Jungletwins

The honey tastes like orchids. Its divine. I bought it at the farmers market on Saturday for 5 bucks. It was the most expensive thing I bought. There are some cutesy honey sellers at the market, and I don’t go for those. No little labels with kitschy names or terrible puns for me. I like my honey in an old jar that’s dirty on top, no label, no nothing. That’s the good stuff. I found it tucked away at one of the fruit seller’s booths, near the rambutans, with a piece of torn cardboard behind it that read $5 in scribbled black magic marker. We brought the twins to the market and made out like bandits. I don’t even know how we fit all those papayas in the car.

I had a real love/hate relationship with papayas when I was pregnant with the girls. Its to be expected with a pregnant lady and a fruit that tastes like perfume. Good perfume, tasty perfume. Some days it would make me gag to even think of them and other days I’d make S fire up the waffle maker and pile my Belgium waffle to the sky with yummy pink papaya.

Back to the honey. It really does taste like orchids. Its just delicious. I can taste everything, all the flowers and fruits and smells. Island honey, island bees. The problem with commercial honey is not that it tastes bad, it doesn’t. The problem is that it all tastes the same, its too…..controlled, like it was made by robot bees. There’s nothing to identify. Certainly no orchids.

I’ve been here over a year, but there are some things I will never get used to. One of them is orchids. Where I come from, people put orchids under glass half spheres like cakes. They display them like fine art in temperature controlled rooms, whispering when they walk by so as not to upset them. They leave them to relatives in their wills and aunts claw at each other over them like cats over tuna. Here, they pull them out of the ground like weeds. They are weeds. They grow everywhere. Everywhere. There’s nothing precious about them.

I’m precious about my maple syrup. We shipped gallons and gallons with our possessions when we moved to this island. We bought it at a farm stand in Maine. Once you start using the real stuff you just can’t stomach that Aunt Jemima crap. Now its all run out and we’re devastated and constantly plotting our next trip to New England and how much we can take back with us.

S took the girls for a walk the other day and brought back loads of strawberry guavas. He boiled them into a syrup and we had it with our pancakes. It was yummy but now its all gone and I’m pre-occupied with how we’ll get more maple syrup.

Poor Mumu has a terrible rash. Its strange, she did fine with rice cereal, oatmeal, papaya, banana, avocado, applesauce, etc, but organic apple juice really put her over the edge. It must have been more acidic than she could handle. I put it in her oatmeal last night, and she was broken out by morning. She’s uncomfortable and clingy. Poor little pineapple.

I want to take them for a walk, but the vog has rolled in so thick and heavy I can’t see two feet in front of me. I hate the vog. Everyone does. It looks like fog but its not. Its surfurous fumes from the volcano. Normally its all blown away by the tradewinds, but if the tradewinds die down for any reason and can’t carry it off we’re stuck with it. Its a bit ironic. The air on this island and pretty much the cleanest in the world. Literally. No smog, no pollution, we are industry free and out in the middle of nowhere. Except. Except when the winds dies down and there’s vog. Then the air must be the worst in the world. The volcano goddess was merciful to me when I brought my preemie twins home. There wasn’t vog for months and months, thank God. Their little lungs. Now its back to inconvenience me.

I’m writing long entries these days. I guess its because I’m just bopping along, stream of consciousness style, not really reading what I’m putting down or trying to tie it together. Maybe its laziness, but it seems more fun this way.

Read Full Post »