Saturday, February 03, 2007

Food, wonderful food...

I've had that stuck in my head for a week. Last Friday we went to see Ice Age 2 at the dive-in (on a screen over a pool) in town, and that is the song that the vultures sing when asked "What are you thinking as you look at us?" by the sloth. Anyways, this would have been a much better post, but the computer lab is being a poop, and changing things around, so I can't find the pictures that I downloaded last week. Oh well, maybe I'll find them if I go back to the library, and I can post them later.

This morning we had flax-seed pancakes for breakfast. Since there are no maple trees in this country, maple syrup is freakin' expensive, so we don't buy it (my mom is sending some in her next package, though, and it's homemade by my auntie). A very aussie thing to do, however, is to sprinkle sugar on the pancakes, and then squeeze some lemon juice over it. I was skeptical the first time I tried it, but it's actually quite good on plain pancakes (banana pancakes are another story).
At the market last week we found these green lemons for super cheap so we grabbed them. They taste very similar, but lack that bitterness that yellow lemons have--almost like a very tart lemonade flavor. When mixed with a bit of raw sugar, they made a delicious pancake topping. There were also a few banana pancakes in the batch, and we smothered those in peanut butter. I <3 breakfast!

Since we had such a big brekky, we weren't too hungry for lunch, so we just had some tropical fruit. Andy and I shared a pineapple, two mangos, and two abius.
The mangos are a different variety than the ones I've mentioned here before; they are a special Thai species with a tiny seed and very very sweet flesh.
The abiu are yellow on the outside and green-ish at the bottom, and you cut them open and scoop out the insides with a spoon. They are usually a bit whiter than this (I think it oxidised from being in the fridge too long) and they have a very delicate, sweet flavour. I've heard them described as tasting like caramel, but I don't really taste that when I eat them.

We got three little white eggplants from the market last week as well. They are milder than their purple cousins, and turn brown when they're cooked. This week we put them in a lemon risotto (based loosely on the recipe from Vegan Planet, though with heaps more veggies, and lemon thyme as well as lemon juice), and in pasta sauce.

I haven't been posting in the past week because it has been pouring buckets--it's seriously rained non-stop since last Saturday. I came to check my email on Thursday and I had to ford a stream to get to the computer lab on campus. Unfortunately, the markets will probably be cancelled this week because of all this rain, and I'll have to eat stupid grocery store veggies and fruit.

If I ever find those other pictures, I'll upload them. From memory, there were pictures of a whole, uncut abiu, our tray of Thai mangos, some of the aforementioned pasta sauce, and I don't know what else. Don't get your hopes up or anything, though, because uni networks are lame.

2 comments:

bazu said...

Oooh another new thing for me: I've never even heard of an abiu. cool! I'd give anything to live on a diet of tropical fruits for a while. I also sometimes really like lemon/sugar on my pancakes/crepes.

urban vegan said...

Dive in? Abui. How cool are they? Let me know if you can buy maple extract wher you live. If you can, I can send you a recipe for a maple syrup substitute that tastes pretty convincing and will save you some cash.

Also--I answered your question about wok care [to the best of my ability!] on my blog.