Now that we have a house, we get callers at the gate. At the weekend there is the fish and shrimp man, with buckets of really fresh stuff. We bought a Dorado the other day, had it filleted on clean newspaper in the street, and it fed 5 of us. With it we had our own limes from the garden.
One day during the week, there is a vegetable man, whom it is useful to use, since you can buy quantities you could hardly carry home. Today we bought 15 mandarins or $1 and two pineapples for another one. If you go to the supermarket, they have the really big pineapples, larger than my head, which we really don,t need.
The garbage men drive past every day but Sunday, playing their tune, and we hang a plastic shopping bag of rubbish on a convenient branch of a tree just outside the gate, and it is swept off into the truck, so they hardly even slow down.
The eletricity bill and Internet/phone/TV accounts are shoved into the gate every month, and the other day I had a man selling honey in 500mil bottles for $5.
However, the Jehovah's Witnesses have also found us!
Thursday, 25 August 2016
As soon as you get your feet under the table, you discover the depth of your ignorance. If you are just a visitor, nobody bothers to enlighten you. It is not worth the trouble but once they realise you are a fixture, you had better learn what is what. So I have found that there are no bananas in Ecuador!
Those lovely long golden curves which adorn our supermarket shelf, are called guineos. Their foot long green cousins are plantains and are vegetables not fruit.
This other day I found long golden ones and was told that they were ripe. I could see that but apparently that's their name and they are ripe plantains. - maduros.
The upshot was that I have discovered that I do not like plantains, boiled or baked, but Maduros are delicious fried. The Ecuadorians like them with fried eggs, but I had them as a relish with stew and rice.
And my adventures with vegetables is far from over. I wanted leeks the other day and looked them up in the dictionary to be told they were long onions. However, when I asked for them in the market, I was told that that is what Colombians call them - here in Ecuador they are white onions. I pointed to a heap of beautifully peeled onions and asked what, therefore, they are called. Oh, they are just onions, and the purple ones are pink onions. Spring onions are green onions, and I have yet to find shallots. Goodness what they will be called.
Those lovely long golden curves which adorn our supermarket shelf, are called guineos. Their foot long green cousins are plantains and are vegetables not fruit.
This other day I found long golden ones and was told that they were ripe. I could see that but apparently that's their name and they are ripe plantains. - maduros.
The upshot was that I have discovered that I do not like plantains, boiled or baked, but Maduros are delicious fried. The Ecuadorians like them with fried eggs, but I had them as a relish with stew and rice.
And my adventures with vegetables is far from over. I wanted leeks the other day and looked them up in the dictionary to be told they were long onions. However, when I asked for them in the market, I was told that that is what Colombians call them - here in Ecuador they are white onions. I pointed to a heap of beautifully peeled onions and asked what, therefore, they are called. Oh, they are just onions, and the purple ones are pink onions. Spring onions are green onions, and I have yet to find shallots. Goodness what they will be called.
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