TODAY

Hsu poke ဆူးပုပ္ရြက္ botanically termed Acacia intsia as a kind of vegetable with a strong odour and a good appetizing taste. Soft thorns are lining its branches and they are easily chewable. There are two different species of Hsu poke – Hsu poke kyi is stronger in odour and by far tastier. It is cultivated in the back yourds of rural houses in towns or vegetable gardens. Hsu poke kalay is a kind of bush plants which grow wild on the hills and plains of arid regions.Sagaing and Mingun hill-ranges are its hebitats. At the first showers from the sky in summer, tender buds peep out from its seemingly dry branches, sending out its tempting scents. The more you pluck its leaves, more new ones come out. For Buddhist monks nuns and lay holy persons residing in many recluses on these hill ranges, Hsu Poke kalay is one of favorite vegetables.
Hsu poke kyi is made for a variety of myanmar traditional dishes with pè-gyi beans, with egg, with chili and onion with dried prawn for soup, as green salad to go with salted fish etc, etc. There are pros and cons for the after effect of eating this vegetable. Both hsu poke kyi and hsu poke kalay are a kind of medicinal plant that nature gives to humans for health and nourishment. It is recommunded to eat a reasonable amount of hsu poke kyi or hsu poke kulay for your blood circulation, regaing of appetite after a prolonged bed-confined illness. Myanmar berbalists say that hsu poke is good for curing flu and aching. But this vegetable is strong in odour and rich is taste, it can cause unexpected headache and vomitting.
Hsu poke plays no small role in Myanmar literature and perfoming arts. References to this vegetable are found in stone insuriptions, chronicles and folk tales.
In one Tara chin about a farmer, shu poke is mentioned as one of wild vegetables, he and his family eat in their daily meal. It runs thus:
Hsu poke and kin mon
buds and leaves all togather
with big mouthfuls, we all
relishly eat our meal
children and grandchildren
on either side endear our family.
ဆူးပုပ္ကယ္၊ ကင္းဖံု
အလံုးစံု၊ ဖူးငုံသာေရာ၍ႁပြမ္း
သည္ႏွင့္ကေလး
အလုပ္ကယ္ဧရာသာ
ငံုကာေလြးေတာ့သည္
သားေျမးငယ္မာခ်ာ
ဘယ္ညာေထြးေတာ့သည္။
Even in modern times hsu poke is sung apprecatively. In the early days of Myanmar movie film, there was one very outstanding hit film named Chit Sa No ခ်စ္စႏုိး; in which a well known talented film actress. Khin Hnin Yee (ခင္ႏွင္းရီ)played the role of a country damsel. In her hit song about the idyllic beauty of her village she praised hsu poke as the main curry of cowboys. The name of the song was Pyo Kye Ywa (ပ်ိဳ႕ေက်းရြာ) My rural village. The relevant stanzas are as follows: –
Young tillers and cow boys
come together for lunch
at my village
with salad of farm prawns
and hsu poke they relish
the fried leftover rice
in a community circle.
(လယ္ထြန္ႏြားေကာ်င္းစုေပါင္းလုိ႔လာ ပ်ိဳ႕ေက်းရြာ)2
(လယ္ပုဇြန္နဲ႔ဆူးပုပ္ပါ)2
၀ုိင္းဖြဲ႕ကာထမင္းၾကမ္းနဲ႔ေၾကာ္စားတာ။
In today’s booming tourism industry of Myanmar, tourists abroad are discovering amazing experiences in the country: Orgnic food especially vegetables wild or cultivated in Myanmar that are tasty and healthy. Hsu poke, regardles of its odour is becoming favourite of some tourists from both West and East. Way-side inns keep hsu poke for their customers.