Wednesday 24 October 2012

Long ago I fell in love with tropical fruits: a heritage of growing up abroad

Well I have to confess that my third culture kid heart has been beating faster the last few weeks. I have been travelling! I had the privilege of spending some time in Indonesia. Even though I grew up in Africa and have only recently travelled to Asia a couple of times I have discovered that I feel at home in Asia too. 
I love the tropical fruit juices. There is just nothing like the taste of well ripened mango's. Every now and then I am tempted into buying a mango here in the Netherlands but it either rots or just does not taste good, it usually turns into a disappointment.

It was really warm here and this cool mango juice was such a delight. Apparently mango's were part of my basic diet when I grew up in Zambia. There are photo's of me in diapers when I was a couple of years old sucking on a mango pip.

Other juices I enjoyed were avocado, pineapple, banana, guava and papaya (pawpaw) juice. Seeing all these papaya's in the supermarket excited me. We used to have papaya trees in our backyard. I remember the days my dad used a long stick to get the fruits down. He made us stand on guard and catch the fruits as the fell down. It was so stressful. Low and behold if the papaya splat on the ground. Believe me papaya's make a real splat, it can make a real mess.   

Smells bring back memories but so can your taste buds bring back memories.
What did you fall in love with growing up abroad? What foods brings back your memories?





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2 comments:

  1. I like this post! I wanted to post about a similar topic. I have the same experience with tastes or smells. There is a particular smell of wood that reminds me my grandma's place in Germany, or the smell in her kitchen. Talking about food: there is the smell of fresh focaccia that brings me back into the '80 in Italy, where I grew up. And there's the smell of risotto ai funghi made in a traditional way in Piemonte. And many more...

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  2. Hi there, thanks for stopping by. Somehow smells are a strong stimulant of memories. The smell of something can take you back in time in a split second. My grandmother lived on a dairy farm in Friesland (north of the Netherlands). She always had milk on the stove in the afternoon ready for a hot cup of chocolate milk. Just the smell of the milk on the stove was so....
    By the way the risotto ai fungi sounds good too. I have just had cooking lessons from an Italian lady and I learned how to make risotto ai funghi :), maybe not in the traditional Piemonte way, but it's great anyway.

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