Home Made Chewing tobacco

The other day I was walking around the Carbon Market in Cebu city PI and found a bunch of vendors selling Hands (leaves) of Tobacco.

The sight and smell of the tobacco took me back about a million years to my family farm in Illinois, My older brother and I would grow our own tobacco and hang it in the barn to cure then make our own chew or smokes from that.

While in High school I read the book "King Rat" by James Clavell. The book is about POW's in Changee prison in Singapore during WW2. In the book There was a paragraph or two on how they local Malay folks processed tobacco the raw tobacco into chew and smoke for themselves.

I decided to try it out myself all those years ago and discovered that the process turns out a decent tobacco for smoking and chewing.

Anyway, my process is pretty similar ; I purchased several hands of tobacco and make myself some chew like I did all those years ago in Illinois. Obtain some decent tobacco leaves, remove stems, cut the tobacco into bite sized pieces (i used a scissors), soak it for a while in green tea to remove some of the nicotine, squeeze out the tea and let it dry a bit, place the semi dry tobacco into a cast iron skillet, add a liberal amount of sugar (i used palm sugar), then slowly dry out the tobacco and melt the sugar over a low flame, constantly stirring to tobacco to keep it from burning.

Once the sugar has melted and has coated the tobacco well, let it cool for bit, then enjoy the chew. I am not a smoker but my brother use to smoke the tobacco we processed this way from his home made pipe (maple bowl, willow stem).

Just thought you guys and Gals might get a kick out of this process and maybe try it for yourselves.

tomahawk - scouts out!