SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

By Jizzy Green, Katikati, Bay of Plenty

They are Kiwis eating food grown and produced within a 200 km radius for 30 days of April in theHappyzine Eat Local Challenge.

Note: Jizzy and her partner Mike will be eating local in Fiji for half of the challenge, and are intending to live off local food there too, reporting back on their experiences if they can access internet.

Breakfast smoothie as usual, we had already decided that today would be a total chill day and so it was!  We had rice flour banana muffins with Fiji honey and went to the pool for a dip and some vital sunshine.  Enjoying a good read.  For lunch I rustled up a tomato, curry powder, ginger, garlic and tomato dish with the leftover breadfruit.  Cheese on the side and some avocado – delicious!

We had bananas and green guava (flesh is white) for a mid-afternoon snack.  For our evening meal, I opened a can of taro leaves in coconut milk (made in Suva), baked some sweet potato (not very sweet) in coconut oil, along with roasted onions – a humble peasant meal, with cheese and avo and coconut flesh on the side.  Fiji yogurt with honey for dessert.

Challenges:

We used to know what we could eat as lacto-vegetarians, now each meal has to be carefully planned, calculated and executed with precision.

Blogging the challenge is challenging, what with downloading photos too – takes duration of an entire Hollywood blockbuster movie.  Very slow internet!

Highs:

We realised we have completed more than one week of eating local.  Being Locovores.  Quite an adventure!

Day 10

Days are flying by.  Our last full day at Wyndham resort, tomorrow we check out and move to Tanoa Hotel with no self catering options.  That is gonna be a lot more tricky to Stay in The Zone!!  This morning we had our usual 2 coffees for me, 1 tea and 1 coffee for Mike (he’s Crossed Over), then we were joined by Vika, a Fijian lady who works in the office here.  She brought us Vundi (I think the English name is plantain) which is basically a HUMUNGOUS banana which is cooked.  We sliced it up for breakfast – it is a little bland, a little like eating cold potato, so I drizzled lime juice and honey over it.

We had our smoothie (banana, papaya and pineapple) and then did a few in-house chores before my old school friend (she’s not old, but the length of time since we were at school is) met us for a “hang”.  Kinda like a play date for middle-aged citizens.  We had yet more coffee, the last of the rice muffins and then went for a swim.  Sue taught Mike how to use his snorkel and mask without getting water in the mouth.  It was great to catch up, we last saw one another a year and a half ago, when we were last in Fiji.

We made rice pancakes (savoury and sweet) for lunch, as per our normal resort tradition.  Our evening meal is a sumptuous affair of Everything left in the Fridge Casserole.  So we have baked pumpkin,  rice and a casserole of eggplant, ginger, garlic, tomato, potato and yard-long beans.

Challenges:

Expecting our visitors to have to eat locovore because that’s all we have!!

Highs:

Meeting up with an old/renewed friendship – our language is a shared history and understanding of having left our home country behind.

Tags: eat local challenge