Seeds And Their People - Ep 5: Rau Đay, Lalo, Saluyot, Ewedu, Molokhia

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

This episode is all about one plant with countless names: Molokhia (Corchorus olitorius). You may know it as Jute, Jew's Mallow, Egyptian Spinach, any of the names in the title of this episode, or as something else altogether! This plant is beloved throughout the world and so we talked to people whose roots are in Vietnam, Haiti, Philippines, Nigeria, Palestine, and Syria about how they grow, harvest, prepare, eat, and save seeds from this delicious, nutritious, healing, and slimy plant. You will hear many similarities and differences. One thing is clear: everyone holds it dear for the way the flavors, textures, and even the tedious plucking of leaves transports them back home.   SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Palestinian Molokhia Palestinian Kusa Squash Francois Syrian Molokhia   MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Lan Dinh and Soi Trinh, "Rau Ðay," March, 2020 VietLead: vietlead.org Resilient Roots Farm on Instagram: @resilientrootsfarm Order Lan and VietLead's seeds, including Rau Den (Vietnamese Amaranth), Smooth Bitter Melon, and Lá Tía Tô (Vietnamese Perilla)!   Chef Chris Paul, "Lalo," March 2020 Instagram: @chrispaulchef Legim (Haitian Stew): tasteatlas.com/legim One Book, Many Voices Community Dinner, March 11, 2020   Nick, "Saluyot," January 2020 Philadelphia Seed Exchange Saluyot and Cleopatra   Ruby Olisemeka, "Ewedu," March 2020 Farm School NYC: farmschoolnyc.org Egusi Amala Flour Red Hook Farm: added-value.org Ruby's Teacher, Oríadé Ìp?`s?´lá Ajét?`lú - indigenous Yorùbá spiritual uses of Ewedu: [e-mail] www.agloglob.com   Anan Zahr "Mlukhiyie," February, 2020 Anan's Musakhan and Sumac class at the Free Library of Philadelphia Anan Zahr Instagram: @ananzahr Anan's Mlukhiyie: click here to see a photo and description Seeds mentioned in this interview:  Palestinian Molokhia Palestinian Kusa Squash Lebanese Za'atar (Thyme)   Hoda Mansour and her daughter Noor "Mloukhia," August, 2019 Instagram: @ootybabo Visit to harvest at Truelove Seeds: see photos here   Mason Harkrader, Bear Bottom Farm, "Molokhia," August, 2019 Instagram: @bearbottomfarm Mother Earth Gardener, "A Taste of Home:" [PDF] or read online here François Selim Moussalli, 1923 - 2018, Obituary Francois Syrian Molokhia All Bear Bottom Farm's Syrian and Appalachian seeds at Truelove Seeds   ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Lan Dinh and Soi Trinh Chef Chris Paul Nick from the Seed Swap Farmer Ruby Olisemeka Anan and George Zahr Hoda Mansour and her children Mason Harkrader and Mo Wiley Sara Taylor

And just typically, just because Africans think so holistically, a widu is more than just a food, right? There are medicinal dimensions to it and there are spiritual dimensions to it. Welcome back to Oh, my goodness. The seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bowden Newsom, farmer and co-director at Sankofa Community Farm

at Bartram's Garden and sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. It's a seed company offering culturally important seeds grown by farmers

committed to food sovereignty, cultural preservation, and sustainable agriculture. This episode is going to be a jam-packed episode all about Malachia. And before we talk about Molokia and I think we should

honor during this time of viral plague with the coronavirus just take a moment to remember all of the people who first who have died as a result of this horrible epidemic but then also

all of us who are still living and trying to work through you know this situation to his end so for the health and healing of all peoples and that we all will be safe and extra careful out of love for all of the people. I want to read a couple of words from Psalm 91.

You need not fear the terrors of night, the arrow that flies in the daytime, the plague that stalks in the dark, the scourge that wreaks havoc in broad daylight. Though a thousand fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand, you yourself will remain unscathed, with God's faithfulness for shield and buckler. thank you we're here in the house and haven't been out much because of all of the social isolation and um we just ate a big meal filled with foods that we've grown over the last year including some greens including seven different greens that chris cooked um can you tell us what greens were in there no i'll try to remember i know i know i put

But collared greens, this is all from our field at Sankofer Farm and Bartram's Garden. There was some turnip greens, rather, and there was mustard. There was some collars, I think. I had kale, lacinato kale. What else do we have? There was wild cress. There was some chickweed. There was chickweed.

And there was green onion. Yep, which is a green and a leaf. and is considered a green in southern cooking. Yeah, and we kind of almost stewed the greens. I mean, the way they were cooked, they were almost the consistency of malachia. I mean, I cook the West African-style. These are greens that are usually used in southern and especially African-American southern cooking. You know, we eat greens every week in the South as I grew up.

We ate some greens every week, and, of course, in Mississippi, that would be usually turnip greens as the sort of mother green of the pot with other, you know, some other greens added to it generally mustard, because that's what most folks had growing up on the side of the house. So, yeah, I cook it, you know, even though those are traditionally African-American, you know, sort of greens have become so. I cooked in the West African style with lots of palm oil, red oil, and onions and and peppers and lots of seasonings. Good, you know, there was some suya powder, smoked paprika to give it a really good smoky. And, of course, we added our mushrooms from the field where we are also growing. Some Chitakis oysters, kings, trumpets, chestnut, all sorts of mushrooms. of them went in the pot with that and we definitely slow cooked and sort of braze the greens

for hours with a little bit of water and our favorite a staple in our house which is veggie broth veggie broth bouillon veggie broth cubes all of it's awesome

it replaces magic for vegetarian cooking and we also just had our first skier of the year the sweet root really it's an East Asian species but it's been grown in my ancestral and our ancestral European kind of northern European homelands since the Middle Ages and it's this carrot family root that has all these

little white thin roots that are so sweet and in fact scurit I think is Dutch for sweet root and we had hop and John as well but anyway the greens are timely because this whole episode is about how lots of different people cook Malachia greens. And we've been, it's new to us, these greens. There's so many names for it, as you'll hear throughout this episode, from Malachia and different forms of that Arabic word, to jute, which is what people often call it when it's used as a fiber, like our jute rug downstairs.

Egyptian spinach, you know, kind of a nod to where one of the places of origin is. Saluio, Uwedu, Raudai, Jus Malo, Lalo. It's got a lot of names, and I'm sure there's a lot more than this. Yeah, we're new to Malagia. I've probably first grew it five or six years ago at Roughwood Seed Collection, but didn't really, really know it until I learned about it from one of the people you hear from today, Mason from Bear Bottom Farm and his Syrian grandfather who grew Malachia. and it's a delicious green.

We have it in our freezer now. It didn't make it into our seven greens tonight, but it's something that we love to eat. We both grow it on our farms. It's a very almost wild plant. It's a very tall mallow in the Malvesia family, you know, with okra and marshmallow and cotton. Do you have anything you want to add about Malachia?

We're going to hear a lot from people in the episode. But what are your thoughts? Well, I mean, I like, I mean, as you were saying, Molokia is new to me as of probably maybe the last six, seven years. The way I think that I've learned more about it is an African cooking and West African cooking, particularly that's that, you know, is sort of the stream through which it came to me. And I love it. I cook it. I don't cook it very often because I think to do it justice, you have to cook it down. a long time so it's an old school green that you have to boil down but with lots of seasoning

but it makes this delicious velvety earthy and in full-bodied sort of stew that you just sort of bathe you know your senses in when you when you eat it and so it definitely is a food that that feels like it can bring you back to life and I just for his healing properties as well too you know that it's a green that's eaten I know people eat it for medicine and particularly healing the intestinal track and inflammation. It's an awesome anti-inflammatory, just eating it, making a tea of it. So I'm very excited to know it and I always want to support people who want to spread more greens in the world because I think we're going to be needing that more and more.

You know, I mean, in this age of plague, you know, so many of us are running for what's the right tincture, what's the right root, what's the right leaf. but a lifestyle of health is really what I think is the most preventative, you know, and preservative practice, you know, for our bodies and our souls. And it seems like this Molokia could really contribute to that, to this beautiful lifestyle of good health because it's easy to eat. Yeah, I love it. But you don't have to take our word for it.

We're going to hear from old friends and new friends from Nigeria, Haiti, the Philippines, Syria, Palestine, and Vietnam in this episode, all talking about their love for this plant. And we're going to start with a friend of ours named Londin, who interviews her mother, and it's a very beautiful short interview. And we just thought it would be a beautiful way to start. And we're going to go through many short interviews and voice recordings that were sent to us, before landing on a couple longer ones from a Syrian-American farmer and a Palestinian chef.

So, yeah, we're going to start here with Lon, Den, who is a real dear friend of ours. She grows with her resilient roots farm in Camden, New Jersey. She grows seeds for the True Love Seeds Catalog, including Raudden, the Vietnamese Amaranth, bitter melon. You want to introduce Lawn, too? Oh, well, I mean, you know, I can't add much more to what you said, you know, Lonely the dear sister in the work. I count her, you know, part of this sort of band of newborn culture keepers, you know, culture restores who are all doing our work, you know, with our people and with the world and, you know, sort of connecting diaspros is what I think a lot about a certain aspect of her work. I mean, her work is geared towards her people as it should be and in really powerful ways and doing some awesome things. But I think that, you know, connecting diaspros, which is so much the goal of this show, is really reflective of Sister Line's life and her work.

And, yeah, Rodei is very delicious. And I'm excited to hear Aline and her mom talk about it. Okay, without further ado, here's Lon from Viet Leed and Resilient Roots Farm, interviewing her mother. Hi, Owen and Chris. This is Lon. Today, I am sitting down with my mom, and we are going to talk about Molokia and our experiences with it. My mom's name is Sae Jin. Hi. So I'm going to ask my mom. So mom, how do you know how do you know about this plant? So when I was young, I remember my mom would cut it up really small and then she would boil it up like other vegetables and then it would become this stew and we would eat it. But then, what do you call this plant?

What do you call this plant? What is raw day known for? Dau d'i, it's made, it's the meat, it's just nudge. Yud-nurt, but it's hot, it's jay-teal. When you cook it, it gets really slimy, and then when you eat it, it can really cool you down, and it's really easy to digest. So, Mom, how do you,

grow it. So you clear the soil, cultivate the soil, prepare it to direct seed onto the soil, so you can just kind of throw the seeds onto the soil, water it in, it will take probably about a week to come up, and then after about maybe a month, it'll get about maybe a foot tall. and that's when you can start pruning and as much as you prune the more bushy it will get you don't want it to grow straight up

you want to keep pruning it and you can you know water and fertilize as needed and this plant doesn't need that much water so when you're planting plant it far apart about a foot apart if you plant it too close

get old more quickly and it will make it easier for you to prune and for it to bush out. Yeah, I'm going to hate that why do you get the seeds? So how did you get the seeds? So a long time ago when we came to Vietnam, when it was easier to bring seeds over, because now it's a lot harder. But I asked my sister, my sister gave it to us.

So, back then, it was really hard to find it here, and when you found in the supermarket, it was really expensive. So it was really great to be able to plant it, so then we'd be able to eat, so we could, like, make soup and stews from it. So it's really convenient to eat, so anytime you have, like, chicken broth or just, like, chicken or meat, you can make, like, a quick soup and broth with it. So why this is like a staple food for me, this is an important food for northern Vietnamese folks. This and Amaranth and Thai eggplant is kind of like the quintessential food is kind of like the quintessential northern Vietnamese food. So, like on a typical day for dinner, you would have a bowl of amaranth or Molokia soup and Thai eggplant. So, Mom, how does it feel to be able to grow a rhodai here? I'm so happy to have been able to see.

I'm so happy to have been able to see. Saved these seeds for so many years. A few months ago, I was even able to send it to my nephew and brothers, who live in Des Moines, Iowa. And they were so shocked. They were like, how were you able to get these seeds? These seeds are so good. And I told them since the last time that I visited,

that I had found those seeds and had been growing them every year, just a little, little. And then now I was able to share it back with them. It is a piece of Vietnam, a piece of our homeland. I mean, she'll get it, and then, I used to get this, so then, I used to now, so now, so she just, um, jure to now, she just chom, chom, every year, she chung, much, use, to eat, eat, to eat, and it, so it, it's, a humvi of Vietnam, me. After Laan sent these initial recordings with her mother, she had some reflections about the meaning of all this and these seed sharing circles in her family. So here you go.

I had always grown up eating Rodai and I never really knew the story behind it until my mom recently shared more about it. And I think something that really stood out to me in the story was that she had actually gotten these seeds from her. her sister in Vietnam when my mom visited 10 years ago. And then recently, when my aunt came over to the U.S. about two years ago, my mom was able to send her those seeds. And, you know, my aunt was shocked about where my mom got the seeds. And my mom reminded her that those are the same seeds that my aunt had given her 10 years ago. And now they're both growing it out.

and like just how much joy that being able to grow this seed out has brought to my mom and her family and how it's helped both of them to feel more connected to home. The next interview here is with chef Chris Paul. He was one of the chefs featured earlier this week at the Free Library of Philadelphia's event at the Cobbs Creek branch in West Philly called One Book Many Voices Community Dinner. had met several years ago at a seed swap at the Free Library and we just reconnected when I ran into him this week and he is going to tell us here all about Lalo. My name is Chris Paul. I'm a chef. My family's from Haiti. I grew up in the U.S. more or less. I've been in Philadelphia for about

20 years in the hospitality industry. Graduated from Drexel had a restaurant in West Philly and now I'm kind of a sabbatical doing hanging out, doing some programs here and there with the Free Library. Nice. You just told me a little bit about your connection to Lalo, which we call Malachia or Juzmallow or Jute. Can you tell us a little bit about your family's experience with that plant? Yeah, so Lalo in Haiti, we usually make it in the form of a legume.

So more or less, I know my grandmother's side, she's from Peña, Haiti, which is more of a province. and their, you know, legumes are very part of an everyday meal, whereas, you know, nowadays it's such a tedious process that I think people make it less and less, especially, you know, being in the U.S., I might only make it like two, three times a year. My mom is in Canada, she might make it, like, every now and then, but growing up, we used to have it almost weekly, and my favorite variation is with blue crabs, so we actually make the legume, and then we cook the crabs in it. And, you know, it's just like the crabs you have here, so you have to, it's kind of a really messy, you go into it, you break it down, chew it up. And it's, I just remember it being very, like, you know, kind of like that okra texture. You mentioned as it cooks down, it's very dark green. Yeah, so we grew up eating that almost once a week, like on Sundays, preferably, every now and then, yeah.

And what do you mean by make a legume? So what we call a legume is more of a process rather than, like, peanuts are legume. and we think of it as a category, but in Haitian, you know, maybe slash French cuisine, Ligium is a process of cooking down greens, other, including other greens such as the Choyote squash. So we have some of that in there. We call that Bayesian. You would have that, sometimes spinach, pretty much anything green.

It's usually a combination of three, four leaves that you're sauteing with onions, garlic, and then you really almost stew and pressure cook using one of those, like, traditional like iron pots and it's a long tedious process so you know you're picking leaves you're picking stems and uh i would say usually it takes a few hours like three even four hours the longer to merrier uh so it's really like a thing where sunday morning before church my grandma preps everything and then you know when you come back from church one to o'clock it's like oh it's ready so yeah it's a long process do you remember seeing it growing or did it just kind of appear in the kitchen yeah we never you know although my grandmother grew a lot of things we never

grew that per se but I've seen it raw you know so I've seen the leaves come in but I've never harvested it you know I know as you mentioned there are some not fake but things that cook like it like tarot and even like the wild spinach sometimes if you could cook it down like a legume you get a good consistency but Lalo is sort of like it's a delicacy I would say I think people like if you bought Lalo to someone here that has been in Haiti they they'll go crazy like oh my god where'd you get this so it's definitely a delicacy cool and one last question about the recipes is in the process is the leaf whole is it chopped how much how finely chopped is it do you remember that part yeah so the leaf would be roughly chopped yeah it would be roughly chopped i mean the great

thing about Caribbean cooking is like we don't really we never really had cutting boards you know it was just kind of like you're just cutting with your hand so you know usually my grandma just sit in front of a bowl and she's just kind of nodding and cutting and even for the most part ripping you know so it's very rough because at the end of the day two three hours later it's sort of all going to come back and you know you're really chopping it to infuse the flavors but if you were to not chop it you probably could just steam it up and it'll break up eventually awesome thank you so much for sharing that do you have a way people can follow what you're doing yeah definitely so you can follow me on instagram at crisp ball chef as i said i'm coming off sort

of a sabbatical so i don't have any project per se but i have i do have some things in the works with the Free Library, the programming, maybe some collaborative dinners, and maybe I might start a farm soon. That's something in the back of my mind. So we'll see. But Chris Paul, Chef, on Instagram. That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. You're welcome. Take care. This next interview is in a crowded, kind of loud space at the Free Library, Central Branch down in Center City, Philadelphia. It's with a man named Nick, who came to a seed swap that we were putting on, you know, I put on seed swaps through Philadelphia Seed Exchange and partnership with the library. And so Nick was there. He's an older Filipino man who came looking specifically

for Malagia and Moringa seeds. And luckily he found both at the seed swap. And he talked a little bit about his relationship to Malagia. So here we go. I guess one other thing I should say is that really new still to podcasting and voice recording, and I plugged the mic into the wrong jack. And so instead of this nice mic in front of his face, the built-in mic on my recorder is what picked us up. So it's particularly loud, but I think you can hear it just fine. The second part of the interview is through this mic. This one is commonly called in the Philippines Saloyot. The scientific name is Corcorus Obliatorius.

It is commonly known as juice mallow, but in Arabic it is commonly known as Molokia. As a side note, this is well known in the Middle East. And a lot of people know that this is the food that Cleopatra in ancient Egypt eats. So that might be a... a good incentive for people to try this. This is slimy. So it takes, that is a saying, it takes a while for you to get used to the taste. All right? How do you prepare saluo in the Philippines? It is usually prepared like a stew. It could be with fish, it could be with meat. Can you say your name again?

My name is Nick without the saint. Thank you. And what part of the Philippines are you from? Capital region. Where do these plants grow in the Philippines? Almost everywhere. Because in the Philippines, we don't have four seasons, only dry and wet. Okay.

And can you say one more time the names of each of these in your language? Moringa Olifera is known as Malungay. And Corcorus Olitorius is known in English as Jus, Malo, but locally it is called Saloyot. Thank you so much. These next voice recordings come from our friend Ruby Oli Semeca. And I first met Ruby many years ago leading a farm school, New York City, Training of Trainers course, which is a class on popular education for farmers. And now Ruby's a farm school, NYC instructor herself, which is so awesome.

I just love farm school and the connections through that organization. Here she will talk about West African and specifically Yoruba uses of Malachia, aka Aweilu. Hey, Chris and Owen, this is Farmer Ruby. Thank you for having me on your incredible and very, very necessary podcast. seeds and their people. I'm so happy to join you in the conversation about Egyptian spinach. And in West Africa, we call it Owedu. I think I first had it when I was in boarding school in Shagamu Ogun State. And that's a Yoruba state in Nigeria. And I've loved it ever since. In Nigeria, Oweidu is typically eaten by Yoruba people.

and is interestingly eaten in a very specific type of way. Ewe-Du or Egyptian spinach is usually combined with locust beans. We call that iru. And sometimes it's combined with egusi, that's melon seeds, ground-up melon seeds. And usually a wedu mixed with egusi is given to women, after going through childbirth to kind of give them, you know, strengthen their bodies up again and help them, help them to produce milk. Now, El-Wa-Du, again, it's really specific how it's eaten.

It's just not eaten with anything. O'Re-Du is typically eaten with something called Amala. And Amala is literally dried African yam flour and the flower looks kind of like

a grayish color it's like a grayish color and when you mix that up with hot water you cook it on the stove you get this dark brown very dark brown doughy food that's eaten alongside with

way-do that's amella and it's delicious i mean it's to many it's an acquired taste i particularly love it and i have a way do in my freezer as we speak um my friend farmer brendan parker from red hook farms i got some from him last summer and it's i got a ton of a waydue from him last summer and i think i have one bag left in my freezer I'm going to make some tonight. My aunt gifted me a bag of amala flour from my last trip to Nigeria. Amazing. It's just so delicious and so filling.

And just typically, just because Africans think so holistically, a widu is more than just a food, right? There are medicinal dimensions to it and there are spiritual dimensions to it. I have a teacher, his name is Oriadeiposa Agitelu. I probably butchered his name. Pardon me. But he's a phenomenal spiritualist and has, really deep insight into how the indigenous Yorba people view a way do.

Again, it's more than a food. It's a medicine. You know, Oriata teaches me that it's used to enhance digestive function. So drinking the juices of it will alleviate stomach pains. Eating it raw can alleviate constipation. There are like a number of spirits. recipes that you can prepare you know you can use you can prepare with a way to do one of them is a recipe for fighting spiritual attacks another recipes to attract blessings into your life

one is for spiritual defense right and there's another for attracting both physical and spiritual love. Let's see if I have a recipe to share. Here's one that's really good. So you get some away-do leaf, you boil it inside a big pot with enough water, right? You add a little bit of salt, and if you identify as female, you add seven white stones to the pot. If you identify as male, you add nine white stones to the pot and you add one alligator pepper you cover the pot and this is supposed to attract blessings into your household and also serve as a defense for any sort of like spiritual attack on your home another really interesting recipe spiritual recipe using a way do is that you burn it.

You burn it alongside alligator pepper. And then you take that ash and you combine it with soap, maybe some honey and palm oil. And that soap is used as medicine or attraction for physical and spiritual love. And again, these are recipes that Oriade has. And I encourage people to reach out to him if they want to learn more about the various indigenous uses of what we do. So Ruby shared with us contact information for her teacher, and we're going to put it in the show notes. So this is your notice that we have show notes.

And I always forget to mention it. But if you go check out the kind of information on this podcast, either on our website or I think also on all of the other. apps, you can see links and more information about each of the people who speak and the things they speak about. So check it out. Back to Ruby. If people want to learn more about it would do how it's used indigenously in Yorba Land, definitely reach out to him. And for me as a farmer, I encourage all gardeners to plant and grow this. This is a wild food. And we know that wild food typically contain more phytonutrients, have the ability to take up more minerals from the, from the soil, and are just much more vigorous. So if you plant this, you will see how vigorous it grows.

It's incredible. I planted the seedlings in the pot, and they went crazy. I mean, they were so healthy. so strong. Yeah, I definitely encourage you to grow a way due this season. But yeah, that's about it. I hope that what I said was informative and you took something out of that. Thank you so much for letting me talk about one of my favorite plants and inspiring my dinner for tonight. All right.

Thanks a lot, Owen. Thanks a lot, Chris. Love you guys so much. Thanks. Thank you so much, Ruby. We love you too. So this next interview is a little bit longer. It's with Anan Tsar, Palestinian chef, who is now a friend of mine.

We first met, like, with several other people in this interview through the Free Library of Philadelphia. The Culinary Literacy Center, particularly my friend Susanna Arminska invited me to be a part of Anon's workshop about Zatar, where I talked a bit about Sumac, which is one of the ingredients in the spice mix. And Anon and I became friends, and we stayed in touch, and she came out to harvest Malachia at my farm, and she traded seeds with me from a Palestinian strain that she had been growing. And, you know, the rest of the rest of rest is history. And so this interview I, a couple weeks ago, drove out and met her at her home west of the city. And she was gracious enough to share her story and recipes with us. So

here you go. Thank you so much for speaking with me and our listeners. Can you say your name and explain where we are and who you are? Yes. My name is Anan, Jardaleez. And I live in Glen Mills, PA, which is about 22 miles southwest of Philadelphia. And we came, we've been in this area since 1980 because of jobs. My husband used to work in a local company here. And I have four children. I am Palestinian. I came to this country at the age of 11, but to California.

So the first 12 years in this country, I did live in California. then I lived in the Middle East for three years, and I've been here since 1980. I actually was a teacher, and not a certified teacher, but I taught privately in the PA Department of Education in the summer program. But I also had a restaurant from 95 to 2001 in Wilmington, Delaware, and it was mainly Middle Eastern food, Mediterranean food, which, I mean, I love to call it. cook. I'm a great cook, and I have four children, so I really had to cook. Great. Can you describe a little more about, or can we start with your earliest memories of Malachia? And can you tell us how you pronounce it? Okay, I pronounce it Milchia. Okay, and this is due to my regional accent of northern Palestine. Some people in the south, in Gaza and in Egypt, they

pronounce it milchia. And it's a very, very delicious dish that we prepare. And I'm, and I make it, I personally still make it once a week in my house, it's prepared differently. Now, I make it different than maybe a village that's only 10 kilometers from where I am in Palestine. So it even has regional differences in preparation of the actual dish. So how, well, before we get to the preparation, because I'm very excited to hear how you make it, what are your earliest kind of sensory memories of interacting with this plant and this dish? Oh, my earliest one is, and we all dreaded it. You know, my mother would buy huge bushels in Lachie,

and then we would sit on the floor, and we would have to sit for hours, taking the leaf off the stem, okay, and then she would wash it, and then we would put it on, in those days she dried it. And, of course, when we first would prepare it, or take the leaves of the stem, she would cook it fresh. And then for the rest of the season, she would dry it and store it in muslin bags.

And we loved it. And my mother, I believe, only made it with chicken. And that's how I make it now. And it's made several ways. But it is a dish that most Palestinians and most Arabs love. Okay. And it has this consistency of, and that's what. why some people don't like it, especially non-Arabs, because it has a slimy consistency,

like Okra in a way. But we do things to get rid of that, and not completely. I mean, it will always be there, but it is extremely nutritious and delicious. It could be eaten like a soup, or the way my mother made it, which I do not make that way, she makes it very thick, okay, with chicken, and she takes pita bread and scoops it. So she doesn't even eat it with a spoon or a fork. So she would take the pita bread, and because it's so thick, she scoops the milchia and the chicken, and that's how she eats it in her mouth.

Awesome. And have you always eaten it even when you moved to California, even when you moved here, and where did you get it? Oh, now, for example, when we moved to California, my mother, our family really missed it because we couldn't find it anywhere. So my mom always had a garden, so she grew it. Okay, in California, she grew it. And then later on, I would say in the last, because of the Arab American community, has grown in this country. So we find it now in Middle Eastern stores and most of the time it's frozen. So I buy it frozen and it is from Egypt. Yeah. Okay. Wow. And so, but you also continued to grow it yourself for a while. Yes. I grew it for actually at least 10 years here in my backyard garden. And maybe I'll grow it this year again.

but it needs it needs a lot of care you know you have to make sure you get all the weeds you know you really have to weed and it was attacked a few times by some insects i don't know what kind and and i don't spray so i would lose that a lot and then the minute it gets milchia really loves hot weather if it goes down to like 68 69 you know it turns yellow and that's it so it i don't think it's it's that easy to grow also it on the east coast here it rains a lot. So I'm not sure if Melchhi likes that much water. I mean, it does. You have to water it. In the Middle East, we water it. But here the precipitation, the rainfall is so high that the leaf actually looks so much different than if you grow it in California. Here the leaf gets very big and it's very, very green. But if you buy it in the Middle East or in California, the

leaf is rougher and it's not as shiny. And there's a different taste. Yeah. How did the look of the plants in my field and the taste of the plants from my field compare to California and the Middle East? I'll tell you, the look is the leaves are bigger, and of course you grow it very high. You know, it grows very high. They are more silky, they're softer. You know, it tasted delicious, so I'm not going to say what's grown in California and the Middle East tastes better. It tastes different. Yeah, it has a different taste.

And also, like I said, it depends on how you prepare it. You know, I, for example, like it very finely minced. Some people cook it with the whole leaf. They don't do anything to it. So you get a totally different taste there. And then what garnishes you put, what we put lemon and maybe some people throw in tomatoes to also get rid of that slimy taste that it has. But the mulchia is delicious and the fresh milchia is definitely more delicious than dried and then the frozen.

than the frozen. Could you speak? Tell us quickly how you, just like an overview of how you prepare it. So, because we've heard from a couple other people on this, how they prepare it. So just to compare and contrast.

Oh, okay. First, I like, I make melchiyi when it's very finely minced. So I start with that. And I only like to use chicken. So I use, I take, let's say, two quarts of water.

Well, it doesn't really matter how much, depending on how much chicken you have. I put just salt and pepper, okay, and I will throw in there like maybe four or six cloves of cartic. When it boils, I throw the chicken in there, and I cook that for maybe about half an hour when it's almost all cooked, almost falling off the bone, and I use chicken with the bone

because you want to get really nice broth. Then I will throw in the very fine muluchy, minced milchiy. and I let that boil for maybe five minutes, and there's another trick about Molchiyi, at least this is what my mother taught me, is that you do not cover the pot. Okay, after you put the melchia in the broth, you don't cover the pot.

We let that, it should take, that will take about 10 minutes, and then on the side, I crushed some garlic, okay, I saute that in, with a little bit of salt and pepper. use coriander, a lot of people use coriander. I crushed the garlic, I saute that, and then I put it on the top of the Melchie, that's still cooking, and let that cook for maybe three, four minutes, and that's really what gives Milchia its final touch. And then I serve it, so I make it not very soupy and not thick, so that it's like a stew, and I serve it with rice. And now some people

make it very, very thick, and they actually use the pita bread to scoop it. But the way I make it, I make it, I know in Egypt, or I've had it at an Egyptian friend, they make it more soupy than I do. I don't make it very soupy, and that's it. But then I also, after, you have to have lemon. We squeeze lemon on it when we're eating it. And I also make another thing, just crush some more garlic, keep it raw, and mix it with lemon juice. and hot pepper, jalapeno, or whatever green pepper you like.

And that, we always put that right after we serve it in our individual plates. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Switching gears a little bit, I would love to hear more about your culinary kind of journey and, you know, having had a Middle Eastern restaurant or Mediterranean restaurant, what are the most essential ingredients and dishes kind of to your taste of? home, so to speak? In Arabic, Middle Eastern, Palestinian, Mediterranean cooking, we use a lot of extra version olive oil, okay, rice, but a hundred years ago, we really did not use rice.

We used wheat, something like freaky. We have a lot of stews, and we cook, we have a lot of vegetarian dishes, but we do cook with lamb and chicken. It is, we use a lot of garlic, onions, and parsley. Like, for example, I don't think I make any dish without onions. You know, when I saute any kind of meat or even vegetables, I start with onions. With extra version olive oil and onions. We use a lot of beans.

For example, chickpeas, which we make the hummus out of. We use a lot of white beans and stews. A lot of fresh vegetables. lots of eggplants and the kusa, which is the gray squash. And we core a lot of these vegetables and we stuff them with meat and rice and cook them in a tomato broth. Yeah, the kusa is basically a zucchini that's very light green colored or gray. And it's interesting because it's also used a lot in Mexican cooking.

Yes, it's used a lot in Mexican cooking. But the way we use it is much different than the way it's used in Mexican cooking. we use it and we like the small ones and what we do is we core it we take the inside out and we save that we cook that separately and then we stuff it with the spiced meat and the medium grain rice at least that's how I make it and we make it in a tomato broth awesome and so you know with your restaurant and with your work that I've witnessed at the free library with the Culinary Literacy Center, and I'm sure in many other instances, you are really kind of carrying the torch for your traditional cuisine. And why is that so important to you and to the

world right now? Well, you know what? It is so important to me. And I like to concentrate on a few dishes that are distinctly Palestinian. And because of basically what's happening to Palestinians. Otherwise, I would not concentrate so much on just Palestinian food, because Palestinian food is also very similar to Syrian, Lebanese, and Jordanian. Of course, each region has their own distinct dishes. And so I've done actually, after I close my restaurants, I have done some fundraisers, like, you know, I invite people for dinner, and it's for a specific charity organization, but they get to taste really delicious Palestinian dishes. What I've seen with specifically Malachia, but with so many of the seeds that we carry in

the catalog, but none more so than Malachia or Malagia is that kind of spark of recognition and this like quenching of a thirst for this taste of home that has been long. for ever since having to leave. In a lot of cases by force, most people don't leave their home because they want to. And so being able to reconnect with this food has been so satisfying from what I've witnessed with Malachia. And I'm hoping, you know, as we introduce more Middle Eastern varieties like the Kusa and Zatar, and so on, just to be able to reconnect people with these tastes of home when they've been disconnected from their homeland. Have you witnessed that as well through your work?

Yes, of course. I mean, especially about, like I said, Mlchiy Kusa, now we can find more in the last 10 years in the stores. But Mlachia until now is to buy green Mlchia is very difficult. I mean, I would have to drive, and it's only available two months to like Northern Jersey where there's a large Palestinian community,

and there are a few grocery stores that do sell it. But it's, it is. I mean, when you, when most Palestinians, I know love Melchiyah. So it does, you know, it's almost eating Melchia is almost emotional. You know, if I call people and tell them, which I did a couple of years ago when Owen was growing the Green Milchiyahiy, they just said, are you sure? They got so excited. And, and you could tell that they were really happy to have to be able to get Grim Luchie is very, very rare yes your friends who came out then came out again the following year and we're going to

have them on this interview as well and they said if you plant a whole field of this we will come and we will tell everybody we will buy it this is so important to us and they bring it home and they have their kids pluck the leaves like you did and like they did when they were kids back home yeah it's beautiful um yeah i don't know is it i don't know how to if it makes sense to bring And it would be cool to like talk about the social kind of political aspects of this being that it's a food, a diasporic food that, you know, why is there a diaspora? You know, why, why is it that so many people have had to leave? You know, this, it was nice about talking about these specific foods is it's like the hope, you know, it's the ways that people have stayed connected to their homelands. But it's often harder to talk about why did people have to leave, you know? And so I don't know if there's any kind of closing thoughts. you have on that. I like to be able to offer the literal seeds of these very important foods to people who have been disconnected from where they come from. And a lot of times it's hard to talk about why is that disconnect there. So how do you kind of deal with that? You also work in the

hope side, you know, the food side, the side where people are staying connected to their culture despite being halfway across the world from where they're from. How do you think about that? Since I am Palestinian, I will talk about most Palestinians who came to this country came after the 1964, when Israel occupied the rest of Palestine. And by the way, Israel has been in existence only 71 years, and that's really not such a long time. Basically, in 1948, about 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. They were expelled, they were terrorized, they fled just because they had children to take care of their family. They were kicked out. And what's the most important thing about all of this is when there is a war, people will go to a safe place to guard their children, but then they're able to come back.

But the Palestinians have not been able to come back. On the contrary, if some tried to return from the borders, they would. be either imprisoned or shot or just thrown back into whatever country that they are refugees in. So for me, you know, I don't know, I'm sure you have been listening a lot to the news lately. Actually, the issue of Palestine is coming up now in the American run for president. You know, I mean, it was never mentioned before, okay, because it's when you think about it, it's really also human rights issue. You know, a lot of people don't know that basically when the state of Israel was established, let's take Jaffa. Jaffa was a very beautiful Palestinian cities.

It had hospitals, it had theaters, it had culture. I mean, basically, the people were kicked out. and another set of people were just put in their place. And, you know, why should the indigenous people of that land, okay, who have lived there for centuries, become refugees, because another group of people that was basically brought the majority of them from Europe to take the country? homes. So for me in my work right now, and I am retired, but I like to work a lot around food, so I'm always like to say, this is a Palestinian dish, and this is a Palestinian dish, and this is a Palestinian dish, and this is a Palestinian dish, because we don't want, we feel that basically the occupation, the Israeli occupation of our land is Palestine, is trying to make us disappear. So we try many different ways in saying, hey, we've always been there and

we are alive. Beautiful. Thank you. No, absolutely beautiful. Well, thank you so much for sharing that and thank you for your work because just this simple act of cooking these dishes, you just put the perfect context for it. It's so much deeper than how delicious it is. It's about so much more. So thank you for that. And also follow me on Instagram. Anan-Z-R at Instagram. That's it. Can you spell it for people? A-N-A-N-Z-A-R. And you will see a lot of the dishes that I prepare, some recipes. And the whole idea of me having an Instagram account is to inspire you to cook the dishes

that I post. And it is very inspiring and beautiful. So thank you so much again. You're welcome. You're welcome, Owen. Thank you for everything that you do. Now we'll hear from one of Anand's friends, Hoda Mansour and her daughter Noor. Hoda and Noor and Noor's younger brother visited the farm this summer, just like they did the year before to harvest Molagia, and they took the time to tell us a little bit about their relationship to it. The first time I recorded, I didn't have the mic on, and so they were kind enough to do. a second interview. Thank you so much. Here they are. Hello, is this been on? I told you this

been on. Did this talk? Hello. It's very loud. Try a little quieter. Hi. Hi. Okay, here, I'm going to do questions really quick. Okay, sorry to make you do this twice. Can you say your name and why you came to the farm today? Sure. My name is Hoda Mansour. I came to the farm to get our favorite melchie a very enjoyable and a staple dish in our household awesome and we just spent time the four of us out there harvesting so you said last year that you what you harvested lasted all year can you talk a little bit about what you're going to do when you go home and how to make it last sure so when we go home we're going to all of us together are going to sit down and myself and and the kids are going to sit down and pluck the leaves.

I'm going to flash rinse it because they're very clean, so it doesn't need that much rinsing. And then I'm going to portion it and then put it in Ziploc bags and freeze it. And it'll be just as fresh when I cook it. And it'll probably last me about a year. So I'll probably make about now with the amount that I have about 20 bags, which I'm so excited about.

Great. And I know that you cook it in several ways in a couple main ways. Can you talk a little bit about those? Sure. So you can make it vegetarian. You can make it with chicken, with lamb, with beef. You can make it as a stew or with just olive oil. Some people make it as a whole leaf and you eat it with a fork with bread, pita bread, any kind of bread. Or you mince it. And I usually like to mince it when it's frozen. It's just, you know, with a fork. With bread, with bread, any kind of bread. Or you mince it. And I usually like to mince it when it's frozen. easy for me. I don't know why. Human said and then it'll be like a soup and my daughter will tell you more about it. It's her favorite. Nice slimy soup that just goes right down. You serve it with rice. Some people like to serve it with rice or you just drink, eat it as is. And can you describe your first memories with this plant?

Sure. I remember plucking the leaves with my grandma. I remember it being a tedious work and having like I just remember saying no I don't want to do it it's so boring but now I look back and I just say I wish I savored every moment of it because it was really quite the memory my sisters and I just like drinking tea talking and you know and we would have a lot more than this but yeah it was like a family event where did it come from who grew it so it would just like back in the In Lebanon, it was just from the farms around us. Yeah, and it would just come home like that.

You say your name and your age? I'm Noor and I'm 13 years old. Can I ask you to, your mom mentioned your favorite dish? Can you talk about your favorite way to eat this and your earliest memories? When I was, when I was really young, my mom used to like, you know, make it as like, almost a stew or a soup, so that way, you know, little baby me could just swallow it,

swallow it, like, really easily because, obviously, I didn't have teeth, so I can chew on the chicken or the lamb, so I had to eat it either as a stew, as, like, a stew or, like, I don't know, it's a very slimy, like, consistency, and I was probably my earliest memory, like, when I was, like, one or two years old. And can you talk a little bit like we did before about kind of carrying these traditions forward and what role you want to play in that? I definitely want to grow a bunch of these plants. I want to grow Maquilla and I want to keep the tradition alive.

So that obviously starts with me sitting down watching my mom and every step of the way asking her, how does this happen? How do you make this? what's like this, what's the spice that you put into this, and just hopefully, you know, catching on and learning how to make it for my future kids, if I even have any, but I want to definitely grow for, like me. I want to learn how to make makir.

Awesome. And then finally, a little bit about the pronunciation and the different ways your family pronounces it. and why? One side of my family says mullahia and the other side of my family usually says mochia and I say mochia I don't pronounce the L and my mom pronounces the L and you can say it I don't know there's like a bunch there's like molochia there's Moologia there's a lot there's like from different parts of the Middle East and

And honestly, everywhere, it's just, it depends, like, honestly, how you, how you hear where you're from, just stuff like that. And where are your parents from? My mom's from Lebanon, or she grew up in Lebanon, but she's... I got water. Her family's from Palestine, and so is my dad. Awesome. Thank you all so much for being a part of this. Thank you for doing what you're doing and preserving the fruits and vegetables and passing it.

on. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. This next interview is with Mason from Bear Bottom Farm in Virginia. I first did this interview with him over Skype in order to write a magazine article for what is now called Mother Earth Gardner about Malachia. So check that out. I also interviewed several other people for that. Mason and Wiley at Bear Bottom. and farm grow many crops, including lots of seeds for our true love seeds catalog. And so in this episode, we're going to particularly focus on, of course, Malagia and Mason's connection to this plant through his Syrian grandfather and the ways they've carried that legacy forward. We'll hear about how they grow it, how they eat it, how they seed seeds for it.

And if you want to be part of that legacy, check out the True Love Seeds Catalog, François. Syrian Malachia. So here's Mason. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm really excited to hear your story again and to record it for posterity. So who are you and where are you? My name is Mason Hart Crater and I live in Buckingham County in central Virginia. Awesome. And tell us just a little bit about your farm? We have a pretty diversified farm. We raise a herd of hogs. It's kind of like a cowcalf operation, but hogs instead of cows who sell feeder piglets and hog shares. We do some seed work. We grow dry corn for milling and sweet sorghum for molasses. And we farm with a team of mules. And we do some logging as well. Amazing. I would love to just

jump into the seed story and then hear more, get more of the context of your work from that. So you grow a lot of seeds for the True Love Seed catalog, but the one that kind of is the most potent story in my mind is the one that comes from your own family, the Syrian Melochia. So I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about how you came to start growing that and what the background is to that seed story. So the Malahia is actually very special to me, and I was really happy that you were interested in it when we first started talking about growing seeds because I had talked to some other people trying to sell the seed, and it just wasn't really striking with other people the way it did with you. So that was really important for me. So the Malahia is a food I grew up eating, and it was my connection to my connection to my.

middle eastern heritage was mostly through food and you know a little bit family culture wise but mainly food and that was a really big one for me and my grandpa grew it all growing up i remember being little and going out to his garden plot and seeing just a whole bunch of mollea just growing there and we would pick it and my mom telling us stories about picking it when she was little you know always eating in that plan was always involved in a lot of family stories and so yeah as i guess as i got older. I kind of honestly forgot about it for a while. And it didn't really, it didn't really come to mind until I started living here on the farm. And my brother was cleaning out my grandpa's freezer one day and was just, hey, you want this bag of a seed that found in grandpa's freezer? I don't know how long

it's been there. I was like, oh, sure. I was like, I'll take that. And so I, you know, I talked to my grandpa who was still alive at the time, and I was like, when do you plant this? And he told me a little bit of things about it and figure out when to plant it and how to grow it and it grows like a weed. So it was pretty easy. It was pretty easy to start cultivating it. I want to hear a lot about all those things like who your grandfather was, how he got here, how he held on to the seeds. And also what does that mean it grows like a weed? So all of the above. Okay. So I guess a little bit about my grandpa. We were pretty close when I was growing up. We just, I was pretty close with my mom. side of the family. He was a chemist, and he was born in Cairo. His dad had come from Aleppo when he was a 20-year-old

and settled in Cairo because of religious persecution. They were Christians, or Catholics, rather. Honestly, how my grandpa got the seed is a little bit of a mystery to me and a little bit of a mystery to my family. I asked my mom, and I wasn't able to ask him before he died, unfortunately. My mom thinks that the seed was sent to him by an uncle after he moved here. I'm here being the United States. And they moved, this year was the 50th anniversary of their move, July 1st. So I got to do some math to figure that out. Yeah, so he was a textile chemist, and he was a textile chemist in Cairo.

He had his own business. And when he immigrated here, he just, you know, restarted his textile business, and he has eight U.S. patents for textiles, mostly fire retardant materials, and ways to kind of make industrial material cheaper to produce, and also very durable. So, you know, just some very useful things. He was a very, like, straightforward kind of guy, no fluff, very tough, very smart. also caring in his own way. So I guess a little bit about the mollaheia as far as, you know, it growing like a weed. Oh, go ahead. I just want to, can you say what his name was?

Oh, Francoa Mousali. Cool. And also, I'd love to hear, like, what he thought of you, you all growing his seed. He didn't give a hoot. I took it to him. I took it to him. He was... My mom, maybe this is, maybe you don't want to put this on your podcast or whatever, but he was always very, like, gruff.

He was never very, like, loving and he was, he, I know he loved us, but he was never very loving and friendly. And my mom, later on in his life, as my mom started to be the one to take care of him and spend literally all of her free time with him and providing him all of his care, she was sort of starting to be convinced that he was maybe had asperger's or some kind of you know he wasn't like neurotypical in the way that he interacted with other people and he definitely didn't know how to show any kind of affection or pick up on social cues like that and I remember I was very my mom was very excited that we were growing it and you know he would ask about it and stuff but I took him some when he was in the nursing home and he wouldn't even eat it but you know I don't I don't like it doesn't hurt my feelings I don't care but it's just like I thought it was pretty funny and it was my brother who was like

oh we have to take grandpa some of his small hell we have to take it to him it's gonna be so important and I was like whatever he does not care he's old and then what he did and I was like see I told you but I mean I think it's more for me and you know other members of my family that I think it's important that I'm growing it. And it does a lot,

it does a lot for me to grow it. I mean, I never necessarily did it for him. So what does it do for you and your mother and your brother? It definitely, I mean, it's a very special plant to me because I held onto that Middle Eastern culture through food mostly. So that's like a very concrete way to be like, I have this thing that I plant every year that literally grew my family. So that's kind of nice. And it's funny because you talk about it. You know, people always ask you what you grow when you say you grow seeds for someone. And that's the one thing that people are like, what?

What's Molahia? And you're like, well, it's like a slimy soup green. And they're like, ew. Yeah, you may have seen there's people that come to my farm to harvest it, mostly Palestinians. and they talk about it like that slimy soup green but in a loving, adoring way. Oh, yeah. They're like, it's just slimy and it goes right down my throat and, you know, in a way that makes it sound delicious when they talk about it, like with the tone of their voice.

But it's not what a lot of other people I know would find appealing sounding. I know. I think it's on the same line as like okra and things like that where people are like, oh, I can't handle the slimyness. And I'm like. That's what I love about it. Totally, me too. I think it's just the taste thing or what you're used to.

And my aunt said that she's actually my grandpa's niece. So I don't really know what that makes her to me. But her name is Mira. And she said that she would feed. Every time her son would bring home dates or whatever, she would feed them all hay to make sure that they were going to get along with the family. She was like, if you can't get this down, you can't hang around here. It's awesome.

But I think that's pretty funny. How would she prepare it? How would you prepare it? I prepare it the same way my family does. There are lots of ways to prepare it, but I've never explored any of them but this one way, which is I take onions and garlic chopped in a pan, a little bit of olive oil and a spoonful of lard, just whatever nice fat you want, really. I would not coconut oil or anything like that um stuff is gross but um it gives the wrong flavor for the dish

but so I take um five cardamom pods and I'm talking a whole onion you know half a bowl of garlic you know and a good amount of grease and yeah so and then I take cumin five cardamom pods a little bit of hot pepper whatever you whatever kind of hot pepper you like. And I just take that and put it in the pan, and I just saute the onions in that

and kind of turn the heat down really low, so the onions really caramelize and go a lot of their liquid. And you make kind of like a weird paste. And you add some salt and pepper. And then take them all hay leaves, and you take them off the stem, and you chop them extremely finely. Because they do get like a mucilaginous layer on top when you cook them.

So if you leave them whole, it's just a little bit too much to try to chew and swallow. So chop them real fine, and then you go on and add that to the pan, and you kind of just stir it all around so the leaves start to cook, but don't roast them. And then I like to use chicken stock, and I just take a big quart of chicken stock and pour it over that pan of greens and onion paste, and just stir it really gently,

and let it gently cook. Don't boil it. And then I'll add a little bit of lemon juice at that point, but mainly the lemon juice you add after. So I let that sit on low heat, and then I've already cooked a pot of rice. And so the way we eat it is just take a big spoonful of rice into your bowl and then take a big ladleful of the Molaha mixture

and you pour that on there. I usually pick the cardamom pods out after they're in my bowl. I don't bother fishing for them. Yeah, and then you add a little lemon juice and salt on top. It kind of the acidity cuts the slimyness and makes it really nice. I know Greek people serve it with chicken on top, and I've heard lamb, too. And there's so many different ways to cook it. Well, yeah, that's what we do.

That sounds delicious. It is so good. And you can make it vegan, too, by use some vegetable broth or whatever. So it's a pretty easy dish to make vegetarian. Would you have it vegetarian ever growing up? like maybe during Lent or something? No. No, never.

I was raised fairly Catholic. We didn't observe things like not eating meat on Fridays. You know, we did at school, but not at home. I know my grandpa probably did. He was a lot stricter than we were, but I don't remember ever doing it like that. How about the growing of Melchia? What would you, what's the process from seed to seed?

So do, you need to do whatever kind of tillage you're going to to do on your soil. You always direct seed it. There's no reason to transplant except for seed keeping in a cooler climate, but we'll get to that at the end. It's really important the soil is very, like the same temperature you would want to plant okra. So 60 degrees plus when you plant these seeds. So I say for here June 1st is good. Let the foil warm up and don't put any mulch or anything on them when you first sew them because it'll keep the soil. too cold. I just like to prep my patch, however, a 4x8 bed or whatever you're going to do, and just go on and sprinkle the seeds, you know, evenly and take a ray and cover it up with soil.

You don't have to, you know, they're tiny little seeds. You don't have to really dig them down or anything like that. And in a few days, they'll start to come up. It's germination is usually like three to five days when the temperatures are right. And you can give them a little water when you're re-first sew them, but you don't need to soak them even. Yeah, and then as far as, you know, keeping them weeded is not very hard because they come up so fast and make a nice carpet. As far as harvesting, you can really start to harvest as soon as there's leaves. Like at any stage in the plant, you can start to harvest it.

Yeah, it's as simple as that the leaves freeze really well. I like to chop them before I freeze them and just freeze them in bags. my grandpa would freeze them in chicken stock to make them more convenient in a plastic bag and then he would just take the Malaya out it would just look like a big old block and he would just saw it in a pan and then it would be dinner in five minutes can I ask a harvest question sure because it's a new plant to me in the last like five years and I'm always trying to get seed from it also so I end up taking the top foot or two like a branch. I mean, for me, it gets like taller than me. Oh, yeah. And so when people come to harvest,

I cut a couple feet off the top, like above the seed pods for them. And is that normal or do you normally keep the plants shorter because you're harvesting constantly? My grandpa would harvest constantly because he had four children that he could just send out to harvest this plant that grows so quickly. So his plants would always be very short. And what I do is I just have to separate plants that I'm saving for seed. Because honestly, I always struggle to get plants to viable seed in this climate, which, you know, it gets very hot here, but still, it's not, you know, it's not Egypt. Yeah, even with a June 1st planting, sometimes I don't get seed in the fall. So what I've been doing now is starting whatever, 20 plants in cells, and then transplanting those

out June 1st, so they have a head start. And that's what I usually end up saving seed from. And even last year had to cover with row cover several times and covering an eight foot tall plant with row cover is not fun and that's just you know that's just like insurance because a lot of times the eating crop will go to seed but you know every year is different for us and you know last year we had a 28 degree night October 22nd so that's not that doesn't work for seed right but you will does the way I'm describing how I harvest does that sound legit as far as being able to harvest and still getting feeds in the same plant or even just like is that like I imagine if you keep them short you have more tender leaves or something I mean the top foot top top top couple feet

look like nice quality leaves and people are very happy with it right as well as the leaves are tender because I mean the leaves on the bottom definitely get Japanese beetle damage and definitely can get very tough and then they just don't cook down to be very good to eat yeah as long as the leaves are tender and don't have a lot of bug damage it doesn't really matter where on the plant you're harvesting from that's true i only the only damage i do see on our crop is japanese beetles they love it it's funny because they love the okra too i mean i love those things i don't blame them okay so how do you um can you talk us through the seed saving yes the mollhaig it's very tall Ours usually gets to be about six to eight feet, and it'll have little yellow flowers and send up clusters of feed pods that are long and look kind of like a mini cucumber, for lack of better words.

So those are going to be ready when they start to turn dark brown and get dry. And so what I like to do is I like to have them dry on the plant, but that's not always possible. When they do dry on the plant, I just go through and I cut all the seed pods off. off into a big basket. And the pods very readily shatter when you put pressure on them. So I'll usually just take a big sheet or another big basket or something like that. And I'll just gently squeeze the pods in my hands. And they're, they kind of peel like a banana where there's little sections. And each little section will have these beautiful emerald seeds just completely filling it. And that's how you know that the seeds are ready and are going to be viable for next

years, they've reached that color. And any seeds that are brown or, like, not just the most beautiful emerald you've ever seen, just go ahead and pitch because they're not going to germinate. I've done some germination tests on some ones that were lighter green and some ones that were brown. And I just, you know, some of them did sprout, but I wasn't getting a good number. So, yeah, as long as you're getting that consistent green color, you should be fine. And, you know, store it in a jar, and if you can, put a little silica packet in there. And the freezer is good, but, you know, also just on the shelf is fine, too. It seemed like pretty hardy seeds to me.

Nice. Yeah. Someone just asked on Instagram how long they store. I think you saw that, actually. And I definitely have germinated eight-year-old seed from an Egyptian family in Maryland successfully. So they do store quite a long time. I also, I do have, like, a small backup amount that I do keep in the freezer. but our freezer space is kind of precious.

So, you know, I store mine outside of the freezer. And I'm still playing, like, I'll just work on a jar. I'm still planting seed from 2015. That's what I planted this year. And I had great germination. So, yeah, I think it is pretty tough. Awesome. Is there anything else you want to say about Malagia?

Well, I guess I do have one thing, one more thing about the Maloia. Great. it's a really common fiber plan and i think that that is i think that's what people mainly grow it for in a lot of places and i think the food aspect of it is just a nice bonus but um i think it's used like hemp in a lot of places for cordage and rope and fabric so i think that you know it's it's really versatile and it's very very low maintenance very pest resistant very disease resistant and very very hardy so it's like you know it's a good solid food you don't have to baby it too much and that's you know that's always nice to have a crop like that you know you know you're gonna you know you're

gonna eat totally i actually that reminds me of your comment that it grows like a weed um does your self seed from dropped seed ever um yes it does but the way that we cultivate um because we do use traditional tillage methods. You know, sometimes I'll leave a few plants here and there as far as the leading goes, but I like to have a good rotation. I don't like to, you know, let the same thing grow in the same place every couple, you know, year after year. And you till with animals. That's how you always tell.

Yeah, exclusively. We've been trying to do bi-annual plowing system. So last year we plowed the whole field, and then this year we just did. just to try something new, honestly. The plowing actually works really well for us. I think it's improved our soil a lot. We had very hard red clay to start with, and now it looks like chocolate cake.

So it has made a big difference. And I think having the animals in the field 100% reduces compaction. Because even with a small BCS or something like that, you can't compare to just having, you know, little mule feet in there. They really just don't do much damage to the soil. They will eat your corn tops, though.

Pluses and minuses. Yeah. Soundsides to everything. Yeah. It's just so beautiful. I love watching the photos of your animals and you all on the farm. It looks like an awesome ecosystem. I love them.

They can be a pain in the butt sometimes, I'll tell you. But when they're good, I love working with them. It makes me so happy. and it's nice to just be able to recognize that there is a way to continue farming without opal fuels oh this makes sense i didn't use a drop of gas to do this and like this can you know i can still keep doing this thing that i love when there is no more gas which will be in our lifetime that's awesome that's awesome um well real quick i'd love to hear anything you want to say about growing other syrian crops that are newer to you and your family and like what that

experience is like because I know that I've sent you several varieties that are connected to Syria. I've enjoyed growing everything you've sent me. You know, even more than the crops being directly from Syria, you know, just by virtue of them being grown in the Middle East at some point, it means they're pretty drought tolerant and pretty hardy. And that's always, you know, I always appreciate growing crops like that and like a changing climate where you don't know. You don't know what one may is going to look like compared to another one. And it's nice to just be, you know, saving those seeds for crops that can really handle, really handle some drought and really handle some abuse from the weather.

So that, you know, that feels really good. And it feels good to be hanging on to seeds that other people could figure out how to say this. You know, I get to live in a stable living situation. I get to keep these seats for people that are being displaced and not being able to have a stable living situation. And I can save them for them to be able to come and get at some point when things settle down if they ever do. I know that doesn't probably sound very good. But I can think about how to make that so better. No, that sounds perfect.

I mean, I think that's a big part of why I try to hold on to these seeds as well. is there are constantly people in the diaspora being displaced, refugees, immigrants, you know, are for whatever reason disconnected from their culture. And just like you said in the beginning, food is often a way to hold on to that or have a sense of home through this one small act of growing and eating traditional foods. Yeah, and I mean, I think that's a huge thing. That's a huge thing for, I guess it's a huge thing for a lot of people I know is just to be able to like eat with their to eating and not just have to

kind of force-fed things that are just not, they don't resonate with them. They can't find familiarity with, you know, just regular American food or whatever. Right. And it's interesting, too, just to switch gears, because you're also growing and preserving a lot of traditional Appalachian crops. And it's a whole different thing because you're living there

and the culture is still, you know, vibrant there. But I'm wondering, you know, even to the point where you are, you know, making your own molasses from sorghum that you grow. So I'm wondering if you could speak at all to what that is like for you and what your interest is in that. Well, my mom was born in Cairo and their whole family is Syrian, but my dad was born in Southwest Virginia. I'd say Southwest Virginia, I mean southwestern Virginia. So Christiansburg, Pulaski. Royal Retreat is where my grandparents are buried on my dad's side. And my dad's grandparents were hog farmers.

And they ran a restaurant delivery business. You know, so that is part that Appalachian food and traditions are also part of my family in the same way that the Syrian crops are also part of my family. So I like to have, you know, I like to have both of those things represented in what I'm growing and what I'm doing. And honestly, I love both of them so much. not necessarily my parents but both of those uh traditions of growing things and there's just so much to be there's so much to learn about both sides of that and um i get the privilege of living here

um in a climate where i can grow syrian crops and um you know a lot of things you know a lot of uh things i've been grown in virginia for a long time so i like to yeah i like to i like to do both of those things. Awesome. Can you just tell us what, briefly, what the process is for making your own molasses? Sure. So the plant is sorghum, sweet sorghum, and there's a bunch of different It breaks my heart to do this, but I'm going to cut it off here. There's seven or eight great minutes of sorghum talk, specifically how to make molasses using their sorghum and their mules and a press, and I'm going to try to save it for a future episode about sorghum. I also had to cut some really great stuff from Anon's interview about Zatar, about growing up working in the tomato

fields of California alongside migrant workers, and I'm just going to have to save some of this stuff for other episodes. So stay tuned. Back to Mason. Cool. Well, this was epic, and I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy farm day to do this. Okay, I'm waiting for the dew to burn off the hay. Nice. Okay. Great. I'm glad to help. Thank you so much to all of the people who took the time to share their stories with us for this episode and share their love for this plant. It is a very lovable plant, as you should know, at this point in the episode. And we are so grateful for all of these friends, including our friend Melchia. Thanks for listening to another episode of Seeds and Their People.

Please subscribe and comment and stay tuned for our next episode in two weeks. Or three, maybe. As always, this show is sponsored by True Love Seeds. When you order our seeds, 50% of each sale goes back to the amazing farmer that grew it. Remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future.