It all began during one of the many trips to the store to buy the weekly allotment of food for the family. I was tasked with a list that was by no means long but was difficult to execute, such as kids cereal (the kind they want or the kind I want them to want), and yogurt (again, so many damn options, and flavours, and delivery methods of yogurt I was doomed to get the wrong kind), I believe I bought the wee little kids cups when I was supposed to get the tubes!
Anyways, before I actually got bogged down in all those damn choices I came across a large box near the end of fruit and veggies. It was full of 4 to 5 foot lengths of brown-ugly-bamboo-looking things. I almost walked right by with a smirk that everyone would have read as "Ha! no one wants to buy a 4 foot piece of creepy bamboo. Am I right?", but my eye caught the label as I passed by.
"Raw Sugar Cane - $1.98"
Well holy crap I stopped in my tracks and pulled the nicest piece of raw sugar cane I had ever seen (it was also the first piece I had ever seen) out of that box and strutted away with an amazing coolness and unconcerned look of "Oh this, I buy raw sugar cane all the time, I feed my 27 year old box turtle* Gorki and then transform the rest of the stalk into a crude flute that I use to express my worldly angst with."
* I really don't think you should ever feed sugar cane to a turtle, it just seems like something someone else would do.
Though I am sure that in those 30 seconds I went from smug smirk to excited as hell and then to cool calm I looked like an idiot that buys something without knowing what he is going to do with it.
..........sigh
See, I have not idea what to do with this thing.The drive home I envisioned the family being excited to see thing new 'food' and rally around plans to consume it in what ever ways we saw fit. Instead all I got was my oldest boy grabbing it shouting "COOL!" and taking a swing at the cupboards with it, resulting in a loud crack. Boy did he look sheepish until we saw that no damage was done to the cupboard door.
Mom asked, "So what do we do with it?". To which I replied "Eat it!"
Well that was the end of that conversation and she wandered off.
I heard her shortly after share a laugh with our daughter when she said "Dad is going to eat a branch for supper."
After a few quick minutes on the Google and I had a whole list of ideas to utilize my length of sugar cane for.
- Soup
- Chew it
- Cook with it
- Kebob skewers
- Tea sweetener
- Boil down in to a natural sweetener
- Coffee stir stick and sweetener (seems like the coolest idea ev-er!)
- Fruit kabobs
...and the list goes on.
I then got out the cutting board, my biggest knife, and a wee paring knife. The directions I found said to cut the cane as close to the knuckles or joints and then peel the hard exterior to get the sweet juicy sugar cane.
Well it was like cutting a piece of 2x2! I had to slam the palm of my hand on the back of the butchers knife over and over and over to get the damn thing to cut.
So I chopped and swore, and peeled and chopped, and worked so damn hard to turn this stick into nice pieces of soft sugar cane.
The pictures online made it look so much easier!So with my tiny pile of yummy sugar cane I approached the family for a taste. The one site said to chew the sugar cane and suck all the sweet juice out and then spit the pulp out afterwards. So I thought the kids would be excited to chew some natural sugar.
......sigh
I only convinced the middle guy to give it a try. And after he spit out the pulp he said "This is the best thing I have ever had before in my whole life Dad!". So I offered him as many as he wanted because it would be just him and I, he said "No thanks." and walked away.
I ended up trying a few different recipes with the sugar cane and not a one of them really worked out. Oh well, at least I have a two foot piece of sugar cane in the pantry and a deep tissue bruise on my palm to remind me of what it could have been. I can still recollect a faint image of the family sitting around, tlaking and laughing while chewing on the fresh raw sugar cane and drinking some home made iced tea lightly sweetened by nature.
I don't think I will ever learn my lesson, because on Monday I bought a giant can of Gulab Jamun. I plan on cracking it open tonight, when Mom is at her university class, and subjecting the kids to this yummy hot sweet dessert. Deep fried dough balls soaked in sweet syrup, they should just give up and get used to me forcing new strange foods on them, because I don't plan on stopping.
Best way to finish off a fantastic Indian buffet!
