I remember walking to school and tearing the sugar cane with my teeth. It is a wonder I have any teeth left..lol Sugar cane sadly is one of those things I can't indulge in like I use to.
Brief History below...
Sugar Cane is a type of grass originally from southeast Asia. The thick stalk stores energy as sucrose in the sap. From this juice sugar is extracted by evaporating the water. Crystallized sugar was reported 2500 years ago in China and India. Around the eighth century A.D. the Arabs introduced sugar to the Mediterranean and it was cultivated in Spain. It was among the early crops brought to the Americas by Spaniards.
Sugar cane was grown extensively in the Caribbean and still is on some islands. In colonial times sugar was a major product of the triangular trade of New World raw materials, European manufactures and African slaves. France found its sugar cane islands so valuable it effectively traded Canada to Britain for their return of Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Lucia at the end of the Seven Years' War. The Dutch similarly kept Suriname, a sugar colony in South America, instead of seeking the return of the New Netherlands (New Amsterdam). Cuban sugar cane produced sugar which received price supports from and a guaranteed market in the USSR; the dissolution of that country forced the closure of most of Cuba's sugar industry. Sugar cane is still an important part of the economy in Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Grenada, and other islands. The sugar cane industry is a major export for the Caribbean, but it is expected to collapse with the removal of European preferences this year.
2 comments:
I havent had any sugar cane in a long time. Think I'll go gets some now that you reminded me, lol.
I, too, love sugar cane and my father grows it, so when I'm home, I get to eat as much as he has growing.
love to live; live to love!
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