Veggie Feast

After nearly two months of not writing on the blog, I have finally been inspired to write again. I suppose there were many events from the last couple months of living on a tropical island that could have provided inspiration, but snorkeling with sea turtles and hiking in the jungle have become a bit mundane. My inspiration is something that I can truly say I used to take for granted.... fresh produce. Yes, that's right. Produce.

During our pre-Samoa fantasies, Paul and I imagined all the locally grown tropical fruit that we would be feasting upon. It turns out that our little lava rock in the middle of the South Pacific is not the tasteful paradise that we imagined. We have very little land that is not on a sheer mountainous cliff, and the land that is available has very poor soil. That said, there are a couple of things that are grown continually and in large quantities here, mainly taro and breadfruit. If one is looking for something more than a diet high in starch, though, you have to rely on the produce shipments from the U.S. or New Zealand. Unfortunately, by the time we purchase these fruits and vegetables they are moldy, mushy, and otherwise tasteless. Not to mention that the price is typically 3 times what we would pay back home. The situation can be so bleak at times that when lettuce arrives on the island, word travels like wildfire among the palagis (white people) and we all rush to the store to buy our mostly wilted heads of lettuce.

This past week, however, I felt like it was Christmas. My first find was a bag of fresh green beans grown in Western Samoa. Emma and I enjoyed snapping off the ends and eating them fresh. In true feast-or-famine style, we ate them all, fresh and cooked. Unfortunately, it was a 2 pound bag, and I am now officially sick of them.

The next big produce find was fresh corn on the cob. Emma spotted a sign on the side of the road that read, "Got corn?". I had noticed the corn field at one time off one of our many dirt side roads, but this was the first time I ever saw any corn for sale. We purchased our dozen ears without any inspection and headed home to shuck them. We were so happy with corn on the cob that we weren't too concerned about the condition of it. After all, we once bought a pint of half moldy strawberries for $8 and ate most of them. It turned out the corn was great! Parts of it were missing kernels, but most of it was covered with yummy, sweet corn. After these great finds, it's going to be hard to walk back into our regular grocery store and face the shelves of moldy vegetables again.