Text 22511, 114 rader
Skriven 2007-11-09 17:53:38 av Barbara McNay (1:382/48)
     Kommentar till en text av Glen Jamieson
Ärende: AHHH 296  71109
=======================
 >  -=> Quoting Barbara Mcnay to Glen Jamieson <=-

 >> Although I have been there several times to visit my
 >> niece, I still
 >> prefer most other US cities to Houston.  As an
 >> engineer, I found
 >> Galveston one of the most fascinating, while San
 >> Antonio has
 >> enthralling historical associations and buildings.

 >  BM> I have been to Galveston beach several times; a somewhat distant
 >  BM> cousin of my ex has an art school/museum in San Antonio.

 > The Galveston beach didn't impress me much, but along
 > the wharf area
 > I saw many places of interest, such as the retired
 > drilling platform
 > turned into a museum, and a replica sailing ship being
 > prepared for
 > long journeys by volunteers.  As I have a weakness for
 > museums,
 > particularly those with an engineering accent, I also
 > spent time at the
 > car and railway museums.  There are also some
 > beautiful old stately
 > homes in that city, some of them open to the public.

Hmm.  I, being a passenger, was transported to the place of interest to the
others. [g]

 > San Antonio also has its museums, at the Alamo, the
 > Spanish governor's
 > house and the art museum.  Its Riverside Walk is quite
 > delightful.

I went to the Alamo, and was introduced to cockroaches at the Riverwalk.

 >>   In PNG even more kinds are grown, including my
 >> favourite - a
 >> short, dumpy banana with a thin, reddish skin and
 >> yellow flesh which
 >> has a sweet apple flavour.

 >  BM> That sounds interesting.  I didn't know there were so many varieties
 >  BM> of bananas; obviously, we can't get them here.

 > I have been told that PNG has some 200 varieties,
 > including the tiny
 > wild bananas that the others descended from, but not
 > all are edible.
 > In fact, some may be poisonous.  One of my other
 > favourites is pale
 > green when ripe, with a flowery, perfumed taste.  It
 > has a very short
 > shelf life, with only a day between "green" and
 > "over-ripe going bad".

Do you have a problem with perfumed tastes?  Many years ago, when lime-scented
shaving cream was popular, I was served lime-flavored Jell-O with whipped cream
for dessert.  It was tasty, but I couldn't finish it, as I couldn't get rid of
the persistent notion that I was eating lime-scented shaving cream.

 >> The banana flower can be cut from the plant once the
 >> fruit begins to
 >> form, without affecting the rest of the plant.  It is
 >> often offered for
 >> sale in Asian groceries.  I like it cooked this way:

 >  BM> I have a picture of banana flowers not on the plant.  I'll have to
 >  BM> hunt up a picture of the flowering plant to see how it grows.

 > That is something difficult to describe, as there is
 > nothing else like
 > a banana fruit/flower combination.  The plant produces
 > only one bunch,
 > then dies.  The leaves are used a lot for wrapping
 > meat or fish, to be
 > steamed or cooked in a ground oven.  The stem is
 > usually wasted, but
 > its fibres can be made into the traditional
 > translucent Filipino shirts
 > - the "barong Tagalog".  Recently a firm in Adelaide
 > has begun
 > producing high quality paper from it.

Useful, indeed.  I've been told that banana sap ruins car finishes.  Are the
leaves actually eaten, and, if so, must they be cooked to be edible?

>  BM> Incidentally, the brief recent messages about mangosteens suggests
 >  BM> that only the inside is eaten, but the juice sold here, according to
 >  BM> the label, is from the entire fruit. The purple part is said to be very
 >  BM> rich in something-or-other-that's-good-for-you.  What has been your
 >  BM> experience with the way various peoples deal with this fruit?

 > The outer husk is a bit like that of a passion fruit,
 > but with thicker
 > pith.  Rather bitter in flavour; not something that is
 > normally eaten.
 > Normally the mangosteen is just cut open and the
 > several sections of
 > juicy flesh picked out and eaten, discarding the
 > seeds.  Flavour is
 > somewhat similar to rambutan or lychee - sweet and
 > succulent.  In parts
 > of SE Asia it is eaten as a companion to durian - a
 > "cooling" fruit to
 > match the "heating" effect of the durian.

I can't in fact tell you what the whole fruit juice tastes like, because it was
mixed with wine grape juice, acia [?] juice, and the juice of yet another fruit
I never heard of.

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 * Origin: T E X A S ! (1:382/48)