Food, Friends, Flowers & Fabric

FOOD:

After a tough day of sun and snorkeling there is nothing quite like a Samoan sized burger! This thing was 6" across at least. Delish... I came very close to finishing it off, along with most of the fries.


FRIENDS:

Friday night at the market. I tried lots of new foods here. Some I liked, some not so much.

I did like the company however. Vili and Marianna, both originally from Fiji, and Joanie from Oregon (also here doing research like me). Fun night out with the girls in the rain.

After all the food testing we left the market and went to a Chinese restaurant and had some familiar soup and egg rolls. Well, we started out adventurous...

Foods baked in the Umu (in the ground on a bed of hot lava rocks):

The basket the foods are baked in is made of palm fronds and is really beautiful. My friend Nia says she will teach me how to make one before I leave.

Young taro is kind of like spinach and is yummy wrapped in a foil pouch, baked with the coconut cream in the umu.

Octopus in it's own ink sauce is likely the most disgusting thing I have tasted, but for the record, even though it looked like this, I did taste it. "Not my favorite"

I have also found that I like taro, and green banana cooked in coconut milk, but do not like bread fruit. (I think it smells funny!)

Fruit:

This guy makes his load look light, but that is a a whole "bunch" of bananas in those baskets!!

At the market: Green and yello banana, papaya, limes, and some strange prickly fruit. No one seemed to know the name of this prickly thing but they also said it was not ripe and would need a few weeks on the counter to ripen. Sadly, I don't have that kind of time.

The papaya was simply beautiful and delicious with lime squeezed on it, and of course my all time favorite pineapple. I sauteed this with brown sugar and red onion.

I also recently picked and ate white guava, drank juice made from the Vi'i fruit, and had the most buttery beautiful avocado ever.

Yummy baked and fried goodies:

Recent discoveries; German Buns, these are kind of jelly filled donuts, fried and served in a brown bag. Pane popo, basically a dinner roll baked in a bath of coconut cream. When you pull one of these warm buns out it is drenched in this slightly sweet coconut cream and is soooo delicious! Hello Breakfast!

FLOWERS:

My first week at church I walked in the chapel to see this. Three large bouquets just like this actually, and I thought "Wow, gorgeous flowers, there must have just been a funeral." I askedaround and found out that all the wards here have flowers like this in their chapels every Sunday.

The women take turns bringing the arrangements from home and for the most part, the flowers are just growing in their yards. Spectacular!!

FABRIC:

Oh, how I love fabric!

My first trip to the store that had some fabric I simply couldn't get over the beautiful floral prints. Hundreds of Hawaiian prints run amuck!! It was great. I wanted them all, but I knew I had to show some reserve and get only as much as I could ship home reasonably. So I ended up with these.

I have a Hawaiian quilt I made for my grandmother a few years ago, that was given back to me when she passed away. It is a soft pink with a white background. I thought perhaps some throw pillows and a small lap quilt out of these would really finish off a girly guest room. Grandma would have loved it. Such fun!