Day 114

Rambutan

Since fruit has become our mainstay around here, I've been wanted to try different varieties beyond the typical apple, orange, banana, grape, peach, strawberry rut we've been stuck in. My local produce market has great prices, but not the best selection. Consequently, I've been hitting up the produce places across the city with mixed success. It's like a treasure hunt. Sometimes I find new and exciting things, other times it's a wash. I have discovered that I do not like papaya. At all.

The other day I came home with two rambutan. They're small, about the size of golf balls, and look like what I used to call "itchy balls" when I was a kid (googling "spiky balls that fall from trees" tells me that officially they're the seeds of sweet gum trees). I had never seen them before, but Madeline recognized them right away as something she'd eaten when she was a kid. She sliced them in half, and we scooped out to meat from around the seed. The taste was very subtle, but the texture was incredible. Like a crisp hardboiled egg. That sounds awful, but it was really good. I would get more if they weren't so expensive.

Today, my plan was to go on a hike and then head over the the art museum. I just recently found out that I get in free with my student ID, and I've been wanted to take advantage of that. Unfortunately when I got to the museum, the line was crazy long, easily 50 people deep before it even went through the front doors. I had a feeling it was either going to be packed or empty considering it's Memorial Day weekend, and clearly it was packed. I'm really not a fan of being in crowded places, so I sat on the steps to people watch and read a book for a while. It was a great vantage point to seeing the whole city in front of me, so I pulled out my camera and accidentally caught the coolest picture:


Right in the middle of the frame is a bird that flew by just as I was taking the shot. Just incredible.

Since I was already downtown, I decided to head over to another produce market that I'd heard about, and finally found my first durian. Madeline will be very happy, because she's tired of hearing me say, "I want to try new fruit. Like durian." I'd read about it in various places, and apparently it's been stuck in my head. So now I have one, and a little blue ribbon that tells me it's "super quality." There's a cartoon pig on the other side. I have no idea. I hung it up in the bathroom near the "personal watermelon" sign I nicked from the grocery store a while back. I have no clue how to eat the damn thing, though. I'll google that, too, I suppose. Google knows everything.

I also picked up a case of yellow mangoes while I was there. They were a little more pricey than I really wanted to spend, but they were ripe and ready to be eaten and looked so good. I had three as soon as I got home.

I do really well throughout the day, but for some reason, at night when I'm falling asleep, I've been getting really strong and vivid cravings for weird cooked foods. Last night it was mayonnaise on a loaf of french bread. I haven't eaten mayo in about four years now, since we went vegan, and I was never a huge fan. It was always just on condiment on my sandwiches. I'm not really sure what it means.

-Eloise