Yuca (cassava) flatbread

While at the village, we were treated to a demonstration of the making of yucca flatbread. Yucca is often known as cassava in English. Yuca is a tubular root, and is a good source of carbs for a lot of folks who live around the tropics. Although we had yuca many times in soups and such, we'd never had flatbread make of yuca. We were stoked, especially when we heard that the bread would be made of yuca and nothing else.

The lady pictured below first took us out back of the village, to where some yuca trees were growing (another  thing we'd never seen). She told me to pull up the tree which, maybe because it had been raining, came right up. The tree had about 7 or 8 tubular roots hanging from the trunk. She brandished the machete she had been carrying and quickly lopped off the tubes. We carried them back to the open air hut we had been hanging out in, and pulled the skin off the yuca. It came off much easier than the skin of those bought in the market or store. She then washed them up.




















After washing the yuca, she proceeded to grate it with a large cheese grater looking thing, but again with the thing you use for lemon zest (the more pokey, star-shaped weird looking side). All the yuca was ground up like this in no time.




















Then she (sorry, forgot her name) pulled off the shelf this long straw mat looking thing, upon which she placed the ground up yuca.




















She twisted the mat lengthwise, wrapping the yuca up inside the length of the mat, and tied the top of it to this pole. The bottom of the mat had two long extensions that looked like handles, and she put this stick into the mat and proceeded to turn it, wringing out the juice from the yuca. It had an amazing amount of juice. Plus, that lady was strong!