pit-pit

One of the things I wanted to do while I was up here in PNG, was learn about the local food. PNG, and Lae is blessed with an abundance of tropical fruits and veggies that we just can't get in Melbourne. For example, I have tried paw paw at home, and found it really rather nasty. But up here, fresh off the tree, with a squeeze of lemon juice...

Heaven.

PNG is a foodie/localvore's wet dream. All the produce sold at the local market is from the area... and I mean, within a couple of hours' WALK. No pesticides are used (too expensive) and the suppliers are the local villages, so the money you spend stays in the local community.

You can go to the supermarkets and get apples or pears, or watermelon wrapped in plastic, but why would you??

I also wanted to find out about local dishes, and on the way home from Madang this weekend, we stopped at a road side stall to buy what I thought was lemon grass.



It turned out to be something called pit-pit, and at K2.00 (AUD $0.75) I thought that I'd give it a red hot go, and get our haus mari to teach me to cook it.

pit-pit is the edible stalk of a wild cane that grows rampantly up here. It looks like lemongrass on steroids. And I was reliably informed that to cook pit pit, you need coconut. Not kulau, young coconut, but "dry" coconut.



And to get to the meat of the dry coconut, I was going to need some tools.

A panga, or a mean-arse freaking HUGE bush knife. And a coconut scraper.



You can buy electric coconut scrapers up here, for about K300.00, but for the amount of times that I will be using it, a K4.00 worked just fine.

It's bloody hard work, though, and took about half an hour to scrape the meat from a single coconut.



you peel the outer leaves from the pit pit, and expose the "meat", which can only be described as like a white bullrush.



Boil the pit pits in water and salt, for about 20 minutes. Add sliced "strong banana" if you care to.



While the pit pit is cooking, add about 1/2 a cup of water to your scraped coconut and wring the cream out of it. Discard the coconut pulp.




Drain the cooking water from the pit-pit/banana and return to pot. Add the coconut milk, a sliced chili, 1/4 of a brown onion finely chopped, a knob of fresh grated ginger and bring back to the boil. Simmer for a further 10 minutes.




The banana takes on the texture of a cooked potato and the pit-pit absorbed a lot of the coconut water. It's amazingly tasty and must be super low-GI, as we weren't hungry again for hours.

I don't have crabs :(

John and Jack took to Labu Market today, to buy mud crabs.

This is one place I am definitely NOT allowed to go to on my own.

To get to Labu Market, you have to go via the docks.. which is where Furry got the bullet hole in his car.

Labu Market sells mostly buaii and marijuana, but also mud crabs.





Except today, they sold out.

So, Tuesday, I am grabbing a banana boat



and for $15AUD, I am being taken to Labu Village



to forage for them myself!!

Hooray for Labu-ians with no crabs, that lead to foraging adventures!!





and here's my posse.. complete with Jack (in the safety vest)



heading off to Top Town to buy a baby billum to take to Madang for the weekend.

Will report back later.

coconut prawn curry

Get some prawns



Open some coconut milk







marinate.



Total cost? about $10AUD for the prawns and about $0.75c for the coconuts.

Arbinoon ol man an meri!

Dudes.

I am in love.

Totally, utterly smitten!

with Lae.

Forget everything you might have read, or seen on the Interwebs.

It is simply the most amazing, foreign, wonderful place in the entire world. Sure, we've got pot holes that would swallow a small family saloon, but pretty much everything else I'd heard is crap.

So far,I've walked around the markets (the ones I had photos of last time), driven around with my window down (a huge no-no according to Lonely Planet), stopped on a lonely stretch of road to buy fish from the scary-looking dudes who string their catch up between two palm trees (no photos, I was being well-behaved and respectful)

Highlight?, Our haus mari came running thru the gate, with her arm out, and gave me the biggest hug and said "Missus Ella!!! OH! I am so happi!! Welcome HOME!"

Everything here is so BIG.. I mean, freaking HUGE!!!!! The mountains, the bird, the freaking prawns the size of lobsters... on steroids....



The giggles of the young women at the market, when I told them I would cry if there were no mud crabs.

Here's a little sample of my life over here. I am sitting in my very chi chi poo poo Company-provided house, with my guards and my house staff, typing on the internet to a worldwide audience of educated people. But later this afternoon, I am going to meet with a 9th generation female witch doctor, whose going to read my future.


Day one here, I drove around in the car, with John and Jack .. the Company "fix it" man, who is an ex-PNG policeman, and HIGHLY respected up here. He is very gruff and tough, and not above ordering someone beaten badly for a perceived slight on me.

So I am packing some serious "cred" with these two guys in the car.

Lae has a population of about 50,000 Nationals, and I reckon, withing 24 hours of me arriving, the word was out that Missus Ray was in town and driving around (the cars are all recognised)..., people were waving out in the street and calling out "Hello Missus!! You good driving!!"

So, Jack and John take me to the Supermarket..... queues part, as Jack leads me thru. Armed guards follow us, to make a point of keeping me "safe"... and showing Mr Jack how fearsome they are...

And there is music in the Supermarket... piped in music.

And on comes a song......

That I like.......


So I start singing.....

And dancing......

In the supermarket aisle...

To "Buffalo Soldier"

And the armed guards do this:

And Jack does this:

And John does this:

and withing about 20 seconds I have Jack and John swaying like Hula Girls (complete with hand movements) while I croon Buffalo Soldier into a potato masher.

That is kinda how me and my posse bounce up here.

So, about 2 hours after the above incident, I get back home, and the guard opens the gate and starts laughing at me.

The word is out.

I am not Missus Ray any more, I am "Crazy White Ladi bilong Mista Ray lukim Trukai" or something like that!

So here's another example.

Last time I was up here, was told I wasn't allowed to go to the Botanical Gardens, as it is full of "cowboys and raskols".. ie, escaped convicts and criminals, who would chop me up and sell me back piece by piece to my family.

So I mention to John that I want to put in a herb garden at the house, and he suggests that I go to the Botanical Gardens.

I am a bit worried, but I trust John, so off we go.

Far from what others have described, I find a beautiful, if not poorly maintained garden that could be of world standard with a bit of care.

This dude come out. His English is very good. VERY good. He's wearing a filthy torn shirt, ragged pants and barefoot. he looks like a classic bloody raskol. He takes me walking and shows me stunning... and I mean STUNNING plants. He picks me frangipanis for my hair. He shows me a hybrid ginger plant that he has bred.



Umm.. What?? This guy is a ragged. filty gardener (at best).

No.

He's the senior Botanist.



And he is giving me a private, free tour of HIS botanical garden.

And he's going to strike me a cutting of a vanilla vine, to grow at the house.



And he asked me why more tourists and wives don't come to visit him.

And I didn't know the answer to that.

I am a firm believer in setting your own house in order. Thinking local and acting global and all of that.

I am going to make my Lae home a place of respectful employment for Nationals, based on mutual trust and respect, and ethical and equitable wages.

And be fucked, if I am going to drive around MY HOME TOWN with my window up, just because the Lonely Planet Guide says I should.

And I am going to use the Interwebs to change the entire world's perception of Lae.

I swear it.

VCE exams.

For the next few weeks, the House of Fur and Purple Love is going to revolve around our son, The Lima Bean. He's sitting his VCE exams. This means that the rest of the household defers to his every whim. It was the same for all his other sibs who have previously sat their VCE. The rules in our house are simple. During your VCE year (and more so during the exams) their job is to study. To eat, sleep. drink., fart and poop study. The rest of the family's job is to facilitate that happening.

The Lima Bean came to me recently and told me that he was thinking of throwing in his studies and becoming a barrista. I instantly went into Jewish Mother mode and told him he was pronouncing it wrong

"It's BARRISTER, dahlink, not BARRISTA"

So, more of the Jewish/Italian/Greek mother came out in me this morning, when I was making him breakfast. What do you make to send your son out into the most stressful time of his entire schooling?

For me it was a no-brainer. It had to be something low GI, nourishing, healthy and "brain-boosting"

Enter my fave range of breakfast foods, Real Good Foods .

What is Real Good Food?

The closest most of us come to eating wholefoods is through a diet of white & refined rice & bread – nutritionally ‘empty’ food that fails to give us the essential nutrients found naturally in wholefood. Advocates of wholefood claim that up to 90% of nutrients such as b vitamins, calcium, protein and vitamin e are removed from the grain in its refinement.

With the idea of returning organic wholefood to our diet in an enticing way, realgoodfood began. Eleven years on we remain committed to our philosophy of working with certified organic and biodynamic organic wholefood. Our ingredients are grown in nutrient rich soil by Australia’s best growers and minimally processed to preserve flavour and valuable oils. This is premium wholefood.

My personal fave is their organic lemon polenta porridge.

A coeliacs delight, this organic porridge has a zesty tang that will warm your heart. Made with freshly ground corn meal & wholegrain rice this is a creamy meal that gives long lasting energy. Corn & wholegrain rice are nutritious grains that are well worth a place in a wholefoods diet. ? We recommend it be cooked with a combination of water, milk & apple or pear juice

I cooked it in whole milk, with some organic honey. It's wonderfully creamy and rich, with a real "stick to your ribs" goodness about it. It's bung full of whole nuts and dried fruit as well. It is pretty much made of pure, organic, biodynamic, Lima Bean-fueling awesomeness. It's not cheap, but 1/2 a cup of mix makes about 1.5 cups of finished polenta. More than enough for a growing Lima Bean. I get mine from the organic fruit shop in Kerrie Road, where they stock quite a few Real Good Food products, including another fave:

So, if you're reading this today, spare a thought for Lima Bean. There is a lot of pressure on kids today to make life decisions at the tender age of 17, and the pressure that's applied to kids, in regard to VCE, is far more than when I did my HSC all those years ago. He may not end up being a barrister, and I am actually quite OK with that, but however today's results turn out, I know that he's gone off with a tummy full of brain-enhancing goodness.

Xiao long bao.

Xiao Long Bao closeup by jslander, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

(because I am a totally neurotic Type-A clean freak, who packed the camera a week ago)

Furry, as you may have read, has been poorly. So poorly, in fact, that he's been in hospital. He returned from Lae with chronic gastro, attributed to giardia, salmonella and possibly cholera. He has been one sick little fuzzball. He attributes the illness to drinking supposedly safe river water, on a recent trek.

Note to self: do not drink river water in PNG. Ever. Even when someone well-liked and trusted says its safe. The thing is, said person has lived in PNG for 20+ years and has the intestinal fortitude of a Weribee duck. Furry? Clearly, not so much.

He ended up at Monash, on a potassium drip, in isolation for 4 days. He's lost 10kgs in 4 weeks and hasn't actually consumed any solid food for more than 3 weeks.

So, what to give him for dinner on a) his birthday, and b) his first night back on REAL food?

Dumplings.

Specifically Shanghai soup dumplings or Xiao ling bao.

Wiki says:

Xiaolongbao are traditionally filled with pork, but variations include other meats, seafood and vegetarian fillings, as well as other possibilities. The characteristic soup inside is created by wrapping solid meat gelatin inside the skin alongside the meat filling. Heat from steaming then melts the gelatin into soup. In modern times, refrigeration has made the process of making Xiaolongbao during hot weather easier, as one can use chilled gelatin which might otherwise be liquid at room temperature.

Oh, can we all say "HELL, YES!!!" I mean, soup AND won ton wrappers?? What is NOT to love.

One of the marvellous things about living in Glen Wobberely, and surely the thing I will miss most about the move to Lae, is the Asian restaurants. Once apon a time, you had to drive into town for a decent feed of dim sum. But now we have possibly the best dumpling house outside of Nanxiang.

J.G Dumpling Restaurant,
78 Kings Way,
Glen Waverley, 3150

Soup dumplings are just the thing, to introduce solid food back into a diet. They are nourishing, tasty and easily digested.

Care must be taken when pickingup the bao, that you don't pierce the skin and allow all the soupy goodness to leak out.

The dumpling needs only a quick swirl in vinegar, perhaps with a sliver of ginger, and then POP into the mouth it goes.

One of the most marvelous things about being a foodie, is watching other people experience new eating pleasures. It's like giving gifts at Xmas, the fun is all in the giving. And for me, the sheer suprise and delight on Furry's face, (and on that of our friends who were with us) ALMOST outweights to pleasure of eating itself.

The slippery skin of the bao yields toothsomely and then POP!, explodes in a soupy wave of hot, savoury goodness. The pork filling provides a textural counterpoint to the soup and the won ton skin, making for a unique dumpling experience.

And here's the thing. At J. G.'s the plate of 9 xiao long bao was only $7. In fact, a plate of steamed vegie dumplings (15 serves) is only $8.50. We had 6 plates of dumplings, approx 75 serves (between 4 people) for the princely sum of $54.00

Just trying out a new look

Nevermind me, I am just redecorating. What with the impending move to Lae, I am thinking about re-decorating/re-naming the blog"

A Goddess in the Jungle?

Kai Kai Meri?

This little piggie went to PNG?

Any ideas?