Mostly Food and Drink

This post is truly just a random walk through a variety of things. First up is Diet Coke.

I don't remember writing about this so I will do it now. Last spring I read that Coke was coming out with 4 new flavors of Diet Coke: ginger lime, feisty cherry, zesty blood orange and twisted mango. I waited with anticipation until our visit to the US last summer and we sought out 1 can of each. B finally managed to find them. Of the 4 , 3 were a definite "NO!" Only the twisted mango had a good flavor. Would we ever purchase them again? Probably not.

If you can't read the price tag for these green grapes in the next photo, it reads Rp 3,229,000. That's equivalent to over $200.00 US. Seriously? For 5 kg of grapes?  I had to look these grapes up on the Internet. They are shine muscat grapes and one source insisted they taste a lot like a mango.

 This is a photo of my friend's orange almond cake. It starts with a whole orange you boil in water. It's loaded with ground up almonds. I got the recipe before she left.

 Another mango season, another gift! 29 mangoes this time. Cream of the crop from Lilly. Gave away most of them again. After all, what can you do with that many mangoes at once? They all ripen at the same time.

 A couple of green drinks. They were both ordered as an plain, no sugar, iced green tea- or so I thought. I guess I wasn't clear. One turned out to be an iced green tea whipped and the other was a heavily sweetened iced green tea latte- probably sweetened with condensed milk.

For our loved ones who always have these in the pantry. Tostitos showed up at the market one day. Rp 127,500 ( US 8.50). And the bag isn't that large. I had to pass.

 I finally decided to make and serve the family hors d'oeuvre to people unrelated by blood or marriage. The American Women's Association had a sort of Thanksgiving potluck. We were supposed to bring a favorite family recipe. Hmmm.... I went for it in part because for the first time in 4 years, I found colby-jack cheese at the market. That in combination with gherkin pickles and maraschino cherry halves or thirds is all you need.

 The comments? What fascinated me is that folks liked them. Especially a couple of ladies from India. This combination of flavors made perfect sense to them. Almost all of them disappeared. It's possible a few folks tossed them in the trash but at least 2 people took a few home for husbands.

I also served a mango and pineapple salsa with cinnamon topped cut up flour tortillas baked until crispy. The salsa had just a hint of spice.

This is called a butterfly:passion fruit, fresh lime, orange juice, elderflower , mint and soda water. Quite nice but I can't remember where I ordered it.

We had lunch one day at a Korean restaurant. This was chicken something but all wrapped in cheese. They brought gloves to the table for you to use. A couple of bites were OK, but it was just too much stuff covered in cheese.

I have made a couple of loaves of bread in recent weeks.  This was just a plain white bread.

 This one loaded with seeds of all types, inside and out.

 I think this was called an Ibis. I believe it had a little melon syrup in the bottom, so still a "green" drink if you stretch the definition.

This was a lychee squash so I'm not sure what is green in the bottom of this drink. Lychee is white but there must have been a little melon syrup or something in this one as well.