Filipinas are cooking bagoong (The Purple Nasty) and vegetables for supper. Joy Joy’s the chef with light assistance from Big Pumpkin and Lil’ Kim. First, the ladies will gather some ingredients growing on the far side of our fence. Aside from the bagoong, supper was delicious and nutritious. Folks, I may be sitting on a goldmine of a business idea. These loofahs grow like weeds in the hot Philippine sun. We borrowed a few from the neighbor since they were hanging on our side of the fence to demonstrate how loofah’s are made. Big Pumpkin will show you how to clean a loofah and get it ready for packaging. I’ll even demonstrate how to use Big Pumpkin’s All-Natural Homegrown Loofahs!
Here are some fun facts about Loofahs I cut and pasted from the dang ol’ Internet:
Luffa is a genus of tropical and subtropical vines in the pumpkin, squash and gourd family (Cucurbitaceae).
In everyday non-technical usage, the luffa, also spelled loofah or less frequently loofa, usually refers to the fruits of the species Luffa aegyptiaca and Luffa acutangula. It is cultivated and eaten as a vegetable, but must be harvested at a young stage of development to be edible. The vegetable is popular in Pakistan, India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam. When the fruit fully ripens, it becomes too fibrous for eating. The fully developed fruit is the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge. In October 2025, the world record for the heaviest luffa was broken at the North Carolina State Fair. The luffa, grown in Graham, NC weighed 11 lb 3.3 oz (5.08 kg).
Names
The name luffa was taken by European botanists in the 17th century from the Arabic name لوف lūf.
In North America it is sometimes known as “Chinese okra”, and in Spanish as estropajo.
#philippines #filipinofood #loofah