Holy cow! Was that a snake. . . or just a branch?! I'm not sure and I'm not going to take my time to figure it out. I've had about enough of the lizards around here. I'm not about to make friends with any other reptiles.
Gosh theses trees are tall. I never realized how huge a palm tree could get. They're practically prehistoric: rough scaly trunks with a diameter of closet and let's not forget the long, feathery, draping branches as that could seriously wound someone if it fell on them. We are in the thick of it now my friends!
So why am I surrounded by rows and rows of palm trees the size of a dinosaur? We are traveling through Melaka, Malaysia and our tour guide doubles as a palm oil farmer.
Oil palm happens to be the main agricultural crop around here. This tiny country grows some 600 million trees, which takes up over half of their agricultural land. (20% of Malaysian land is farmed) Palm isn’t just farmed here. No, 60% of the country is covered in forest, including some of the worlds oldest virgin forests.
The unique thing about processing palm is that it makes two oils from one plant: palm kernel oil-made from the fruit’s core and palm oil made from the fruit’s flesh. Palm is the only fruit to produce two chemically different oils.
Many products we buy at the grocers have palm oil on the ingredient list. It’s not just an affordable fat, but unrefined palm fruit oil is full of vitamins. It is a great shortening for baking as it is naturally solid at room temp, needing no hydrogenation. This means it has no trans fatty acids, and because it’s not an animal product, it is free of cholesterol.
I have to be truthful, being surrounded by all this agriculture made my eyes start to moisten. It just felt so homey here. . . and our tour guide was such a sweet man it was hard not to miss the sweetness of the cornfields and my father back home. I guess you can take the farmgirl out of the farm an throw her into the jungle, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl no matter where she goes.
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