Ina and Vicky are our coordinators. These two women do everything for us. From running orientation, opening bank accounts, to day to day activities these women help us run our lives here. If it wasn’t for the two of them, I’m pretty sure I would be a mess by now. One of their many roles is to help plan our Wednesday Teacher workshops where we learn new ways to help our students. On days where we don’t have a workshop though, Ina and Vicky get together to plan extravagant “Culture Classes.”
We don’t get many “Culture Classes”, but when we do, they are amazing. This Wednesday was just that, another “Culture Class.” Vicky and Ina, or as some of my ETA group calls them- Vina, keep the destination secret leading up to the event typically telling us details we need to know such as the location if we are scootering or if the activity will determine a certain kind of dress. Our clues was a location set in the middle of a field in Luye township (a township between 關山and 台東), we must where closed toed shoes, and that the activity might take longer than the typical 2 hours that are allocated for workshops on Wednesday. By the Monday before we got the details, we were going to learn how to make Roselle Jam from start to finish.
I bet at this point you have no idea what Roselle is. Before coming to Taiwan I had no clue. The teachers would look up the translation of 洛神花 (pronounced luo shen hua) and assume that when they said Roselle I would know without a doubt what it was. It took a little bit of research to understand that Roselle is a type of hibiscus flower. We are currently in the middle of Roselle season, November to December. The flower actually blooms for one day and what’s left is the flower fruit, the Roselle. Roselles are everywhere once you know what to look for. Their spiky red shape can be found lining the streets, on mountainsides, on farms, and in grocery stores. I have even gone so far as to eat one off the side of the road when I was crafting with an aboriginal tribe. At first taste I disliked the flower for its very sour taste, but the more you eat it and the more you try the different ways to the prepare the flower it grows on you. So far my favorite way to have roselle is either to have it dried with sugar where it takes on the consistency of a craisin, or to have it in tea. Now that I have come to like it I was disheartened to hear that last year there were too many Roselles produced, so this year the market is expecting a large decrease in Roselle farmers.
We met one of these Roselle farmers at her B&B. I was the first to arrive because our Wednesday workshops begin at 2pm and I was under the impression we were starting at the same time. I was wrong. I was alone and completely convinced I was either in the wrong place or that everyone had already gotten there and were in the field. After 15 minutes of worrying Benton showed up and then the rest of the people that live in 關山with me. Living in 關山, it was only a 20 minute drive so Vicky and Ina encouraged us to drive from school instead of taking the train into the city to take the bus with the rest of the ETAs. Once everyone had arrived we took off walking past farms till we stopped by an open car with gear. Yes, you need gear to pick Roselles. The stalks of the flower are more akin to a thicker twig so you use clippers to clip them. Roselle picking also requires that you wear gloves to protect your hands from any spikes and you wear the large hats with a piece of fabric to keep the sun and bugs at bay.
Once we were all suited up with our little bags we walked further into the field to look at the plants. The bushes were more plentiful than if you would go blueberry picking. I think the bushes look so full because the Roselles are pretty big and their bright red color make them easy to spot. We began to clip the flowers that were the size of our thumb (never smaller as those aren’t ready yet) as close to the base as possible and put them in our bags. The key was that the roselles needed to be large, needed to not have any large spots or a change of drastic color (in other words it can’t look like its on its way to rotting), and there should be no ants on it. I took these instructions to heart and was very selective with the roselles I picked.
Some of my fellow ETAs were already on their second bag by the time the farmer told us time was us. I looked down to see my bag barely reaching half way. I think the combination of my pickiness and my camera distracted me from the actual picking.
We then all carried our bags of roselles back to the bus or in my case my scooter to go to a special “second location.” We followed the farmer in her car as we drove to Luye’s visitor center. On the steps of the center they had large baskets for the floors and what looked like metal boba straws (boba is the tiny balls or 珍珠in bubble tea). We were shown how to take the metal straws to the base of each flower to push out the giant seeds from the middle. After seeding all the flowers we carried both the containers of flowers and the seeds inside. The sides were all placed together to be boiled to make some sort of substance that seemed to be analogous to gelatin I think if I understood correctly.
The seeds became translucent while they boiled. When the farmer determined the seeds to be done, she showed us that each of the seeds were made up of tinier seeds in the shape of a heart.
In small groups of five we weighed out 500 grams of roselles on a scale. We then broke all the flowers into smaller and smaller pieces before washing them in the sink. This is where I found out that not every person was as careful as I was. Multiple of the flowers were taken over by ants or when you took the seed out it looked moldy almost. I was relieved that the flowers that were used in my jam making process were the ones that I deseeded and “helped” wash. By “helped” wash I meant watched and supervised my friend Crystal wash all our flowers. After all the flowers were washed we added 100 grams of brown sugar and then mixed it all up. Only then did we add it to a larger pot we were sharing with one other group (the group that used the same washed and deseeded flowers as us – so definitely still a non-ant batch of jam). All we could do was keep stirring. It couldn’t just sit there with the fire on because that’s just not allowed, it needed to be constantly moving. We took turns stirring the pot only stirring for a couple minutes at the time because every so often the steam would begin to sting. Every so often the woman teaching us would come by to dip a spoon in our concoction just to pull it out and see the consistency as she dripped it back into the pot. With her approval we began to fill our little jars and put them upside-down to seal them. And that my friends is how you make jam.
I can’t say whether or not the jam is any good because it is currently sitting on my desk at home uneaten, but I can say it is a beautiful color and that my name writing abilities on the label are exquisite.
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