Borneo Lady: My Ginger and a recipe

Another easiest plant to grow in my garden is Ginger (Zingiber Officinale). It is a tropical plant thus thrive well in our country, Malaysia.

The "Wangi" (fragrant) Ginger

This type of "Wang" (fragrant) Ginger cost Rm 12 per kilo in Kota Kinabalu Market.

Ginger is popular in food and for health benefits. In google, you can find endless topics of ginger benefits and it's uses for Asian Cuisine.

There are many websites talking about the benefits of Ginger and one of them is Medical news today

In Feb 2019, a friend, Jennifer wanted to give me a type of ginger to grow. She said,"It's a 'Wangi' kind of species. Wangi in English means 'fragrant'. My friend told me this type took a longer time to grow compared to the normal ginger and they only harvest twice a year, because they took time to grow. Since my garden is very small,whichever plants that grew slowly, would be in my favourite plants list.

Jennifer's mom brought those gingers from her home town, Tambunan for her confinement. There were 3 more gingers left after she completed her confinement period and wanted to give them to me, but forgotten all about it, due to preoccupion with breastfeeding, baby caring and so on. By the time she realised it, the gingers had shrunk, dried and looked so wrinkled and hopeless, like, there was no way, they would thrive.

Dehydrated ginger

Without loosing hope, she asked if i still wanted to try to grow them. Of course I do! Any plants that took a long time to grow are THE most welcome plants in my garden.I planted them on my newly created raised bed😊 under the shades of my blue pea flowers plants.
When the leaves of the blue pea flowers plants dropped on top of the soil, they became mulch to keep the soil moist which are perfect for my ginger. The soil need to be slightly acidic and well drained, so I dumped all my kitchen scrubs( peels from the onions and citrus fruits) to keep my ginger happy😊.

Self-made raised bed from concrete bricks

One month later, on 28.3.2019, I noticed healthy little green leaves shooting out from the buds. I was elated.

28.3.2019

8.6.2019

On the 8.6.2019 , I snapped another photo for it's progress. The leaves were very slim like bamboo leaves but they progressed well.

On the 11th June, 2019, another friend, Vanessa gave me a bottle of home-made Ginger wine and told me it's a special ginger wine, made by her friend and you can't find it anywhere, from markets etc. She said her friend only made a limited amount for her

own use and special orders for friends.

So I thought Chicken with wood-ear( black fungus) in ginger wine would be an ideal recipe.

For the Malaysian Chinese, ginger and wine are commonly used for confinement foods.It is a tradition that we believe, the Wine and Ginger promotes blood circulation and helps to remove "Wind" that causes headache and joint pains.And the wood-ear helps to "clean" the uterus and hasten womb recovery.

In a more stricter traditions, the chicken must be fresh and not from a supermarket. So some smart husbands would start rearing 30 baby chicks (Confinement period is normally 30 days ), so by the time his wife started to give birth, the chicks would have matured and ready for the pot, in ginger and wine for 30 days!!! This dish is served with warm rice. Sometimes for variety, "Mee Suah" dish was prepared.

I remember those days, around 1983, a confinement helper would cost Rm1,200 - Rm1,500. She would come to my home around 8am and finished her duty at 5pm, everyday for 30 days. My confinement food would be prepared by her. She would wash my clothes and my baby's. ( in old tradition, women after birth were not allowed to mix their dirty clothes with the husband's or family as it's a taboo that will bring bad luck to the family).
I was instructed to be kept warm from head to toe as exposure would bring illness into my body as a consequences of "wind". 😨 Goodness me, I was sweating cobs and felt so uncomfortable that I broke the rules and went for hot shower by the end of one week!😜

The chicken wine confinement dish was too concentrated that I was drunk and my poor baby was "drunk" too because i was breast feeding exclusively. In those day. the confinement helper were mostly in their 40's and 50's and we can't get through to them. With our parents' tradition, it's even harder to go against. I remember my mom was so upset and refused to talk to me for weeks, just because i told her to reduce the wine for the confinement food(sometimes she would do the cooking when she was in good mood).
She argued that it's because my baby was very obedient (Guai) baby😖, and not because of being drunk!

Chicken with Wood-ear Fungus in Ginger Wine