A classmate recently caught dengue and told me she was drinking tawa-tawa to help in her recovery. Later, she revealed that she didn’t need to have blood transfusion and that her recovery was fast, considering her age.
I went to read the book “Philippine Herbs: For Healthy Cooking, Common Cures, and Concoctions” (Artpost Asia, 2017) to find out more about the plant. Listed were the corresponding names of tawa-tawa (Euphorbia hirta L.) in Filipino and English (Australian asthma weed, snake weed, cat’s hair), and how the herb is used, as well as a photograph and artist’s renderings of the plant.
The book was recently launched, attended by its authors, Dr. Domingo Madulid, Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan, Josefa Consunji Reyes and yours truly.
Dr. Madulid, known for his books and scientific papers on Philippine plants, was former chief of the Botany division of the National Museum of the Philippines. For “Philippine Herbs” he classified and described each type and indicated its uses—as medicine, food or remedy.
Dr. Tan currently teaches in med school and serves a foundation as consultant on health policy and health systems development. He believes in combining medicinal plants and conventional drugs. His essay, “Natural Healers,” is about plants and their medicinal properties. To employ these healers, he gave recipes of brews that are said to help alleviate certain ailments like diabetes, cholesterol and gallstones.
Essential oils
“Philippine Herbs” says Reyes is a “health and organic produce advocate.” She has channeled that advocacy into producing essential oils for the international market. In the book, she gives recipes not only for healthy teas, juices and tonics, but also herbal baths and rubs.
My contribution was herbs used in cooking, a subject I knew very little about. So I was relieved when given the list of familiar ingredients used daily in the Filipino kitchen. Sixteen recipes contributed by cooks and chefs were chosen to represent regional food, and we made sure to include soup, salad, main and dessert.
Stories by growers
Midway through the project, I was asked to do the chapter on “Growing Greens.” I didn’t inherit my grandmother’s gardening sills, so I searched for stories by growers, from window garden enthusiasts to those who use every patch of space in their small residential lots or condos, as well as those who have made herbal farming a business.
At the launch, the book’s authors also talked about current projects. Dr. Tan encouraged growing pili trees to obtain the oil that he said reduces wrinkles and smoothens skin. The international name is Elemi essential oil.
My talk was about using herbs as the subject of the Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Awards, and how I wished the contest was over before I had to write for the herb book.
One of the first-prize winners was Elmer Nocheseda, a book author as well, who stressed that “herbs are not mere gugulayin or sahog sa laoya but, more importantly, they are halamang gamot or potent vegetal presence that heals.”
He wrote about how he sources his herbs from vendors around Quiapo Church, such as kolitis (green amaranth) for laoyang pata (pot-boiled pork leg cutlets in sweet potato and vegetable broth) and bawang na mura (young garlic) for pugtong gurame (fried small carp cured in vinegar and garlic)
—dishes from his parents’ hometowns of Angono and Pateros.
It was the last line of second-prize winner Josephine Roque that I would have included in “Growing Greens,” a perfect and humorous way to describe how herbs are easy to grow and don’t require too much attention. She wrote: “They need little fussing over like a boyfriend with no self-esteem issues.”
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