Foods You Have Probably Not Eaten

Organized by the order in which I remember them.

Manioc- This is Gabonese health food. A common ribbing amongst the guys I work with is "what's the matter? Didn't you eat your manioc?" The Gabonese eat every part of this plant. The leaves are like a bitter spinach, which isn't too bad, and very healthy. The roots are gigantic, have no nutritional value whatsoever, and taste like sour rubber. They are valuable, however, because if you eat it, you won't be hungry for the rest of the day. Probably because the manioc is too busy bouncing around in your stomach to move on to the rest of the digestive system. Manioc root is much tastier with hot sauce and soy sauce. Still pretty weird.

Plaintain- When green, banana shaped potato. When yellow, less tasty banana.

Breadfruit- Edible a couple of ways- mature and immature. Similar to a plantain, if you eat it when it's green, it's very potato-like. If you eat it after it's changed from green to brown, It's a sort of semi-sweet fruit. So far I've only had a chance to eat the green stuff, as breadfruit fries. I cut them into big flat squares. Since breadfruit has holes in the part you eat (imagine a cross section of bread- very similar, hence the name) that's the best way to cut them for frying. I've heard of recipies involving breadfruit, butter, and brown sugar that I'm interested to try, but so far I haven't seen a ripe one available.

Spiky Pear- This is the weirdest fruit I've ever tasted. It's kind of a cross, flavor wise, between pear and pineapple. That's not weird. The weird part is the texture. It has the texture of beef jerky. Except slimy. Which doesn't make it sound appetizing, but in fact it is delicious. It's also enormous. The French term for it is "Heart of Beef" which describes it's size and shape. It's green, and has little spikes all over it.

Tuna Fish with an expiration date from 2009- Yeah. It was delicious.

Itangas- These are tough to describe. They're about the perfect size to fit in a closed fist, and are bright purple. Some people say they smell like turpentine. They kinda do.  They have a large pit inside. To cook them (they're no good raw) you boil water, then remove it from heat and pour it over a plate of itangas. The skin bleaches a tiny bit, and then they're ready. Then you put either salt or sugar on them (I like brown sugar- the flavors meld well) and eat the green inside part and the purple skin off of the pit. Very tasty snack.

Powdered fortified milk- is actually better than the carton milk. Similar tastes, but the powder stuff is a zillion times more reliable and less scary. Kind of annoying to have to "build" every glass of milk you make, but worth the work to avoid instant death by milk. Cuz that's a lame way to die.

Raw Peanuts- Did you even know there was such a thing? Turns out that they're not really nuts, they share a family with peas. When raw, the meat of it is very similar to raw sugar snap peas. Yum. Also very good boiled.

That's all I remember right now.

Personal update thang- I'm doing pretty well. French is coming along at what feels like a snails pace, but I'm able more and more to understand people, and even have discussions with people who only speak French. I will post soon about the Gabonese love for Barack Obama, which is hilarious and bizarre.