DR. MALUNGGGAY

Just like the camote and sayote (in Benguet and Mt. Province), many would say that malunggay is a poor man’s food. This raison d’ etre may be because it is just boiled for a few minutes with a dash of salt and presto! it is a viand. Or, maybe because it is easily grown and is commonly seen in the tropic belts so that meat eaters and people who depend too much on highly processed food consider it so. However, it is very much savored in countries mostly in Asia.

I haven’t met Dr. Malunggay in my childhood days because it does not thrive in cool places. (I grew up in the cold mountains where vegetation is different from those in the low lying areas). I now live in the Ilocos Regions, so I had to teach my taste buds tang vegeplants in hot areas at the start. I finally got inloved however, with Dr. Malunggay.

When I did my MS Graduate Study, Dr. Malunggay was my frequent companion in our dormitory kitchen. I remember very well that while cleaning and separating the small oval leaves from the petiolets, sorts of stories would quickly spring up about it from my kitchen mates. My kitchen buddies before aside from Filipinos were from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar and they have their own names for Dr. Malunggay. They have their own way also of preparing it. It was then that my brain subconsciously committed to my memory its Scientific Name, Moringa oleifera Lam. so we could understand each other when entertainingly asked of what to cook for dinner on such a day. All what I knew of the plant’s name before was just a malunggay tree called horse radish tree in English.

It was in that kitchen also that I learned that the Cebuanos call the plant kamunggay when Ilocanos call it marunggay. I learned also that the Tagalogs and Visayans do not eat the pods while both the leaves and pods are a delight in the Ilocano dish. The Tagalogs usually associate the leaves for tinola, a menu of chicken and unripe papaya. The Visayans cook it with much water, a pinch of salt and a little of ginger and call it bulanglang. Some prepare it with squash and coconut milk especially in the Southern Tagalog Region.

Aside from malunggay leaves however, I often saw my foreign kitchen comrades particularly those from Laos and Thailand relishing tender shoots of a certain wild vine of the cucumber family found growing a lot in the vicinity of our University. Wow, I also found it so yummy! So, I also gathered shoots of this weed with the malunggay leaves, camote tops and spinach freely growing at the side and back areas of our dormitory.

As much claimed today, Dr. Malunggay is so wealthy of minerals needed in the human body .It is now available in drugstores in capsule forms for the reasons, one: is to help curb malnourishment in the Philippines, a program of the DOH, two: to add claimed minerals to health of people who do not consider greens on their plates.

And, given a time I would go back and thank again those leaves that lusciously grew around our dorm! It helped me not only in my budget during those times (hahahaha) but also in maintaining my health aglow! Besides, I was able to influence some of my meat-eating buddies to include those weeds on their diets (hahaha again!) even if they amusingly called me "Miss Damo." wahahaha!