It's another strange fruit.
I would have thought that we would have run out by now. After all, how many strange fruits can there be? I ask from a gastronomic perspective, not a botanical one. I know well that there are bjillions of strange biological fruits, but how many would you find in the market?
At least one more.
I should ask you all to guess, really. It might be fun.
On the other hand, I'm easily distracted, so I'll give you a few hints here, then the answer will be at the bottom.
Hint 1: It includes the name of another fruit.
Hint 2: Bonnie will have heard of it, but never seen it.
Hint 3: In the US, the most common form is a juice.
Other strange things in Aus...
Energy crisis.
In WA, there is a shortage of gas. Not for the car, they call that petrol. Gas for fuel for production plants, heating, general energy stuff. This came about last month as the result of a refinery getting blown up -- no foul play suspected. There are some pretty serious side-effects of this.
Serious Side-effect 1: The commercial laundry that washes all the hotel sheets for Perth was told to close down the week before the largest tourism conference in the Australasian region. No fresh sheets, and bring your own towel as we hear about hospitality...
Serious Side-effect 2: There is debate about banning the use of gas to heat homes. If there was no heating the houses, the argument goes, then the companies could be up and running with the gas that was saved. Otherwise, we would have home heat and everybody laid off, and the, "warmest group of unemployed people in Australia", to quote a local business leader.
Serious Side-effect 3: All of these other effects were discussed ad nauseum on the news and the talking heads were getting moderately agitated, but it wasn't until the latest headline that the average WA citizen got worried.
It would seem that without gas, one of the local chemical companies would be unable to produce CO2, used for flash freezing poultry and fish, but also used to supply draught beer in the pubs.
In short -- no sheets for the hospitality conference? No dramas. No heat in the homes of the elderly during winter? She'll be right.
But no beer...
I expect this situation to be resolved pretty quickly now.
Speaking of beer, there is currently a huge movement to crack down on binge-drinking in Australia. Good. It's about time. Far too many fatalities on the roads, teen alcohol abuse, abuse in clubs and the rest. But what, you may well ask, defines binge drinking?
You would have gotten an answer this week.
Binge drinking (in Australia) is defined as of Thursday, as:
3 glasses of wine, or
4 mid-strength beers.
Very little was said about time frame, but this is quite a lightweight definition in a country that prides itself on the outback pub, bringing a stubby-holder to every occasion, and selling wine to the rest of the world cheaply enough that everybody in the UK can afford Australian merlot for their binge-drinking.
Like I said, there are some strange things going on down here. Mysterious things.
But none so mysterious as the mangosteen.
3 comments:
And does it taste piney like an actual mango?
Mang O. Steen will be the name of my next RPG character.
We must confess, we can not tell you what a mangosteen tastes like. We kept waiting for this "hard as a golf ball" fruit to soften, and as it turns out we waited until fermentation. So, we would have to say it tastes like bad fruit juice.
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