I found out about "Ampalayang Ligaw" or Wild Bitter Gourd when I was in college. Mommy D brought some of it home from their home, she even brought the mature one, where we can immediately plant its seed in a pot or in the ground. At that time I already liked eating "Ginisang Amapalaya," so whenever she brought it home, we would cook that for lunch or dinner. Then the time came when she successfully grew a wild bitter gourd in our yard.
That time our garage is not a garage yet, and it's not even cemented. We grow it near our window, and those wild plants can really grow fast. So thanks to that, we had a source of healthy veggies on our land. We even had cherry tomatoes, oregano, eggplant, and patola back then. We just cleared it when Mommy F decided to cement our plot. It's really amazing when you have plants in your land. You can sometimes have a healthy meal thanks to it.
Anyways, Auntie Velyn brought a lot of wild bitter gourd for us. It's actually the right timing because we didn't prefer anything for the day. I don't even have a plan to buy anything for lunch because I'm kinda lazy. And I thought we'd just end up having just eggs, lol. Well, basically, it still has eggs, but, at least, it's not just eggs but with healthy veggies too. Lol. They are freshly picked from her garden. Look at all these cute bitter gourds, they are really tiny, but there are a few bigger ones too.
And she even brought a lot of Malunggay, which will go well with Ginisang Ampalaya with lots of eggs, they are really healthy ingredients. Seriously, Auntie Velyn is really just too sweet. I'm sure she picked all these with the thought of giving them to her sister. Hehe. And just yesterday, she brought 4 big eggplants too, OMG! We're having a lot of free things these past few days ( ◜‿◝ )♡.
There's just one thing you'll really hate when preparing this wild bitter gourd, cutting and removing the seeds with that white thing in the middle can take a lot of your time. I remember removing a lot of them before, and they are smaller than these ones in the photos. So to make my works get faster, I'll just cut them all first then after that, that's when I will remove the seeds inside.
And when removing the seeds, I just use a spoon. If it's too small, then I use its handle. Imagine you have a hundred of them, you really need to remove them one by one, lol. That's a lot of work! Goodness. Lol. Anyways, you can already cook this by just cutting it in half. But I cut them into tiny pieces so that they won't be too bitter, haha. I don't know if the way to cut it can actually help reduce the bitterness. But either way, I just put it into water with salt.
By the way, I'm not the one who cooked this, it's Mommy D. I just helped with the preparation. It's just a simple Ginisang Ampalaya with egg, minus tomatoes too. We ran out of tomatoes, sadly. And this is much healthier even with just three ingredients, which are the wild bitter gourd, malunggay, and two eggs.
We had a happy lunch <(￣︶￣)↗.
Lead Image Edited in Canva