Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Puso: Filipino Woven Rice Pouches

Very cool:

Puso are one of those incredibly perfect foods… boiled rice in a biodegradable package. It is nutritious, delicious, hygenic, easy to carry or transport, easy to open up, keeps the rice clean, can be brought out to the fields, a picnic, etc. And it doesn’t mess up any pots or pans or utensils when you cook them. All you need to master is the weaving process…simple, right? Of course the simplest looking things are often the most difficult to do. And of a dozen folks in our Cebu office, not one among them knew how to weave a puso container made out of coconut leaves or fronds. All admit to having eaten hundreds if not thousands of servings of rice purchased or cooked in this manner, but few had any clue how to make the little packages. It was time to call in an expert, and “Richard” (who made puso for a living) was asked to come to the office to teach me how to make a puso, ineschange for a modest “consulting” fee.


Link has many more photos of the weaving process.

Digg!

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