We spent the day processing cassava since we had received a big burlap sack of this “ground food” as a gift.  We also added our own cassava to this…our type is the esteemed yellow variety which has the hearty taste of wholesome potatoes.  Altogether we probably had about 10kgs (22lbs) of fresh vegetable.

As soon as you harvest cassava, it should really be eaten or processed within 24 hours.  Otherwise, they start going bad quickly and become discoloured.  When freshly dug up from the ground, the outer part peels off easily.

After peeling and washing, we cut the root into inch size pieces and steamed them in bamboo steamers placed in our mega-sized pressure cooker.

Next, we put these cooked cassava pieces through the meat grinder to get them into a soft pellet-like consistency.  We put this out to sun-dry this afternoon and will probably continue this for about three days until they get bone dry.  We will end up with about 1kg (2lbs) of dried material.  After that, we are going to experiment with the dried ingredient.  We are hoping that the dried cassava can be  re-hydrated instantly with hot water to give an instant “cuppa cassava” meal (like instant ramen noodles)!  Great for packed lunches and On-The-Go!!  Wow…it takes three days to make an instant meal…too funny!!

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