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Foreign Vegetable Supper on Guam


 I usually post about food only on my recipe blog.  But today I will share a little bit about some food on this blog, because it relates to our life on Guam, and some of the new foods our visitors got to eat.

Moving around the plate as if it were a clock you will find a little pile of Wing Beans, cooked with tomatoes at the 12:00 position.  At 3:00 is some garbonzo curry on brown jasmine rice.  6:00 features long beans.  My favorite breadfruit potato salad is at 9:00.


Wing Beans are amazing beans.  You can see small sections in the photo above.  They usually have four "wings", and can be around 6 - 10 inches in length, and around 1 inch across.   Here is a link with a good photo of a wing bean on a plant, and interesting information about the bean.

To cook wing beans, I washed them, and cut them into 1 inch pieces.  I started by sauteing some onions and garlic, then added tomatoes and wing beans and cooked them with some Bragg's liquid aminos.  We decided they tasted like a cross between crisp green beans and mung bean sprouts.  Even the sceptics thought they were satisfactory enough for a second helping.


Long beans are common around Southeast Asia.  I ate them often in Thailand.  It is nice to find them on Guam.  We tried to grow them in our garden back home, but without success.  Now we get to eat them at least once a week, without the work of growing and harvesting them. 

Long beans here are around 18 inches long.  They are more crisp then the green beans that I grow at home.  Here I wash them, and then cut them into lengths.  I sauted some onion, a good amount of sliced garlic, and a couple whole chili peppers.  I added a few sunflower seeds, and then the long bean pieces.  When they had softened a bit and changed color, I added some Bragg's Liquid Aminos, and some lime juice, and the beans were ready to serve.

The Breadfruit potato salad was made by my team of teenage girls.  The night before they cut two small breadfruit in half, and laid them on an oiled cookie sheet, cut side down.  They baked them at 350 degrees for one hour.  The next day they peeled and cubed the bread fruit, then proceeded to make it into a potato salad as normal, with a little vegenaise, and some diced pickles, onions, and salt.  But since it wasn't a potato salad they didn't know for sure what to call it.  Those mischievous minds decided to offer their dads "Fruit" salad when they came home for supper.  A good laugh was had by all.

Comments

  1. That is very interesting. Thanks for sharing. May never visit Guam, but I get the opportunity to learn about it!
    Lisa :O)

    ReplyDelete
  2. The thing I remember about long beans in Pohnpei is Byard chasing flies with some that were too tough to be eaten. They made as good a flyswatter as any. The memory makes me smile. :D Breadfruit salad... my mouth is watering.

    ReplyDelete

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