Eating tulip

No morning bell beckons us to breakfast today, because it is day one of “haus kuk weekend.” The dining room and kitchen are locked, and we are left with a fire and whatever food we purchased at the POC store on Friday. Since we can’t buy vegetables or fruit at our store here, we walked to the Saturday morning market just up the hill from us to purchase produce straight from local gardens. The women who are selling food sit on blankets or mats on the ground with their products spread out in front of them.

 As we began to look around for the vegetables we wanted to purchase, I realized that I know almost nothing about the vegetables native to PNG! We have been eating them at our meals made by the kitchen staff, but I didn’t know which vegetables were which, or how to prepare any of them myself. It is a small market, and there was not much variety available on Saturday, but we purchased one familiar food: green beans. They are different than the green beans you get in the States, though, so we weren’t actually sure that was what we had bought! Eric also got some cucumbers, which are pretty much the same as they are in the US. Some of the other greens that are available here are tulip (not the flower), ibica, and pitpit.

 Just as we were ready to leave, a woman arrived with a load of pineapples. Immediately a line of POC students formed in front of her, eager to purchase pineapples from the only person who had them available. We bought one and headed back home. There I stumbled upon another dilemma. I’ve never cut up a pineapple without a pineapple corer! After three attempts, I’ve now gotten much better at cutting up a pineapple with just a knife, but it is a much slower process than using a corer!

 Each time we wanted to cook, we had to start a fire and keep it going as we cooked. Making things difficult is the fact that this is rainy season, so dry wood is hard to procure. After two days of cooking over a fire, we were glad to be back in the dining room for breakfast on Monday. How incredible it is to us that many families in PNG do all of their cooking over the fire—rainy or “dry” season!