Tannia Skin

[brag]

Eating the skin of the tannia can provide lots of necessary fibre. Besides, it is nutritious and delicious at the same time. I accidentally discovered that tannia skin can be delicious. I forgot I had tannias boiling on the stove as I went about my business outside the house. Suddenly, I smelled something roasting. I returned to the kitchen to discover it was the tannias. As I started to scrape off the burnt skins, I decided to tast it, and how about that! The skin was so delicious, I ate them all. Let all the water of the boiling tannias dry up and the skins begin to char. It is something like baked potato skins and can be served the same way. I suppose the same thing can be done with dasheen and eddoes. Try it, you may like it.

[sapodila]

Interesting! Did it not scratched your throat?

[Falcon]

just be careful and increase your calcium intake when you do that.

[brag]

I gues that bhajee of all sorts which I like very much takes care of my calcium needs. It works well as a snack food. Today I repeated the process and ate the tannia with kuchela. No sap, it did not scratch my throat at all.

[Falcon]

no brag. For Dasheen and Tannia, they need to be eaten with lots of calcium to take care of the oxalate, which can lead to kidney problems, and gout.

[brag]

Thanks for that tip, Falcon. I will remember that. I am not much of a provision eater anyway, but happened to buy tannias to make tannia choka when I forgot the tannias on the stove and discovered a new way of eating them.

[Chicabonita]

Another name for Tannia? Don't have idea what it is.

[brag]

Some people call it Yautia and others call it malanga. It is a sort of hard version of the eddoes and white on the inside like a white dasheen or taro, but not as large as a dasheen. It is a little longer than the eddoes. It is a tuber that shoots out from the mother of the tannia plant. The link below gives you some idea of the plant.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/1492/tannia.html

[roger]

no brag. For Dasheen and Tannia, they need to be eaten with lots of calcium to take care of the oxalate, which can lead to kidney problems, and gout.

*** Falcon, maybe you can tell us more about the 'oxalate'. My take is that all compounds with odd numbers of Oxygen (O1, O3, O5 etc) are potentially dangerous to health.

The only thing which I disagree with is the use of calcium to counteract those substances. In my view those substances should be avoided altogether since they destroy healthy body tissue producing calcium and uric acid which can precipitate in the kidneys as stones.

So if Falcon is correct then eat the tannias and dasheen but not their skins.

Roger

[brag]

I never read up on tannia before, but here is what is also said in the link.

"When the Europeans arrived it was known from southern Mexico to Bolivia, but was possibly more intensive in the Antilles. Domestication may have occurred in various places and with different materials, and was based on processes such as roasting and cooking the tubers, thereby eliminating the irritant substances, calcium oxalate crystals and saponins."

[brag]

Look what is written about its cousin, the eddoes.

http://greatbigvegchallenge.blogspot.co ... eddoe.html (http://greatbigvegchallenge.blogspot.com/2007/06/e-is-for-eddoe.html)

[brag]

We ate so much dasheen, tannias, eddoes and dasheen bush as children growing up, I have to wonder why I am still alive and healthy today if it is troublesome. What I know is that for taking care of an excess of anything in the body, a good helping of green leafy vegetables, either cooked or raw, is one of the answers. In addition, an almond or two a day, cucumbers, pumpkin, and pineapples are also good for cleansing the blood of any excess of toxins in the body.

[gingergirl63]

You know,all this talk about tannia and eddoes making me really hungry and off course remembering my childhood.One of the two has a slimy texture to it .....if my memory serves me right.It is really tasty as curried with potatoes.

[brag]

Eddoes do have the slimy texture to it, but it makes a great choka.

[Angie]

Brag, yuh know how long me eh eat that.

[brag]

Salt, check out the Asian and Spanish food markets in your neighborhood. You will find almost everything there that you find at home. North Carolina should have some ethnic grocery stores. I know they have some in Greenville, South Carolina.

[Angie]

I does buy it here, but I never thought about making choka with it, I usually boil it together with Dasheen [malanga coco] to have with stew or curry fish.

[roger]

We ate so much dasheen, tannias, eddoes and dasheen bush as children growing up, I have to wonder why I am still alive and healthy today if it is troublesome.

*** That probably just goes to show how robust the human body is.

But beyond that I think what we should be saying is that is why grandpa, grandma, mom and dad, and all before us that we know suffer from either arthuritis, kidney stones, diabetes, heart problems or some other degenerative condition that we pass off as old age just as every murder today is passed off as gang related.


Roger

[brag]

If you apply the same reasoning for or against corporal punishment in school, you will see that it works either way-- you could be worse off or better off either way.

[gingergirl63]

I think we're getting of course in this tasty subject(: ,all i have to say is boil and fry with maybe sada roti and tomato choka.

[brag]

I made another discovery about eating tannias after the two times I recently ate them. So I went and bought some more today so as to test it out before sharing my crude finding.

[brag]

Yesterday was the third time in less than a month I had tannia as a meal. This time I peeled the tannias after boiling them. I noticed that on all three occasions I did not have to get up in the middle of the night to use the urinal. I normally use the urinal about every four hours. Can there be a relationship between eating tannias and the health of the prostate? I will keep on eating tannias to see if it is not just coincidental.

[gingergirl63]

Brag,i was so anxiously awaiting your findings.

[saltwater]

Brag, my nani and nana use to tell me never use tania leaves to make bhaggie because it will make you sick. I cannt remember the details of what kind of sickness, but it look like you finding it out now.

[Falcon]

why are you equating frequency of urination with prostate health brag?

[brag]

It is low frequency, especially at night that I am equating with a healthy prostate, not high frequency. So now when I have to get up at midnight to use the urinal, I am concerned about the health of my prostate. By the way saltwater, I never heard of anyone eating tannia leaf bhagee.

[Falcon]

but frequent urination has a lot to do with kidneys in the first place, long before one would seriously the prostate.

[saltwater]

It is low frequency, especially at night that I am equating with a healthy prostate, not high frequency. So now when I have to get up at midnight to use the urinal, I am concerned about the health of my prostate. By the way saltwater, I never heard of anyone eating tannia leaf bhagee.
My nana and nani use to took me in the bhagie patch and showed me what is tania leaves and dasheen bush leaves and eddoes leaves. They emphasized never cut the tania leaves because it would make you sick. The point I was making is that whatever in the tannia making you sick is the same for the tania leaves.

[brag]

Sorry if I am misleading. The tania is not making me sick. My point is that I noticed I did not have to use the urinal in the middle of the night on the three occasions I recently ate tania. It is only a recent observation I made when I had an urge for tania choka, and ended up eating roasted tania instead.

I am not a lover of ground provision as I had so much of it in my youth. I rationalize my not wanting root vegetables by saying that all root vegetables were hog foods since we had to dig like hogs for them, and that all vegetables that grow above the ground were human foods since we only had to pick them. So I stopped eating root vegetables for many years. But, I may have to revise that thinking, and go back to eating ground provision again because it is said to be high in fibre and considered a power food.

I believe I learned that a high frequency of urination is one of the symptoms of a deteriorating prostate. It may also be a symptom of a bladder problem. So, I am only taking precaution about any prostate problem, as I am at the age to be concerned about the health of my prostate.