Try dribbling this!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
One of Sarah's favorite treats from the market is pomelo - a close relative of grapefruit. The other day I bought this one for her which you can see is nearly as big as a basketball!
Pomelos have very thick rinds - this one was about 2" thick. Inside the fruit is yellow or pink and tastes similar to grapefruit, although often they are not as juicy or sweet.
This pomelo cost $10 Solomon dollars which is about $1.25 US. We have seen a big increase in prices at the market. Some produce has doubled in price over the past few months. This is partially due to a lot of rainfall which ruined some gardens and a big increase in the price of rice which is largely imported.
Labels: food
posted by Martha @ 8:11 PM
Yes, we have bananas!
Saturday, March 10, 2007
As you might expect, we have a lot of bananas in the Solomon Islands. What you might find surprising is that there are many many varieties available. Some bananas have to be cooked, others can be eaten right off the hand and some can be either cooked or eaten fresh. Some bananas are tiny - 3-4" long and others nearly a foot in length.
Yesterday as I walked through the market, I saw a type of banana I hadn't seen before so I decided to try them. As you can see they are a bit red on the outside, but the flesh has a red tint as well. They are very tasty bananas.
When we are in the USA we don't eat many bananas because they tend to be rather tasteless and disappointing to us. The variety of bananas sold in the USA were probably chosen because they ship well. Bananas here are tree ripened and we'd have to say they taste much better as a result!
Labels: food, life in the tropics
posted by Martha @ 11:10 AM
Treasure at the Beach
Last Saturday when we went to the beach, Emily and her friend Grant found coconut which had begun to sprout. Emily and Grant got excited because it holds a special treat.
They took a bush knife (machete) to the coconut to get through the thick fibrous husk. They hacked at that until they could peel the husk off the shell.
A final 'whack' and the shell splits open. Inside the shell is a pithy white flesh which is the 'germ' of the coconut seed. The kids love to eat this slightly sweet treat which is called vara.
Labels: food, life in the tropics
posted by Martha @ 10:00 AM
We all scream for ice cream!
Monday, February 12, 2007
When we were in the USA, friends introduced us to
"Coldstone Creamery Ice Cream". We aren't sure if they did us a favor or not, because we got hooked! At one store we saw a poster that said something like, "Real friends don't let their friends eat store bought ice cream." We chuckled at that, because here in the Solomons, friends who eat at our house are never served store bought ice cream!
We have a hand crank ice cream machine and Tim has ice cream making down to a science! Tonight was his first time to make ice cream since we've returned to the Solomons.
Tim makes a cooked custard type ice cream which we refrigerates for 24 hours before he starts cranking it. He usually cranks the ice cream at night when the outside temperatures are cooler. When the ice cream is finished, he stores it in our deep freezer until it's ready to serve. Tim makes the ice cream ahead of time so it has time to firm up before we serve it.
The girls love when Tim makes ice cream and have talked about falling asleep at night to the sound of dad cranking the ice cream in the carport below the house as they dream about the delicious ice cream they will eat the next day.
We are preparing for our Valentine's Party on Wednesday night which we host each year. This year we are having a scaled down party and only serving dessert instead of preparing a formal sit down dinner for our guests - we have hosted up to 22! Next year we'll do it up big again, but for this year, our friends will be delighted to savor Tim's ice cream again after a year's absence.
Labels: food
posted by Martha @ 9:14 PM
Market
Friday, February 9, 2007
Note: Sorry there haven't been any new blogs for a few days. I was ready to write up my market trip Friday morning, but the power was out for a while. Then when I had power Friday night, there were technical glitches and the photos wouldn't load. I hope you enjoy a trip to the market...
After I dropped the girls off at school, I headed to the market to stock up on fruits and veggies for the weekend. I came home with a loaded market basket and then some more. I thought you might enjoy seeing what I bought.
One woman had lots and lots of 'bushlimes' which are a small lemon/lime type fruit. Bushlime juice is very refreshing! I bought 80 bushlimes at a cost of $20 (less than $3.00 USD). When I got home I put them in a bowl and poured boiling water over them. This softens the skin and makes them easier to juice. Later I juiced them with the juicer attachment on my Kitchenaid Mixer. Then I poured the juice into ice cube trays to freeze. Later I put them in a plastic bag or container and keep the bushlime cubes in the freezer for making juice quickly and easily.
I bought a few small tomatoes. In the market, they are placed in little piles worth $1.00
($.20 USD).
This is a small pumpkin. It cost $10 ($1.40 USD). We enjoy baked pumpkin.
Emily requested some guavas. This is a pretty good sized one. I hope she likes them - I tend to buy them ripe and the girls like them a bit green.
This bundle of greens is called "Chinese broccoli" and it does taste a bit like broccoli. It takes 3 bundles to feed our family and each one cost $6 (almost $3.00 US). Usually we chop it up and cook it in a little water with chopped onion. Yum.
Sometimes we can find green beans, but more commonly we find these 'long beans' in the market. I don't like them as well as regular green beans, but they are OK. You may notice that the bundles of vegetables are wrapped in a leaf to keep them together. What a great bio-degradable way to package!
This unusual looking vegetable is actually the flower of a type of grass! The outside of the rough husk is covered with tiny hairs that can stick in your skin. The part that you eat is the white flower inside the husk. 
When it is steamed and served with a cheese sauce on it, it almost tastes like cauliflower. This bundle cost me $8 (a little over $1.00 US)
There were lots of pineapples in the market and the one I bought cost $12.00 ($1.70 US) and it is sure to taste much better than ones you can buy in a grocery store in the USA!
I bought this chicken from a woman I know who was selling chickens in the market. It weighs a little over 2 pounds and cost $50 ($7.15 USD). Chicken is expensive here because all of the feed is imported since there isn't any grain grown in country to feed chickens.
My just for fun purchase was the flowers. Saturday is the best day for finding flowers at the market, but I lucked out with these two bundles (which included some orchids) for $10 each ($1.40 USD).
My last purchase was a watermelon. I'm terrible about picking out good ones, so I enlisted the help of some local women in the market to help me choose a nice one. It worked because it is a nice red color inside and tasty, too!
Labels: Daily Life, food
posted by Martha @ 9:24 PM
Taco Bell Solomons Style
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
We had some wonderful meals in the USA and especially enjoyed Mexican food. However, Emily and Sarah have been looking forward to eating our homemade Mexican meals that we enjoy here in the Solomons. Eating Mexican food here takes quite a bit more work than in the USA. 
First we start with pinto beans. We buy them at the bulk store in town. They have been in the freezer for about a week to kill off the extra 'protein'. (weevils)
The beans are washed and then put in a pot of water that is brought to a boil. Then the heat is turned off and the beans left to soak for a while. If I plan ahead, I do this the night before I want to cook them.
After the beans have soaked and swollen a bit, the water is drained off and changed with fresh water. (This is supposed to make the beans less 'gassy'.)
The beans are put on to cook again with lots of onions, garlic and some beef boullion. They cook and cook and cook all day and occasionally water is added to keep them from boiling dry. A pressure cooker speeds up this process, but mine isn't working. However when our crate arrives at the end of February, I will have a new one.
When the beans are soft, we mash them with a potato masher in a cast iron skillet with a bit of oil and fry them.
Meanwhile the flour tortillas are in process. The flour is sifted for weevils. Then I mix flour, baking powder, salt, oil and water together in my Kitchenaid mixer. The dough is formed into balls and left to sit for 15 minutes.
Then the dough is rolled out into tortillas that are cooked on a cast aluminum griddle on our stove. This process works best with a couple of people working together. Tonight everyone was helping and it all went much faster. I forgot to take a picture of us eating our bean burritos, but they were tastier then Taco Bell!
Labels: Daily Life, food
posted by Martha @ 7:49 PM
Making Pancakes
Saturday, January 27, 2007
After all that, we weren't really psyched up to do any heavy cooking, so we settled on Romanian Pancakes (similar to crepes) which we ate filled with a fresh fruit salad of papaya, pineapple, bananas and grapefruit. Sounds fairly simple, but of course all the fruit had to be cleaned and cut up.
Then there was the flour. The flour sat in our freezer for several days to kill any weevils. Sure enough the flour was loaded with 'extra protein' so it needed to be sifted. To save time later, I sifted a large container of flour.Here is the extra 'protein' I found.
There are 'joys' of living in the Solomon Islands that I had forgotten about when we were in USA...
Labels: food
posted by Martha @ 3:18 PM
