forgot about it and you crave for more. The taro adobo is the easiest to cook but it can also be cooked with coconut-based soup, simply fried in a pan, or rolled in rice-paper wrappers.

Plant identification is very important in bushcraft and survival. Today’s session educated the people from Camp Red the appearance of jute leaves and young taro tendrils. They were also exposed to the methods of cooking these. Sharing what I know and showing them how. The pots, plates and spoons are washed in a nearby well. In an hour we would be moving out but, for the meantime, we engage in small talks.

Aljew foraged a green coconut from a short tree and opened it. Titay watched how his dad did it. She drank the natural water straight from the small hole. The coconut was split in half by his dad while Titay scraped the meat with an improvised spoon made from the green husk. It might be ordinary for you readers but bonding with a daughter or son and exposing them to the outdoors is something you would crave for if you have the time.

By 14:00, our things are slowly returned to our bag. We took another trail that led to Baksan. We reach a road and it is a long way back to Guadalupe. We will pass by the Sapangdaku Spillway and going there would all be downhill by a concrete road. We crossed a bridge and walked the rest of the way to the church. Titay felt the fatigue and the pain but her dad never left her side. She reached our destination and she got her fish balls.

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BEBUT’S TRAIL XVIII: Jute Leaves

IT IS ALWAYS A GOOD THING to go out of your comfort zone, hike outdoors and do dirt time. Yeah, dirt time. That is what we called our activity in the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild. We stay in one place and make wonders. Dirty your hands, do manly work, use a blade or cook something unfamiliar using indigenous material.

After meeting up with the guys at the parking lot of Our Lady Guadalupe Parish today, August 13, 2017, and buying the ingredients we need for our cooking session, we hiked towards that hill which I liked to call as “Heartbreak Ridge”. It is not heartbreaking when you are hiking down it in the afternoon. Just do not do that uphill starting 07:30 and upwards.

 

At 08:30, the hill was very warm. The rising sun is at its most intense here because it is bare. The secret to surviving “heartbreak” is to take it slow. Do not mind the heat and ignore it. It is at your back anyway. Just do not hurry. It would help you much if you travel light. Bring just a day pack. If you heft a big one, make sure you start early.  

The hike on a very warm day on a very bare hill, gave me the opportunity to test my theory on food preservation, especially of leafy vegetables. I bought a bundle of jute leaves (Local name: saluyot). For those who do not know about this plant, jute leaves has antibacterial property. It is also anti-convulsant, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammation, antipyretic, anti-obesity, anti-fungal and anti-microbial. (Source: StuartXchange)

A hundred grams of jute leaves yield 43-58 calories; 80.4-84.1 g H2O; 4.5-5.6 g protein; 0.3 g fat; 7.6-12.4 g total carbohydrate; 1.7-2.0 g fiber; 2.4 g ash; 266-366 mg calcium; 97-122 mg phosphorous; 7.2-7.7 mg iron; 12 mg sodium; 444 mg potassium; 6,410-7,850 µg beta-carotene; 0.13-0.15 mg thiamine; 0.26-0.53 mg riboflavin; 1.1-1.2 mg niacin; and 53-80 mg ascorbic acid. Leaves yield a significant amount of mucilaginous polysaccharide, therefore, a source of energy.

 

Forgive me for speaking Russian but jute leaves are my favorite and I will be cooking this later when we reach Sibalas. Meantime, I have to protect it from the wilting power of the sun on vegetation that is cut from its main stem. What I did was sprinkle water on the leaves and wrapped it with leaves from a parasol tree (binunga). Then I turn it upside down and place it inside a plastic bag that I hand-carried.

When we reached the safety of the woods, the pace of our walk began to slack a bit. We simply enjoyed the cooler ambiance that a shaded trail offered to superheated homo erectus. We do not have a timetable for this day hike. We just have a destination and that is it. We sit there, stay for two or three hours, prepare our food, cook it and eat it. In between will be the tales about the recent activities and of future projects.

The woods would also lessen exposure of the jute leaves against the heat. That also goes with the other vegetables, sold and already sliced in bite sizes, like red squash, string beans, okra, white squash and shreds of cabbage leaves, ingredients for a soon-to-be Cebuano culinary called sinagol-sagol (English: mixed vegetable soup). Once we get to Sibalas, I would personally supervise the cooking.

We arrive at 09:50. A shed welcomed us and we rest for a while on its split log seats. A center table accommodated the things from our bags that we unloaded. Blades are normal sight for us and they are handled with so much care, not for its sharp edge but because these are special properties which tell so much about the owners. These are extensions to our personality.

I set up my Swiss Army Wood Burner and went on the process of collecting as many dry twigs as I could for fuel. Boiling of water for coffee came first and is mandatory. Coffee, whatever its form be, and whatever weather, is always perfect outdoors. Then rice was next.

My companions prepared a hearth on the ground and started a roaring fire with firewood. Stones are placed along each side and an iron grill is laid across the fire. While waiting for the coals to glow hotter, the meat are immersed in a mix of soy sauce, vinegar, crushed garlic and sliced onions. Once the coals would be ready, marinated meat would be grilled over it.

The jute leaves remained fresh although the moisture I provided has already evaporated. Its being loosely encased in a layer of bigger leaves from the parasol tree helped its preservation. The same with placing it upside down as all the water it preserved went to the extremities of the leaf capillaries.     

I picked the leaves one by one from the stems and it should be about 75 grams in weight. When the rice got cooked, I replaced it with a small pot containing water and the raw vegetable mix, with a piece of ginger and slices of onions, green pepper and tomatoes. I let boil for eight minutes before I placed salt and black pepper.

When I got the taste right, I add the jute leaves and leave it simmered for just a minute before I remove it from the burner. The soup and the rice are now ready for the eating. The grilled meat is now almost at its last pieces and, probably, we would have our lunch at 13:00, which is just about fine. By now, everyone should be hungry.

After the meal, we washed our pots, spoons and plates from a nearby well. For the rest of the day we just talked and enjoyed the wonders of the outdoors. The shifting shadows under a forest are so strange to watch. Sometimes, you get small doses of filtered sunshine and it does not hurt you. The forest heals your body, mind and your spirit.

Sitting for most of the time, feeling and examining the edges of your blades, is a relaxing moment for me. Perhaps, for the others too as I see one of them finishing a chunk of wood into slender pieces and another one having a grand time shaving feathersticks. What would be your afternoon be like in the outdoors?

When 15:30 came, we packed our things and walked a different trail going to Baksan. We reach a road and followed it for 45 minutes until we arrive at the Sapangdaku Spillway. A small Suzuki Scrum is parked in the middle of stream while children are around it, splashing water into the tires, underchassis, hood and everywhere. An adult seemed nonchalant of the turbid color of the water.

Fortunately, there is a new pedestrian bridge constructed and we walked it instead of crossing the stream on the spillway which we did in the old days. In another 45 minutes we arrived at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish. We called it a day and that is the trademark by which I and the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild spent our weekends.    

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BEBUT’S TRAIL XIII: Legends of Baksan

IT IS A PARADISE FOR BUSHCRAFT. Nobody knows where Baksan is and nobody is interested. I do. Jhurds Neo, the head shed of the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild does. It is just walking distance from Guadalupe. If you prefer to be lazy, you just drop at Sector 8 and you would be on your way on foot the rest of the way.

Where really is this place called Baksan? Honestly, I cannot tell you. Just use your Android phones and your Google Map. It is right there complete with longitudes and latitudes. But could it really tell you the whole she-bang? Uh-uh. GPS technology is only good when you are driving a company car. Ask your HR department. It is also only good on straight lines and wide open spaces and catching Pokemons.

I am choosy now of who I bring with me. I do not want it saturated by people who cannot fit in to the places they visit. These people are careless creatures who do not know common sense, trying to adapt themselves into something else which they themselves have no idea about. The absolute posers and pretenders. They come from both extremes and both kinds are amusements in Facebook. Then there are the stupid.

A year ago, I thought I know a lot about Baksan. I was just learning it right along the fringes until a local led me into its bosom some months ago. I have written an article about this, ready for posting in Warrior Pilgrimage but, unfortunately, this and the rest of my valuable files got lost after my hard disk drive got corrupted. I have to start writing this again, this time, for today’s activity.

Well, today is July 31, 2016. I am guiding Jhurds and the rest of the badasses of the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild and a female guest who seems to like our brand of outdoor activity. Tell you frankly, I have always observed that women are more inclined to challenge themselves to worm their way in to this man’s world called bushcraft. Must be that they are right-brained and can understand better the creativity that bushcraft provided.

From Guadalupe, the forest swallowed us by the time we hiked a trail that is the flank of a low mountain range which is now developed into an abomination called the Monterazzas de Cebu. This unfinished and hard to sell high-end subdivision which tried to sound Italian, claims the whole of Banawa Hills and is just a few steps into the Buhisan Watershed Area. How could the DENR approved an Environment Compliance Certificate for this? Why cannot the Metro Cebu Water District question this development? Is it money talking?

The trail wove around places where there used to be communities. Hedges of ornamental plants that line the front of what used to be houses are now thick and wild. A part of a post protrude from the vegetation that is now claiming the old habitations. A part of a concrete floor is now crumbling and begins the process of turning into dirt. Hibiscus and franciscos indicates an absent family that used to claim their side of paradise here.

We pass by an even ground where there used to be a basketball court and, beside it, a place where there used to be a chapel. It was abandoned by the former inhabitants when this became the battleground in the ‘80s between the military and an ideology that promised a painful change. There were no victors but there were shattered dreams and blistered hopes as the conflict stunted the growth of progress here. It is a cursed place.

I led them into a place the locals called as Enas. There is a natural spring that bleed water into a very small pool tainted with sulfur. It is not potable. The overflow trickled slowly down the hillside and joins Baksan Creek below. The ground has thick sulfur deposits and is bare of vegetation except of sparse ankle-high ferns. Dead trunks appear as burnt and black. This place reminds me of Kaipuhan, in the Cuernos de Negros Mountain Range, but smaller in scale.

It is my first time to see something like this in Cebu. The place is just queer. I see a lot of Indian rhododendron (Local name: yagumyum) growing around the fringes of Enas, with which shrubs are found only in highly elevated places where the clime is colder. Its presence only indicates of a micro climate happening here, perhaps, spurred by the location of the sulfur spring.

The sulfur spring could only mean that there is an underground volcanic activity or there is a fault line somewhere near which necessitates the seepage of sulfurous water. There is a fault line though, discovered recently running across the Buhisan Watershed Area. Bad news for that greedy high-end Italian-sounding abomination. It is just less than a kilometer away. Good luck!

We followed a trail and I took chance to look over a rare homestead where there are three boys playing. It would be a big help if I could ask them of the way to Sibalas and they pointed to a very narrow trail. I see a lot of marang trees (English: Johey oak) and these are bearing fruits, just a few more days and it will be ripe. The trail is quite steep, without any shrub for a handhold, and it led to a stream below.

The stream is familiar. I have passed by here in December last year, right after a Christmas outreach for children located in Upper Baksan and on two different occasions after that. There is a crumbling structure of what used to be a house. A standing concrete wall bear bullet holes, concrete testament of the intensity of conflict that befell on this place. Walking upstream, we came upon a small community, remnants of a once big community.

A path leads to a ridgeline above. Locals are harvesting star apple fruits (kaimito) on a saddle and, some of them, we meet along the trail carrying it downhill in big baskets on their backs held by tumplines supported by their foreheads. We found several paths but I chose the most beaten trail. It followed a low ridge and, after crossing a gully full of accumulated cottonfruits (santol), I saw a roof of a small house.

We are now in the “Navel of Baksan”, a correct translation to a description given by my local guide during a hike here in March as “ang kinapusuran sa Baksan”. There is now a community here, another remnant, led by an original resident Luceno Laborte. Nearby is a natural spring contained in a concrete box which my guide have suggested to as the center of it all. The water source attracts nearby communities to as far as Gethsemane in Banawa during extreme drought.

Luceno or Noy Ceno is present and he welcomed us all. We all remove backpacks and begun the process of our patented “dirt time”. The guys immediately forage dry firewood while Ernie Salomon, the camp fixer, receives all the raw food ingredients into his airy kitchen and tame the edible assortments into one fine meal which will soon emerge. Fire appears, not from bottled fuel but by real source, and water is boiled first for coffee. Coffee, campfire and the outdoors is a good combination, is it not?

I looked at some of my blades when I am alone. There is a 10-inch vintage 1943 knife made by Fame E&J Kitchening Ltd. of Sheffield, England, with a deer antler handle and can be carried on the side in a black leather sheath personally made and owned previously by my generous benefactor and a fine gentleman from the UK – Alan Poole, also known as the Ghost of the Woods in the international bushcraft community.

Second is a classic bushcraft knife made by William Rodgers, also of England. A phrase of “I Cut My Way” is engraved, along with the manufacturer, on the blade. It is 9 inches long and 5/32” thick with beech scales. It is impervious to abuse and was also given to me by a gentleman from Liloan, Cebu – Aljew Frasco. The present leather sheath, untreated yet, is designed to be worn frontiersman style and is made by Jonathaniel Apurado.

Another is a custom bushcraft knife made by The Knifemaker of Mandaue City, Cebu. It is small, 8-inch and 3/16” thick with hardwood scales. Sheath is riveted kydex and can be worn hanging from the neck, over the shoulder or could be slipped into the waistline. The manufacturer wanted it tested in real live action accompanied with a product review. So far, I had felt its weight in my bag and in my person and it is barely negligible.

What about balance? There is no such thing as balance. Balance can be interpreted differently. For an experienced knife thrower, balance is immaterial. Distance does and dynamics. Choosing a cottonfruit tree, I aimed the Knifemaker custom knife onto its trunk from an estimated distance where I believed it ought to be thrown. The blade spun in blinding speed and found the target true.

Blades, the main tool of all crazy bushmen, are used without limits and does all the work of splitting firewood to slicing meat and vegetables. Noy Ceno shows off a few of his prized blades: a 36-inch long tenegre blade and an 8-inch knife. The knife is a World War II survival knife issued to US pilots which is now sporting a different handle. The tenegre is badass. It belonged to his great grandfather and it has a tale to unwind.

Ears pricked up, Noy Ceno tells me that the blade was used by the original owner during the days after the Tres de Abril uprising of 1898 against Spanish domination in Cebu. Then it had seen action during the Philippine-American War after that. Both historical events told of many brutal close quarter encounters where the blade has advantage, whose Cebuano hands wielding it have grown up with the indigenous art of stick fighting.

This old tenegre blade is not that thick and it is very light. I could hear the metal sing faintly as I slashed the empty air. My hair stood up at the very act of it. The present wooden handle and sheath are replacements of the older ones and is made by a local artisan, whose designs are prevalent among all working blades owned by farmers in Baksan and among nearby communities here.

The name Baksan, from what I understood and came to believed in for so many years, comes from a local snake – a python, as it would be to a lot of places bearing the names of Lawaan and Buhisan, even a spitting cobra, Banakon. But Noy Ceno begged to disagree. “Baksan” is termed to this place by other locals because of the habit of its inhabitants who secured the intestines of their opened stomachs as if it is a belt while retreating from a battle.

It was kind of strange hearing it but I have known of some hardy characters who survived knife fights with their opened entrails pushed back inside slashed stomachs as if nothing happened. These guys surely have grit. I look at my pot belly. Could I do the same? I would faint, perhaps, but I would have to bite the bullet if ever I would have to choose between one who sports an ugly scar or as a cadaver.

Lunch came. One is a soupy local pasta called pansit; another is a dish of scrambled salty eggs mixed with sliced tomatoes and onions; and a dessert of sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and onions in vinegar. Rice and milled corn are mixed in to the fray. It is a small feast which are rare in dayhikes but is held regularly by the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild as a sort of tradition. Here, everybody learn outdoors culinary, enjoy a warm meal and a good dose of bush lore.

On the other hand, all mainstream hikers subsist on cold meals or snacks because they are concerned of their time. Their watch, always telling them the Western idea of time, kept them away from enjoying the mountains in such a close and sacred interaction and the opportunity of maintaining friendships with locals are almost nil. They are always in a hurry and they are just passing all the time. They can never be part of a landscape.

I am proud with the guys at Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild for they have understood the ways of nature and are far better outdoorsmen than their corporate peers. By leagues. They move with an easy stride and demeanor and time is of no essence to them. They can lose among vegetation if they wished it and appear in another place some distance away.

When the sun seems to have started losing its intensity, we begin packing our things. We had spared food for Noy Ceno and his family as well as unused coffee, sugar and some items. We will take another route that will pass behind that greedy high-end Italian-sounding abomination. It goes down a long ridge which would be heartbreaking if taken uphill in the morning. We reach Guadalupe in good daylight and spend the rest of the hours in a friendly watering hole.

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