Fruits

 

First, I want to thank those of you who read my blog, it is so nice to read the few comment that you have left... it makes me feel like I am writing to an audience and it is worth the time I spent to document our experience here... So THANK YOU!

There are so many fruits in Cambodia, not only those they grow but also those they have adopted from other country and now grow here.

First lets look up Avocados, those I have seen in the States are usually oblong, pear shaped, some are more creamy than others and sometimes it takes awhile to get ripen.  I don't know if it is the pesticides used by farmers or not but I always ended up wasting a lot because I forget I have them when it is too over ripen.

Here, Avocados are huge and round.  It has a tangy taste and cream even when it is not quite ripe.  The seed in the avocado is almost the size of a lime.  I make the mistake of waiting for one to ripe, i.e. turning from green to brown/black and the whole inside of the avocado was black and stringy!  So, lesson learned, I will only get avocado when I am going to use it the next day, as long as the shell is soft and even though it is green, the inside is creamy and mild!

US Avocado

Mostly Round Avocado with big pit

Big pit Avocado in Cambodia

Here are some other fruit that you might not be familiar with:

Egg Fruit: texture like egg york

Custard Apple - I like this a lot, very sweet with lots of seeds

Dragon fruit, these ones are with red meat

Dont know what this is called, it has very hard shell.

When cracked opened, not very tasty at all!

A type of plum, yellow meat inside

Pamelo

White meat inside, very tasty and juicy

It is Mango season - what do you do with all the mango given to you?

 March to April into May is mango season here in Cambodia, you can find mango tree every where, the tree makes for good shade from the sun, now you can just pick them everywhere!  We have been picking since the beginning March from the mango tree next to the Mission Office.  The fruit was not quite ripe yet, but office staff still eat them; it is sour but it tasted good to them because they eat it with mouthful of hot sauce!

Now the trees are ripe and we were given 3 large bags of mangos, one bag from Virak (our office manager), one bag brought by Sister Neang from her own home and one bag from the Realtor, Brother Leang.  They all have mango trees growing in their house and they were very nice to share with us.  However, how do you eat 30 mangos without getting tired of it?  I took to Youtube university for recipes:  Mango cheese cake and Mango Cake of course.

The mango cheese cake did not turn out as pretty as I hope.  I could not find gelatin here so I used Agar.  It turns out okay and I think I will give it another try this week.

One of the Chinese member from China turns 21 on Tuesday, so I decided to make him a birthday cake - Mango birthday cake.  Then on the same day, I found out it was Sister Neang's birthday, so I decided I could make her a cake too since she has given me 10 Chinese yellow mango.

I watch the youtube video and started making it.  The instruction was very clear and easy and the cake turned out great.  The most expensive part of this cake is the strawberry!  it costed US$15.00 for 1 pint of strawberry!  Luckily, the mango was free!  It costs about $15.00 to make each cake.  Everyone enjoyed it!

My cake did not turn out too bad.  The third one was the best in decoration.  I served it at dinner with Paul and Susan Hansen, Kate Lloyd (area communication), Dan and Marian Sellers.  It was a hit!

Mango cheese cake, first try

This is the link to No bake Mango Cheesecake:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llmP3KKdKdY&t=285s

Here is the link to the Mango cake recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkIppUzPcgY

cooling the cake

Cutting cake into thirds

Prepping the Mango slices, Chinese yellow mango

Khmer Mango, deeper in colors

Covering the cake with Mango

Cake #1

Cake # 2

Cake #3

Me and Cake #1

Cambodia - the old Hong Kong!

 

We were driving around town on Friday, checking out missionary's apartment before transfer and come across this scene.  It reminded me instantly of what I remembered seeing when I was a little girl in Hong Kong.  There were no high tech equipment to help move materials upstairs and so you see instead of carrying the bricks up the ladder to the second floor, the worker on the ground threw the brick upward to be catched by another worker.  It was very impressive how accurate the throw is and how the other person just catch it so easily.  I am amazed at how manual labors are performed each day.  Despite the fact the country is claiming to be building high rises building using cranes and heavy equipment but the little jobs are so done by hands!  

When we were in India 4 years ago, we saw workers carrying buckets of mortars/cement on their heads and climbed the stairs to put into columns forms to make supporting beams, here it is the same; the building right outside of our large window went from 3 floors to 8 floors; each time they build a floor, large cement truck would come with cements being mixed, using pully, workers moved the cement upward and put on the forms to create supportive beams for the next floor.  Now the outside of the building is done, and works to create the individual units inside the building will begin.  The fun part is watching this building goes up and how workers built it, but the sad part is, of course, it now blocked our once wonderful view of the skyline.  

Manually putting the steel up, then putting boards to form columns

It is getting higher!

Column now filled with cement!!

Completed with a blue roof!