Kaipen

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Exotic health foods: kaipen from Lotus Foods Mike Adams, the Health Ranger See article keywords and concepts

We're talking about kaipen, which is pressed fresh water green algae. Caryl, could you talk to us about where this is made? Levine: We found this algae in Laos. It is indigenous to Luang Prabang, which is the old capital in Laos. During the dry months, which are November through February, when the rivers are at their lowest, the people in the villages go to the middle of the river and take algae off the rocks in the bottom of the river. It's beautiful fresh water green algae -- it's riverweed, as opposed to nori, which is seaweed.

So this kaipen, or kai at that stage, is not as briny, not as salty. After they harvest the kai, they clean each strand in the river and then put it out overnight to drip dry. The next day they make a solution of tamarind juice, and on a beautiful palm mat they'll pound out the kai with the tamarind juice. The process is almost the same as making hand made paper, and is pounded until it's nice and thin. At that point it's the size of a regular baking pan, and when it's totally thin and there are no holes in the algae, they'll essentially make a pizza.

And that's when the kai becomes kaipen. They also use it like a chip. The same as you would have a beer and chips, in Laos they would sit down with a beer, fried kai and hot sauce. We love flash frying it and using it like a vegetable or a crouton or a side dish. I also love taking a whole sheet, wetting it and using it as a wrap. You can wrap a piece of fish in it and bake it or steam it. You can fan it over a gas grill and get it a little crunchy and then just eat it like a snack.

All of these products can be bought on the website as well. Mike: Are there other places where customers can buy them? Levine: Not really. Some of the whole food stores in Northern California have them, but we mainly sell through our website. When you're in distribution, they want things to move very fast. The website has products like our rice flours; unique items which are a little bit slower to move through a grocery store or a natural food store. Stores want more turnover. The products are still great products, so we sell them via our website.

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ABOUT THE CREATOR OF NATURALPEDIA: Mike Adams, the creator of this NaturalNews Naturalpedia, is the editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's top natural health news site, creator of the Honest Food Guide (www.HonestFoodGuide.org), a free downloadable consumer food guide based on natural health principles, author of Grocery Warning, The 7 Laws of Nutrition, Natural Health Solutions, and many other books available at www.TruthPublishing.com, creator of the earth-friendly EcoLEDs company (www.EcoLEDs.com) that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting products, founder of Arial Software (www.ArialSoftware.com), a permission e-mail technology company, creator of the CounterThink Cartoon series (www.NaturalNews.com/index-cartoons.html) and author of over 1,500 articles, interviews, special reports and reference guides available at www.NaturalNews.com. Adams' personal philosophy and health statistics are available at www.HealthRanger.org.