Lest you think that all of my cooking here has been learning to make familiar dishes with the resources on hand, I wanted to let you know about one of my latest culinary adventures.
Last weekend my family enjoyed a wonderful stir-fry meal with rice, noodles, various veggies, and PukPuk. (PukPuk is the Tok Pisin word for Crocodile tail). It was quite delicious. I wasn't too sure about it myself before cooking it, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised at the flavor.
I guess that goes toward the top of my list of most exotic things I've cooked and eaten. Maybe later on, I'll get more adventurous, but for now I'm feeling proud of this accomplishment.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Rambutan
This place is full of foods that I’ve never in my life seen or heard of. Going to market is a great cultural experience. I have enjoyed several new foods since arriving in PNG. Today I tried something called Rambutan. This is possibly the most bizarre fruit I have ever seen or tasted! I thought passion fruit was interesting, this definitely tops that! It is a small oval shaped fruit (smaller than a kiwi, but bigger than a grape) the skin bright red and has what looks like thick black hairs coming out of it. (Sounds appetizing I know!) To eat it, you cut open the skin (thankfully you don’t eat the skin) and inside is what looks like a white eyeball. It’s roughly the texture of a firm grape. You eat the flesh (the white eyeball part) and the spit out the seed that’s in the middle. I’m sure after this description most of you are thinking, why would you even want to eat that? Honestly, I don’t know what inspired me. I was prepared to spit it out and never try one again, but I was quite pleasantly surprised! It was pretty tasty. I fact I think I’ll go pop open another!
Making bread
One of the things I was most nervous about before coming to PNG was baking my own bread. I was given a breadmaker by my aunt, but since our shipment hasn’t arrived yet, I’ve been making it by hand. I’ve come to the conclusion that making bread here in PNG is easier than making bread in the USA. I have had quite a few failed attempts at bread baking in the US. I never can seem to get it to rise well. Surprisingly, here in PNG I’ve had much better success. It may seem like a small victory, but I feel a sense of accomplishment every time my family bites into a sandwich or piece of toast made with my homemade bread.
One thing I have learned, though, is that not all bread products are created equal. After a couple of successful batched of bread, I decided to try my hand at making hamburger buns. Well, I tried… and failed miserably! Who knew that making homemade hamburger buns could be so much harder than baking a loaf of bread? Thankfully, my family is very understanding and puts up with my culinary failures!
One thing I have learned, though, is that not all bread products are created equal. After a couple of successful batched of bread, I decided to try my hand at making hamburger buns. Well, I tried… and failed miserably! Who knew that making homemade hamburger buns could be so much harder than baking a loaf of bread? Thankfully, my family is very understanding and puts up with my culinary failures!
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Happy Easter
I realize that for most of you Easter is today, but for us it was yesterday.
Easter has always been a big family celebration for us, so as we prepared for our first holiday overseas (there was my birthday, but that doesn't really count) we were really hoping to spend the day with other people. We were so happy to be invited to Easter with our friends the Russells. We shared a lovely meal and time visiting together.
We began our Easter morning with the traditional family photo before church. There were no new Easter outfits this year, but we tried to dress a little nicer than normal. This is a VERY casual place. Dressing up does not happen often. Yesterday was the first day I wore something besides sandals on my feet.
We followed the photo with a short walk to church. There are two services each week the Tok Pisin service and the English service. Because we want to get familiar with the language, we have been attending the Tok Pisin service. It requires a great deal of concentration and I find that I miss a lot of what is being said, but it's a way to connect with the nationals and communicate to them my desire to get to know their culture. Hopefully, in the process, I will begin to learn more Tok Pisin.
After church we came home and had an Easter egg hunt for Sydney and Calvin. We had another family over on Saturday to dye eggs with us, so we hid those and a dozen plastic eggs which I brought with us. The kids enjoyed that.
After the hunt, we went to our friends house and enjoyed an Easter meal together and spent some time visiting and enjoying the beautiful day.
There is something really peaceful about this place. As I sit here I'm humbled by thoughts of God's incredible love for me. He created such places of beauty that we can enjoy. Most important, though, he sent his son to die for our mistakes. Wow!
Easter has always been a big family celebration for us, so as we prepared for our first holiday overseas (there was my birthday, but that doesn't really count) we were really hoping to spend the day with other people. We were so happy to be invited to Easter with our friends the Russells. We shared a lovely meal and time visiting together.
We began our Easter morning with the traditional family photo before church. There were no new Easter outfits this year, but we tried to dress a little nicer than normal. This is a VERY casual place. Dressing up does not happen often. Yesterday was the first day I wore something besides sandals on my feet.
We followed the photo with a short walk to church. There are two services each week the Tok Pisin service and the English service. Because we want to get familiar with the language, we have been attending the Tok Pisin service. It requires a great deal of concentration and I find that I miss a lot of what is being said, but it's a way to connect with the nationals and communicate to them my desire to get to know their culture. Hopefully, in the process, I will begin to learn more Tok Pisin.
After church we came home and had an Easter egg hunt for Sydney and Calvin. We had another family over on Saturday to dye eggs with us, so we hid those and a dozen plastic eggs which I brought with us. The kids enjoyed that.
After the hunt, we went to our friends house and enjoyed an Easter meal together and spent some time visiting and enjoying the beautiful day.
There is something really peaceful about this place. As I sit here I'm humbled by thoughts of God's incredible love for me. He created such places of beauty that we can enjoy. Most important, though, he sent his son to die for our mistakes. Wow!
Monday, April 2, 2007
We've gone Bananas!
We have about 50 ripe bananas at our house right now and about 100 more ripening.
This seems to beg the question... "What am I going to do with all those bananas?"
My answer... I have no idea! I mean really how can I use them all?
I enjoy bananas, but I'm sure you will agree that this is an excessive amount. Sharing with the neighbors might be an option if they didn't all have their own banana trees.
Here are a few ideas I came up with...
Just eat them, of course
banana bread
banana pancakes
banana cookies
banana smoothies
banana muffins
I researched some banana recipes and came up with one for banana fritters... turns out that one is not a family favorite!
So, if you've got any ideas about what I can do with all these bananas... let me know!
(Please understand I'm not complaining about having fresh ripe bananas from our own banana trees. I'm just looking for creative suggestions.)
This seems to beg the question... "What am I going to do with all those bananas?"
My answer... I have no idea! I mean really how can I use them all?
I enjoy bananas, but I'm sure you will agree that this is an excessive amount. Sharing with the neighbors might be an option if they didn't all have their own banana trees.
Here are a few ideas I came up with...
Just eat them, of course
banana bread
banana pancakes
banana cookies
banana smoothies
banana muffins
I researched some banana recipes and came up with one for banana fritters... turns out that one is not a family favorite!
So, if you've got any ideas about what I can do with all these bananas... let me know!
(Please understand I'm not complaining about having fresh ripe bananas from our own banana trees. I'm just looking for creative suggestions.)
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Yard Meris
Thank goodness for our yard meris!
The house we are living in here has quite a large, beautifully landscaped yard. While I enjoy the beauty of the yard, I know nothing about yardwork and caring for plants. Thankfully, one of the ways we serve the nationals is by hiring them as house help and yard help. Each Thursday we have two women (sisters) who come to the house and work in the yard (yard meris). They rake, pull weeds, pick ripe fruit, etc. I'm sure that without them our yard would be dead in a matter of weeks! We are blessed that our yard meris are Christian women. They live here on the center and the children on one of the women have become good friends with Sydney and Calvin.
Part of my job as the person hiring them is to feed them a snack at break time and serve them lunch. It also gives me a chance to sit and talk with them a bit. I'm hoping that this will be one way I begin to learn tok pisin (pidgin).
The house we are living in here has quite a large, beautifully landscaped yard. While I enjoy the beauty of the yard, I know nothing about yardwork and caring for plants. Thankfully, one of the ways we serve the nationals is by hiring them as house help and yard help. Each Thursday we have two women (sisters) who come to the house and work in the yard (yard meris). They rake, pull weeds, pick ripe fruit, etc. I'm sure that without them our yard would be dead in a matter of weeks! We are blessed that our yard meris are Christian women. They live here on the center and the children on one of the women have become good friends with Sydney and Calvin.
Part of my job as the person hiring them is to feed them a snack at break time and serve them lunch. It also gives me a chance to sit and talk with them a bit. I'm hoping that this will be one way I begin to learn tok pisin (pidgin).
Pizza Dinner
In keeping with family tradition, we spent our Sunday evening with a pizza dinner and a movie. Gone are the days where we call up the pizza delivery and we have hot, fresh pizza in 45 minutes.
It was about a 2 hour process and took some teamwork, but we made our first homemade pizza here in PNG. We began with making the pizza dough. I mixed the dough, Chad did the kneading and shaping on the dough. Next came the sauce, thankfully we can get some canned foods at the store here, so we opened up a can of tomatoes and a can of tomato sauce, added some spices and other things and made a lovely pizza sauce. Now for the toppings... we can get mozzarella and parmesan cheese here at the store so we used that to make the kids a cheese pizza. For the grown up pizza, we chopped up some meat sticks they sell here as a snack item (it's the closest we could find to pepperoni), sliced some olives (from a can), and chopped up some pineapple (fresh from our garden).
The overall consensus... delicious. So, while it's no pizza delivery, we felt pretty good about it. I am constantly amazed at the resources we have here in the food department.
It was about a 2 hour process and took some teamwork, but we made our first homemade pizza here in PNG. We began with making the pizza dough. I mixed the dough, Chad did the kneading and shaping on the dough. Next came the sauce, thankfully we can get some canned foods at the store here, so we opened up a can of tomatoes and a can of tomato sauce, added some spices and other things and made a lovely pizza sauce. Now for the toppings... we can get mozzarella and parmesan cheese here at the store so we used that to make the kids a cheese pizza. For the grown up pizza, we chopped up some meat sticks they sell here as a snack item (it's the closest we could find to pepperoni), sliced some olives (from a can), and chopped up some pineapple (fresh from our garden).
The overall consensus... delicious. So, while it's no pizza delivery, we felt pretty good about it. I am constantly amazed at the resources we have here in the food department.
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