The day prior, the beam ray expert and healer Mr. Romy Macapagal suggested that my wife consume fresh bubbling Tuba for probiotics. He is of the hypothesis that we should consume local and that locally made probiotics contain the energies and probiotics we need because it comes from the environment close to us in our own country, in our own land. Makes sense. Look for fresh bubbling tuba.
We drove yesterday to Morong Bataan to visit my first ever real healer, Lorna Reyes, more about her in another blog post. We were rewarded in this trip with the thought of looking for fresh “tuba” or nectar from the coconut tree or sasa tree / nipa tree. Morong Bataan is a tiny 4th class municipality just after Subic and Anvaya Cove. A town where everybody knows everybody. We knocked on 2 houses. 1 was out of tuba from coconut trees. And 1 was selling sukang sasa – vinegar from the nipa tree. And if they are making their own vinegar, they must have their own fresh tuba – nectar.
At first I bought a couple of goods. All their sukang sasa – vinegar from the Nipa trees, and a bag of cashews, 6 bottles of raw wild honey from the mountains. Then I got curious how they made their vinegar. And the lady was gracious enough to show their backyard setup.
1. Collect nectar from the nipa tree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nypa_fruticans Pierce a hole at the side of a plastic coke liter bottle. Tie it in such a manner to collect the dripping nectar. This is what is known as “tuba”. This is the probiotic.
2. When you get the tuba, you put it in a big clay pot container called a banga. The tuba ferments there for some 3 to 4 weeks.
3. The mature tuba, now young vinegar is poured into bottles for sale and allowed to mature further under the sun.
If I were doing this I should use glass bottles instead of plastic.
Dolores, describes what her husband does. Maybe there is more information from her husband. Maybe they have a fermenting agent they add? What I do know is what I got was pure vinegar, no water extenders. Simply because this is the source. This is a small town where you cannot cheat your neighbours and most everybody knows what pure vinegar tastes like.
With the amount of items we bought, Dolores gave us the liter bottle of tuba as a gift. This is how rich the provincial people are. I’ll tell you how much richer they are… In 2005 I drove alone to this place and near sunset I was on a tricycle and asked the driver to tour me around and I asked for a restaurant for my dinner. He said they had no restaurants and invited me over for dinner at his home… which I did accept and had a nice meal. He even invited me to sleep overnight. I just asked to be taken to the rustic basic beach resort.
More about Morong in the next blog posts.
Contact Dolores of Apo Mayang’s Pasalubong in Morong Bataan: 0999-596-7466
Maybe she can send you her items via bus.
See pictures:
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- Their signboard
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- The house
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- The nipa tree
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- collecting nectar / tuba
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- The banga where tuba is fermented
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- Inside the banga
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- Fresh nectar tuba vs vinegar (sukang sasa)
