Veggie Tales

One thing I enjoy most about Papua New Guinea is the availability of fresh produce at the market. Papua New Guineans from all over the Aiyura Valley bring fresh fruits and vegetables from their gardens to sell at the Ukarumpa market. The market is outside with long wooden tables set up where the vendors can display their produce.

The market

Market runs from 6:30-8:00 am, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so one morning a week (Fridays this term) I haul myself out of bed (which gets harder and harder as the end of the school year approaches), throw on my “market clothes” (aka a skirt and sweatshirt over my pyjamas and my gum boots), grab some kina, my keys, and my lowlands string bilum, and head out the door. Since the fire-mapartment is so close to the market (down the driveway, past the store, and around the Teen Centre), I don’t have far to walk.

Just about any kind of vegetable you could want is available—broccoli, green and black beans, kaukau (sweet potato)potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, celery, onions, green peppers (called capsicum here), carrots… And many kinds of fruit as well—bananas and pineapples (a whole table dedicated to each), papaya, mango, strawberries, gooseberries, passion fruit, and—my personal favourite—rhubarb.

Once you arrive at the market, you walk past beautiful bouquets of flowers tied together with strips of leaves and then tied to the ends of sticks that are poked into the ground. After walking through the flowers, you get to the fruits and veggies. Broccoli and tomatoes are piled up with little signs propped against them with the price written—K1 for a large tomato or K3 for a medium sized head of broccoli. Green beans are stacked in small piles for 20 toea each. Strawberries, gooseberries, and black beans are sold by the plateful—it’s handy to keep a couple plastic bags in your market bilum for these types of items (they would fall through a regular bilum, or get squished and make a mess).

Bananas, green beans, tomatoes, capsicum (or green peppers),
lettuce, avocado, and broccoli

Once you have everything on your list (or if you’re like me—as best as you can remember, because you probably forgot it at home), you can stop for a donut for the walk home. After you get home and wash your sticky donut fingers J, the dangerous part begins—the beaching. I say dangerous because I’ve ruined several shirts and at least one skirt with bleach—aprons are a good thing! A capful or so of bleach in enough water to cover the fruits and veggies, let them soak for about 20 minutes, turning them over about halfway through the time. Then a good rinse and let them drip dry a bit in the dish drainer, and into a Ziploc bag and the fridge they go!

I like to keep some veggies in the freezer, if possible, usually beans and carrots, so that they’re available and partially cooked (I usually blanch them—boil them for a few minutes, then put them in a bag and freeze them). A super easy and quick meal is two minute noodles (think Ramen noodles) with green beans and carrots (and a bit of mince or chicken, if there are any leftovers lying around in the fridge!). My favourite meal is stir fry—with all these fresh veggies, how could anything be better?!