Eating Raw Sugar Cane

I have heard about this but never actually tried it myself. Then the other day I was driving back with my friend Jackie from visiting our friend Maureen who just had a new baby, and saw this guy selling raw sugar cane on the side of the road.

So, I stopped to try some. Before, I could say anything, Jackie hopped out of the car to get some for me.  I didn't even have a chance to give her any money to buy them.  That is Jackie on the left of the picture with her hand on her hip. I tried to secretly take this photo but the guy saw me. ack! He told Jackie if he knew I was going to take a picture he would have turned the other way so I could get a better picture of what he was doing.


From what I could tell the guy took a tall stalk of the sugar cane and would strip off the green bark with his knife, as you can see in the picture.


Then he would chop the white stick into smaller 2 inch pieces that would drop into a small bucket. He poured the contents of the bucket, about 12 pieces into a bag for each customer.

Jackie said that all you do is bite off a piece, chew, taste all of the sweet goodness from the sugar cane, and then spit out the pieces when there is no more flavor.

I brought the treats home to share with the kids so they could try!

At first, they had a hard time biting the big pieces (evidently, with practice this is easy!). I think you are actually supposed to bite off some of it, not put the whole thing in your mouth like Caleb is trying to do here.

So, we cut them up into smaller kid sizes pieces for the kids to fit into their mouth. Whew, that was much better for the kids. They popped the piece into their mouth and chewed and sucked on the sugar. They loved it! It was sweet and fun to try something new.


You should try this if you get a chance. Enjoy!

Here is a pic of the raw sugar cane BEFORE and the pieces of stalk left over AFTER chewing all of the sweet sugar out.

p.s. Actually, I have heard, not sure if it is true, but I have heard that chewing sugar cane is really good for your teeth. I think the chewing on the stalk fibers acts like a toothbrush. And how fun to brush and get to taste the sweetness of RAW SUGAR.

Cheers,
Anna