Adventures with food / the "I Dare You" game

Ok... first rule of blogging... WRITE DOWN YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD! I guess I thought I would remember... silly me! I thought I was going to have to start all over... finally guessed correctly and am back up and running.

Hawaii is such an amazing mix of cultures (native Hawaiian, Chinese, Portugese, Philipino, Japanese, Caribean, etc.) Because of this, we've found that every trip to the grocery store is an adventure. So we started a new family game called "I dare you". About once a week each of us takes a turn picking out something new or strange at the grocery store for everyone to try. The only rule is that you have to be willing to take the first taste.

We've come home with sushi, poke (raw fresh shrimp or fish "cooked" by marinating), passion fruit everything, mango this and that, and new completely unfamiliar fruits and vegetables grown locally... I am amazed and totally impressed by what my girls have been willing to eat under the auspices of our "game" (even Kate who had narrowed her vegetable selection down to raw carrots, cucumbers and steamed brocolli).

Last week the girls and I came home from the farmer's market with "dragon eyes" (longon fruit). They are round and about the size of a small plum with a thin hard brown skin (like a potato, but thicker). Once you peel the skin, the fruit looks like a kiwi green mellon ball with a large black seed in the middle... thus the name. The fruit tastes a lot like honeydew mellon. We also came home with Dragon Fruit which looks kind of like a pink artichoke. You cut it like an orange in wedges and scoop the fruit out with a spoon. The fruit is soft and creamy and tastes like kiwi. I'm told it comes in a purple variety as well.

We found plenty of star fruit, but either it wasn't a good variety or it wasn't ripe. To me it tasted like yellow peppers, so we chopped them up and used them in a stir fry (very good!)

Our best/strangest find was a large soursop, which is very hard to describe. It is big and lumpy and green. It weighed about 10 pounds and the skin had pokie spikes all over it. It looked like something that would come off a cactus. I have to admit... I wasn't too psyched about trying that one, but it was awesome! We explored it with all of our senses before we tasted. The fruit was milky white and smelled like pineapple and bananas. The texture we decided, was a lot like cooked dungenes crab. Weird huh! But the taste... sweet and tart at the same time. Delicious! I found a recipe for "Jamaican soursop punch" as well as a recipe for soursop ice cream. The punch wasn't a big hit with the kids. It tasted exactly like a pina colada mix, so I encouraged Dave to break out the blender (seeing as how we made it and it was fresh and all...)

Anyway... The kids get so excited when we find something new and "weird" now... Never would have predicted that! Tonight they had regular old pizza (but niether noticed or commented on the mushrooms, which is a first!)

Much love and aloha to all of you! Thank you for your emails! We miss you all!

Susanne, Dave, Ellie and Kate