Soy galette and cyclone dessert!

Finally, the radio announced this morning that cyclone is over for now. Time to look around the garden and repair the damage. Well, you never know what you can get to eat when you do not want to throw away food and with a little bit of imagination, you can almost make anything to eat. Spare one hour to prepare the dish and dessert and you are on for a good treat.

Soy galette and vegetables with yellow lentils for the main dish. Soya beans existed in Madagascar since 1900 and people use it in many different ways. I use a very small amount mixed with bread fruit flour to make my galette.

These are green mangoes, harvested from all the branches broken down by the cyclone! They look like they have some black patches but they are perfectly alright so if you see those, please do not throw them away. They are good.

Here is how the green mango compote looked like when finished. I much prefer this to the apple compote in plastic cups that you can find in any supermarket theses days. I made 3 jars out of 4 mangoes. Mind you, it did not last long since, me and my sister ate a whole jar! My brother topped it up with a bit of macadamia ice cream and nearly finished a whole jar. I highly recommend it.

The pot can stay in the fridge for few days if the kids do not find it!

One type of breakfast

Good morning! I don't know if breakfast was meant to be prepared in a hurry or eaten fast but everything around my eating habits is slow. Slow cooking and eating slowly otherwise I don't get to eat at all. Not that I am fussy but everything goes moramora we say over here. Here is my breakfast this morning. Breadfruit pancake with fresh strawberry compote. Yes! That tree that gives you bread if you are following my posts. You can make flour from it and the result is a very fragrant fruit flower pancake!

Pic.1 Breadfruit pancake and strawberry compote

Pic.2 This is how I plant my strawberries

No breakfast is complete without coffee and I know my coffee well. These are special highland arabica beans that I harvested from my coffee tree right from my small garden. It is almost surreal but yes, one of my small tree provided about 7kg of coffee last year. Now it has left many more small coffee plants in my flower bed and I am in trouble because I do not want to kill any of them!

Pic.3 Highland arabica coffee beans harvested last year

Pic.3 And more coffee trees to come!

Local or international?

My friend helper came back from our local market this morning empty handed. Why I asked? Apparently, she did not recognise most of the vegetables on the stall and she was afraid to make mistakes. I decided that I would go myself to find out. And yes, I understood what she meant. There were different onions, different cucumbers, different honey, different green leaf vegetables!
When I asked the names of these strange looking vegetables, the seller did not know but he explained how each one tastes! I took the risk, bought the one that looked like a spaceship and spent time on the net to find out. To my amazement, the one which is supposed to be called a horned African cucumber was after all a melon that the vendor could have waited until it was ripe and yellow so it would have tasted like a mix of jelly, banana, and zucchini! Well, I learnt something today! I only buy local vegetables and look what I found. An ancestor of cucumber which originated from Africa! YES. Buy local if you can and you learn something new. Spiky cucumber.

Thank you Malala for taking the photo while I was sniffing the spaceship! :)

I cut it in half, scooped the inside and ate it. People, you do not need vinegar or lime! It is already naturally with the taste of lemon. I just added a bit of salt, pepper and drops of olive oil... Yummy!

Manga or Mango

Before I add the second food I eat this season, I would like to repeat that all these food need to be as fresh as possible for your own benefit. So, please if you can, plant them. You are better off if they are in your garden!

Also, one other thing, please do not be lazy to find out what are the fruits and vegetables in season if you need to buy them in the market. 

I keep a diary of when they are at their best and try to only eat those in season because, they are better for your health and they are in abundance therefore cheaper. 

I eat lots of mangoes. I have mango trees in my garden and they produce far too much mangoes than I ever need in a day. Once again, there are so many ways of eating mangoes but the freshest is the best.

This is what I do:

• I smell the mango off the tree
• I peel and clean my face with its peel
• I then make fresh juice and drink it all day
• I also make chutney, sauce and eat it as it is

I believe, this is one of the secrets of my clear skin. You can find out more about its nutritional values.

I also love making green mango salad which is one of my favourite salad dish.