Peanut roots.

I finally got my photos from Martin Lo for my peanut root story when I realised my fellow Gardening Facebook friend Nancy Chan had posted her post. Here it is.

http://chingchailah.blogspot.co.nz/2015/08/growing-peanuts-in-my-garden.html It's an amazing post . do visit it.

This leaves me to tell my peanut root/ FA Sa Gan story. I didn't know about the good stuff about peanut roots until I was an adult, self appointed secretary of the gardening club. We residents, mainly from abroad loved to potter in the land around us, but we were not allowed to. But we did anyway. The University Estate Office came and pulled our plants. We played a cat and mouse game.

Eventually both parties got tired of this game, and the University gave us a nice plot of land. We divided the plot and one member grew peanuts. As I am allergic to peanuts, I didn't want her peanuts when she came with a bucket full of it.

Months later, a neighbour who sadly had short young children. She came to be and asked for the peanut roots.

"Why do yo want them?"
"Didn't you know, peanut root soup will make a preadolescence child grow tall."

I went to the member who grew them.
" This is exactly why I grew them for my small son."

Then I heard from my sister in law who was a teacher. She heard the pupils have a ditty for a short teacher.

"Fa San Gan aka peanut root,
Fa San Gan,
Ah Ma mei bei ni Fa San Gan."  your mum did not feed you peanut root soup.

When I visited Sibu, my home town, I saw them selling in the market. I bought a big bag for my friend. She said the soup did help.

I shared this with friends in the various gardening forum.

My two daughters are 5 ft 10. My friends asked if I secretly cooked the FA SAN GEN for them. I joked back, if I had, they would be 6 ft 6.