Apologies to all, I have been away a long time. The summer, however, has not been wasted. after 3 and a half weeks in the tropics, I bring you a handy guide to foraging for wild tropical foods. These are the foods you are likely to find in tropical regions with a monsoon season.

On the island of Nossi Be we feasted on some of Madagascar’s 40 subspecies of banana. We picked breadfruit outside our host family’s house in Ambodrona. Breadfruit, as its name suggests, is used as a staple carb in Malagasy diets.

We visited Lokobe National Park, a tropical rainforest. We rowed there by wooden pirogue. Here we found wild pineapple, cashew nuts, vanilla vine, and a mimosa that stops bedwetting!

There wa also a lovely cool waterfall after the intense, oppressive heat. Our guide Rivaldo rows a pirogue to the mainland to study ecotourism. It saves him money, but it takes him and his friends an entire day!

In the cooler rainforest of Montagne D’Ambre we found taro, a wild vegetable harvested for its starchy root. It’s poisonous raw (just like a potato) and is mashed, roasted or fried.

We tried some Strange Fruits (to quote the soul song) including baobab, mokucha and tamarind.

The green coconuts were delicious.

At a plantation in Ambanja we munched raw cacao fruit. You have to suck the juice out from around the cacao bean without breaking it. It is amazing. We also saw how the cacao beans are processed and fermented to make chocolate.

Above you can see the mokucha fruit. It’s hard, like a cricket ball. Inside there is a brown fruit like a sweet citrus.

Especially good was the traditional Malagasy breakfast – mokare vary (rice cakes) with excellent Malagasy coffee in tiny metal cups. The entire breakfast for 4 people cost the equivalent of £1.50. (2000 Ariary). Rice is the staple crop in Madagascar.

And here’s us after a delicious fresh fish lunch outside a shack on the remote beach, baie de Dunes.

Anyway, back to the daily grind! I have more Autumn foraging and another Natural Dyes workshop coming up. I will add the links in the next post.

xx Hedgewitch Kat xx