Homegrown Squash

What with the current E.coli cucumber food scare sending Europeans into a frenzy, and an ever increasing number of alarming reports on mass farming practices (exploding watermelons in China, for example), I'm mighty glad to be doing our best to grow our own. We've got a huge, uncontrollable squash-vine taking over half of our backyard at the moment, and much to Matotea's delight it's got a whole heap of squash coming on it. She likes to keep a close eye on how many we have, and whether they're still there where she left them last time.  I think a few of them should be ready by the end of june. I can't wait to get going making squash soup, squash curry and even squash cake (yes, I have a recipe, and whatsmore it is REALLY delicious), I'm even told that squash jam is quite good, though that'll be a new one on me.

Christophene

I'm super excited to have discovered a 'new' vegetable in these last few months, it's called a christophene or chouchotte. It looks slightly weird, but is very versatile, it has a taste and texture a bit like a mild radish, though it has funny spiky skin and an almond-like stone. To be honest I had actually seen it for sale here before, but I'd just steered clear of it. But I've been reading a few Caribbean cookbooks, and most recently Ann Vanderhoof's An Embarrassment of Mangoes (about a couple who take a career break to cruise around the Caribbean in a yacht), it's filled with great travel tales and delicious anecdotes and recipes. I've long looked to
Caribbean cuisine to inspire my dishes for the guesthouse, a lot of the same vegetables grow here and there, though we lack the diversity of spices, peppers and chilies, sadly! Anyway I use the christophene in salads to give crunch, but it can also be cooked in a gratin, stuffed or added to stews and curries, it's just another thing to add to my backup list, for the days when I'm tearing my hair out to find vegetables here......

Snozzcumbers, red tape and Peppa pig!

It's been a random sort of week, with a few quite unrelated odd things cropping up.

Matotea has started addressing herself as Peppa Pig, and we have to answer to Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig, or suffer the consequences. This role-playing fantasy has been going on for two days now!

I received a weird looking vegetable from my mother-in-law, she told me it was a giant bean, maybe I should plant it so that I can find the crock of gold! But seriously what is this, it looks like a cross between okra and a courgette....and brings to mind snozzcumbers........ 

Sometimes life here in French Polynesia is a little trying - yes, it's true, even here in paradise.  I've been trying to figure out what to do, to get my UK-European drivers license renewed/changed into a French Polynesia/European drivers license. It's an impossibly complicated matter, as is anything involving paperwork here, all the more complicated by the fact that you can't get passport photos done in Rurutu, nor get an official french translation (yeah, hard to believe, but I need to get my license translated by an official translator!). I'm grappling with the realization that I'll need to go to Tahiti to get the pictures done, quite an expensive passport photo that!

Heimana stood up for half a millisecond on her own, and was SOOOO very pleased about it. Almost as pleased as she was to be sharing a ride on Matotea's tricycle (dammit that camera has not yet arrived)!

The bank called me on saturday, weird enough as the Socredo has the least useful opening hours of any bank I know.......but a very polite lady wanted to ask me not to use their online banking facilities, outside of regular banking hours (hmmmmmn! now isn't that the purpose of online banking?).......apparently it was causing some kind of confusion for the computer techs or maybe the fraud squad in Tahiti !?!