Spice Farm, Zanzibar

I found this map on the computer on which I am typing. I can't read it either, but I posted it anyway to see if it would be better enlarged, I don't think it helped....

Zanzibar is world renowned for spices, escpecially cloves. Most farmers here cultivate 2 or 3 different spices total, but spice farm is for tourists and has every kind of spice growing that you can imagine. This is not typicall for local farms to have so many different plants at one farm.

My tour guide, Bure, was great. He is from Zanzibar and lives in the village, seems everyone knew him and he knew everyone. He wanted to know how good of a cook I was if I could determine what spice each plant was by smelling it. I got most of them right.....

Cloves grow in trees and are the only spice to produce the fruit first and then the flower. It is green and then dried in the sun and turns brown or black and that is how we buy it around Christmas to stick into oranges and makes a wonderful smell!

Cinnammon, also a tree, the Queen tree, can use the bark, the meat of the wood, the leaves, all parts. The crunched up leaves smell faintly like cinnammon, but the bark was so fragrant!

Don't Touch Me Plant- this is a five leafed plant, like a small fern. Each five fingered stem is about the sized of my palm and itty bitty leaves the size of a piece of rice along each one. If you barely tap it, the whole leaf closes and folds down toward the stem, the little leaves on each finger also individually fold and curl up. It was so neat! I think I touched all of them, of course, if it says Don't Touch, then I will do just that.

Tumerick is poorman's saffron. (saffron by the way is the most expensive spice in the world)..Tumerick grows like an onion, it's root is yellowish/organge. I couldn't identify this smell when he tested me. Don't think I have ever cooked w/ tumerick anyway. :)

Red curry is called "lipstick" curry and the local women can use this for their lipstick and face paint, Bure proceeded to demonstrate and wore his make-up during the rest of the tour.
Brown curry is the most common and is grown here as well.

Pepper!! very interesting, think of about 20 little green pepper kernels growing sort of like grapes. This one pepper tree can have 4 different kinds of pepper, and it all depends upon which time the pepper is harvested. If it picked green and put into vinegar, it will be green pepper. If it is picked green and then set out to dry in the sun, it will be black pepper. If the green kernels turn red and are picked red, that is red pepper and very hot. If the red pepper is picked and then boiled in hot water, the red skin peels off and underneath is a white meat, this is white pepper. The longer the pepper matures on the vine, I think the hotter the flavor.

The spiny tree---when it gets older and more mature, the tree produces sharp spines to prevent monkeys and other wildlife from harming the tree.

Tapioca plant--actaully resembles a pot leaf, but the stalk can grow quite tall like a corn stalk. Bure made me a necklace of a tapioca leaf and tied the stem around my neck, I guess they make rings for the tourists as well, but I got the necklace.

Nutmeg, jack fruit, durian fruit, all sorts of bananas, vanilla, coffee beans, jasmine, ylang ylang (goes into Chanel #5 perfume), lemongrass (for massage oil as well as mosquito repellant, custard apples (white, slimy meat w/ big black seeds), cloves....SPICE KINGDOM!!

Four little girls ran up to me and wanted me to take their picture and then see themselves in my camera, the little one on the left wanted to hold my hand, so walked hand-in-hand for a bit until Bure told them to go home....

By the end of the tour I had a hibiscus in my hair, tapioca necklace, one wrist smelled like ylang ylang oil, the other wrist smelled like jasmine oil, I had yellow fingers from the tumerick and the other hand had orange fingers from the red curry, lemongrass oil on my arms, a leaf bouquet of all the samples we encountered and a tummy full of the local fruit I got to sample, as well as some new spices to bring home and cook with! Plus a new phrase, "asanti sana, squashed banana, don't say habana!" (thank you, squashed banana, don't say no!




Quite an experience!!