Erm…. My pronunciation is going to get me into trouble

See that big yellow thing in the background? I’ve been asking, since I came up here in 09, what they are. You can get them at roadside markets all over Morobe Province. Often, they come in the most amazing deep red.

They are called Mariposa, or so I thought. And I always wondered why they were called after the Spanish word for “butterfly” and why people always giggled and turned away when I asked then how you cook it, or “what yu use him for?”
A Spanish word as part of the local language is not so odd.Tok Pisin is a melange of Australian-pronounced English, German, Italian and French.

Umm.

No. It’s not Mariposa.

Its:

Mari Pleeza.

You work it out.

This morning's haul

It's Thursday. In Lae, it's pretty much universally referred to as "stay-at-home Thursday". Primarily because it's pay day for a lot of the locals, and the queues for the bank are so long, the often stretch around the block. Combine that with scorching heat, and strength sapping humidity, and you've got all the ingredients for a couple of the locals to let their inner raskol out for a run.  It's just another way we bounce up here in Lae. It's also means I get to work from home, so Thursday is going to be by blog/obligatory email home day. And I get to go to the market nice and early, to pick up the best the vendors have on offer.



Today I grabbed a mango for breakfast, a hand of eating bananas, some more rambutans and some kina. Kina is the name of the currency up here, but also the name of a tasty mussel/pipi/clam-like mollusc. Originally, transactions were made in Kina shells, thereby giving rise to the name of the currency. They are large and meaty and I think they're going to be awesome on pasta tonight.They're currently de-sanding themselves in the bath. You have to rinse them for at least 4 hours before you can cook them, to get rid of the sandy grit, and also the tiny kina crabs that live in some of them.

Lae is shrouded in its usual haze of overcast cloud, wood smoke and dust. The local ladies are getting to know me at the market now, They call me and show me their wares with smiles  that are blindingly white, and heart-grippingly genuine. Some of them have walked 6 hours down from the mountains to bring just a few hands of bananas or a bag of charko lif down to town. Pikininis stare unabashedly at my hair and ask their Mamis why the white lady has buai in her "gras bilong het".

The smell of Lae is one of woodsmoke, BO, mangoes, dust and the sea. Sometimes, when the mackerel factory is canning, it smells of that, too. When the vanilla factory AND the mackerel factory are processing at the same time, it can be a little...err...overwhelming.

We had an awesome tropical storm last night. torrential rain, lightning, thunder, the whole shebang. The overnight rain has damped down the dust and pulled some of the humidity out of the air, I don't need the aircon on just yet.  It's my haus mari's day off.. the workmen next door have yet to arrive and switch on that bloody gen-set, I have a puppeh at my feet, an organic, free trade, single source coffee in my mug  and a 'fridge filled with all sorts of local goodness.



Every day, I feel more and more contented, and more and more home.

arpinoon ol man and mari!

Guess who's back in PNG?

Yup.

Got me a 3 year gig up here. And now, I am working on social media solutions for small business, as well as looking at ways to export spice back into OZ, so I'll have MUCH more time to hang out here!!

So lukim yu from the land of:

 

cassia bark, rambutans and mangosteens. Total cost? about $2.00 at the local market.

There is something about this place. It's certainly not for the faint-hearted. Particularly if you're a woman. But once you get past the dust and the buai spitting, it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. The mountains are like nothing we've got back home, they're huge! As a friend said "who looked at those peaks and thought it would be a good idea to walk across them and invade Australia?"

My days are filled with breakfast at the Yacht club, watching the locals in dug-outs and banana boats head in and out, doing laps of the pool while my mari (housemaid) cleans, supervising the gardener who's putting in my herb and fruit garden. So far we've planted lemongrass, chilli, a mango tree and two banana trees. Hopefully my vanilla  vine will go in next week.

A weeks worth of fruit and veg can be picked up from the market for less than $10AUD, I got excited today, because we got new razor- wire, I had home made Singapore chilli mud crab and French champagne on my birthday, and Friday night I had the most amazing all-you-can-eat seafood buffet at the Lae International for about $27 AUD a head.

I'm home

What's important?

I've got to a point in my life, where I am currently assessing what's important. What matters and what doesn't. Sorting through what's real and what's habitual. What's worth my time and what wastes it.

And this applies as much (perhaps more so) to things as it does to people.

Last week I forgot the anniversary of my Hobbits death. 

I have a myriad of excuses, but the fact remains that for the previous 5 years, the first week of Feb has loomed large and treacherously, from Xmas onwards.

And this year it passed by in a flurry of "other things".

So, in making an active decision to spend more time on the good, and less (if not none) on the bad, and PARTICULARLY, the ugly, I've sorted my life into what's important and what isn't.

And when you are authentically.. I mean REALLY committed to this process, it's quite confronting. From the ring my first real boyfriend gave me, to the very last thing my Hobbit purchased for me, I've gone through my life and discarded what I no longer need.

And in some cases, kept what I thought I didn't.

And, because this is a food blog, and this post is in SERIOUS danger of becoming a self-indulgent, maudlin middle-aged emo sook-fest,I give you a small taste of what, after 45 years on this planet, is important to me.




A wine rack, a coffee plunger, a print of Monet's garden in Giverny, my stick blender, a mirror overlaid with KwanYin, my antique marble slab,my silicone cooking gear (but only because my non-stick ripple pan is my most prized possession!) and my cookbooks. My Aqua Sulis and a bag filled with mezzalunas and my antique butchers knives.

And my PNG panga and my hand-made bilum.

The rest was dross.

AGITK and I will be taking a wee hiatus, because this blog IS one of the things I have decided is important to me, and when we return, in about 2 week, things, my friends, will be very VERY different.

As they say in the classics, "strange things are afoot at the Circle K"

See you all on the flip side.

CFD/AFD

No, it's not some trendy new diagnosis of children who obsessively wash their hands while screaming that they have nut allergies, it's my new mantra.

And, as every good Buddhist knows, mantras MUST be abbreviated to TLA's (which in itself is a joke, three letter acronyms? geddit!!)

So, this weekend, past, My delicious friend, Peakie and I embarked on my very first Blonde Ambition Tour.

Peakie is (sometimes, even erstwhile) blonde, as are some of her besties, and they all get together on various girls weekends, in the country and overseas, and each one of these girls weekends/weeks are referred to as a Blonde Ambition Tour.

Very similar to my Namaste Bitches sisters and our Florida Tour last year

(pee ess, The Namaster Bitches 2011 Tour is to the UK to see THE OPENING NIGHT OF THE FOO FIGHTER'S WORLD TOUR.. more on that later!)

And what happens on a Blonde Ambition Tour STAYS on.... well, you know the rest.

Except this time, we decided to be a gang, The Blonde Ambition Gang, which of course, leads me back to the topic of this post.

BAG.

Thus we all had to have gang names.

Mine, I am proud to announce, was Lemon Iced-T (BAG). And rocked the SHIZZ out of the Torquay Caravan Park. We TOTALLY  played Lilly Allen's "Fuck You" really loud. Like on 4. At about 6.30pm.

We were ROCK STARS, man, we kinda slumped around that Caravan site causing fear and havoc in the hearts of all who saw us. Although we replaced the hoodies and bandanas and low slung jeans for one piece bathers with built in spandex support and sarongs, we were FEARSOME, dude. Our slumping gang skillz even had a zed.

We even had someone knock on the caravan door at 10.30 and tell us to "Keep it down" . It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

Now, Girls weekends, I've had a few. But I can honestly say that I have never come home from a weekend having only existed on chicken twistees, blue cheese, havarti and cowboy shots.

Seriously. That is all I consumed for an entire weekend. Maybe a few random CC's in there, and there is a vague memory of a handful of BBQ Shapes. And possibly a mouthful of  2 minute noodles.

Did you know that you can re-use the pre-fab Cowboy shot glasses, and make BETTER ones? Like with Baileys and Scotch?

Believe me, after your 17th, they taste AMAZING!

Tip for young players?

Make sure you get the angle of the weird little curvy plastic divider in said pre-fab shot glasses right, or it just dribbles out of the side of your mouth, and you look drunker than you actually are.

And you waste alcohol, which is a violation of both BAT and NBT rules.

So, this past few days have been deemed CFD/ AFD's

Cheese Free Day and Alcohol Free Day.

Quite seriously, if you put a wodge of  Pule in front of me, I'd just about vom.

So, Sunday night, after the above weekend, I had this:



Tofu and chive Asian dumplings, with wilted choy sum, tomato and cucumber.

I could actually feel the nutrients returning to by blood stream and forcing the chicken twistie badness from my liver.

I'm too old for this. 

Beware of Greeks bearing......

KOUZINA, at Knox Ozone.

Some of the cheapest, most innovative food, Greek or otherwise, I've ever had.

Seriously, my aversion to all things meat and fruit combo'd is well documented here.

Yet, that second photo:- seared scallops on fetta and watermelon disks, with a watermelon and mint dressing, was sublime.

The Lima Bean and el pussykato sipped on cocktails, while I indulged in a Mythos or two.

www.kouzina.com.au


Oh, and the last photo?

That's Kouzina's take on baklava with Halva ice cream.

minor_deity1@hotmail.com

My enablers.

Hi. I'm pg. I'm a manners Nazi, inveterate snob, book whore and foodie.

And my son, The Lima bean is my enabler.

As some of you know, he took 2010 off as a gap year, before he's off to join the Army (to train as a helicopter pilot... he's too tall to fit into a jet, according to the ADF!)

So where does the son of a book whore and foodie choose to work during his gap year?

IN A BOOK SHOP IN CAMBERWELL!!!

It's kinda like a smack addict having a son who works in a meth lab.

So, while the north of my country experiences the worst flooding in history, with 75% of the state of Queensland declared a state of emergency, it's also pissing down here in Melbourne Town.

Not to the extent of what's going on up North, but enough that Lima Bean and his most beautiful and succulent girlfriend, The Pussy Kat, made me a deal this morning.

Drive them to work in Camberwell and they'd buy me breakfast. AND bring me home a book (Geoffrey Robertson's treatise on why the Canonical legal system of the Vatican encourages and perpetuates paedophilia, no less!)

**sigh**

I hate that my son knows how to enable me.

So we braved the rain, the tram tracks, the aqua-plane-ing of the car, the plethora of dickhead drivers through the Camberwell junction and finally made it to Cattivo.

Now if you are a languages freak (as opposed to a language/spelling/grammar/syntax freak, of which I am both.), you'll know that cattivo is Italian for "naughty" as in bad or wicked. It's possibly derived from the Latin "capttivus" meaning "caught by the Devil"

And Cattivo has captivate me in just one sitting.

From the communal table, to the funky retro 50's music (sets at an excellent volume), to the waft of fresh ginger as they freshly squeezed our breakfast juice (I ordered orange, pineapple, carrot and ginger), everything was perfect.

Including the waitresses response to me ordering "I'd like you to move the entire cafe closer to where I live, please"

**wink**

I had the omelette with pancetta, fresh tomato and spinach.

It was perfection on a plate.

The portion size was just right, the omelette was light and fluff and thick, no scrimping on the eggs, and it was folded over the other ingredients, rather than having them incorporated into the omelette itself, which is the "proper" way to fill an omlette. The heat of the omlette warmed up the tomatoes and spinach, so they retained their fresh characteristics, which lent a quite different flavour and texture than if they had been cooked in with the egg mix.

It was served with a single piece of perfectly toasted sourdough.

The only down side? pre-packed butter.

Served with a knob of Lurpak, this would have achieved taste-varna.

Lima Bean and The Kat had the crepes, made fresh and filled with ricotta, topped with fresh strawberries and a glaze that tasted like it had organic honey in it.

Not my cuppa tea for breakfast, but they loved. it.

Urban spoon says:



In a town where breakfast restaurants are more frequent and on every corner, much like McArches, and most serve food of the same McArches standard, it's quite awesome to find a breakfast place, that has a commitment to using fresh ingredients in a really respectful way.

Awesome.

pg says stop what you;re doing, whatever it is, right now, and go there.