The whole "live seasonally" thing can be infuriatingly slow sometimes. You want and need to work with a natural ingredient which arrives just when it darn well pleases, with little disregard for your budget or your business planning. haha... like really! So I literally nearly did a cartwheel down the middle of the local Thai freshmarket the other day when I saw her - an older Thai "auntie" with a battered little card table boasting just three bunches of freshly picked moringa pods. Each bunch was 20 baht (about USD $0.70) so her income for the day would be around $2. Thai people are VERY shy about being photographed in anything less than their Sunday best, so I didn't snap a pic of her, but I couldn't wait to snap a picture of the magic pods the second I got home. Felt a bit like Jill In The Beanstalk with my magic beans.
Yes, the fresh young moringa pods really ARE that green in the bright, natural, Thai sunlight. No filter.
Why the excitement? I USE moringa oil in my business - lots of it - in beeswax balms for tattoo after care, for Intensive Skin Repair Balm and for my Eye Area Treatment Oil. The supply here in Northern Thailand is patchy and slow, and I often have to pay through the nose for my moringa oil, to keep up with product demand.
What's so special about moringa oil for natural medicine? It is incredibly rich in the rare Omega 9 fatty acids, oleic acid and behenic acids, as well as natural vitamin E. It prevents, reduces and helps heal scarring, speeds up wound healing and protects wounds from infection. It's a natural anti-inflammatory, so it naturally reduces swelling, puffiness, redness and pain. It's phenomenal emollient properties help prevent scabbing (and in tattoo aftercare that means more ink stays in your skin instead of falling off in the scab) and prevent wrinkles. You can read more about the natural healing properties of moringa pods HERE. The oil is pressed from the seeds, which grow inside the pods. The moringa leaves themselves are also a natural powerhouse and superfood, but that's another post for another day.
My business Pure Thai Naturals Co Ltd is working with the indigenous Karen people along Thailand's border with Burma, through the Karen Department of Health and Welfare. It just so happens that moringa trees grow easily and well in those mountains. And so I will teach the Karen people to manually cold press the moringa seeds - many people have no access to electricity or, if they do, can't afford to use it. And we have been waiting and waiting for the pods so we can GET ON WITH IT!
So yes, feel and share my joy and excitement..
The funny thing was that the lady at the Thai freshmarket got all excited too when I bought a bunch. She called her companions over and they all nodded and smiled rather toothlessly.
"The farang know how to eat our mountain food!"
I smiled and paid and thanked her, and walked away with a feeling of having supported some people who feel their way of life isn't valued or appreciated by white western people. That felt good.
Arriving home, I plonked them on the bench and cut one open.
Again, no filter - this is what they look like up close and personal on my kitchen bench, in my dimly lit, old Thai teak house.
I HAVE eaten Gaeng Som (Thai Sour Curry) made with moringa and prawns. It was unusual, different and nothing I really enjoyed, basically because most of the time was spent chewing woody moringa stems (which you have to discard) for what felt like almost nothing left. After much reading and viewing (bless you youtube!) I have discovered there are MANY ways to prepare moringa pods and am going to attempt a Tamil style moringa dish using both pods and leaves later this week. Watch your steem feeds!!
DELIGHTED that the moringa oil natural medicine is visibly on its way. The pods need another month or so of serious dry season heat to grow the seeds to maturity. When the first pods are deep dark brown and start to split open, that's the PERFECT time to harvest the ripe pods, bursting with their seeds. Each pod carries upwards of a dozen seeds which grow quite large, and it is these ripe seeds which we will cold-press for our Magic Moringa Oil.
If you read my Forest post yesterday, this is ONE of the ways we will start to create a viable income stream for vulnerable indigenous mountain people, so that they don;t have to torch our magnificent forests to feed the exotic mushroom trade to China. Missed that post? How could you. haha.. OK, here it is again: While We Struggle For Forest Ownership, Mother Earth Weeps.
The journey and the seasons continue. And I look forward to sharing my Tamil moringa dish with you while I impatiently await the pods to ripen.
BlissednBlessed in my natural Thai world.
Contributing to the @earthtribe. Cos it MATTERS.
