Passionfruit

I'm officially having a hard time remembering what I have talked about and what I haven't. I apologize in advance if I start repeating myself. I suppose this is progress of a sort. The 'newness' of Australia has started to blur into the background. Its not always clear anymore what is unique to life here in Australia - its starting to all just feel like regular life. Except for the times when its not.

I've mentioned before that Melbourne is very multicultural. This is also true of a lot of the people I work with. Its not uncommon at lunch that someone will have something new, or that others haven't tried before. On Monday, someone brought in kiwi berries - tiny kiwis the size of grapes that you eat whole (they don't have fuzzy outsides). No one except the person who brought them in had tried them before, so everyone asked about them and tried one. They were good. Unsurprisingly, they tasted like kiwis.

On Tuesday, when I went into the lunchroom, there was some strange looking purple produce on the table. I assumed that someone had brought in something new again for everyone to try. Here is how the conversation went:

Laura: *points to passionfruit* What's that?

Everyone except Laura: *stares incredulously* Its a passionfruit. Have you never seen one? Do you not have passionfruit in Canada?

Laura: No we don't have passionfruit in Canada! We barely have pineapple!

To be fair - we may have passionfruit in Canada. I have never seen one before, but its not like I was looking.

I explained to the lunchroom that while I was aware of the concept of passionfruit, and I had never actually seen or tasted one, and had no concept of what they are like. The person who brought it in very kindly took pity on me, and told me I could have it. Thus began my at-work passionfruit experience.

For those of you who don't know, I tend to be a very curious person. If I have questions about something, or am looking at new things, I am not very good at staying calm or hiding my excitement. In short, I have no chill. Luckily for me, neither does Justin. That's why on instagram you will often see me use the hashtag #TeamNoChill. Because most of the time, we are big, excited dorks. But this passionfruit experience was happening at work, without Justin there to be a big excited dork with. At this stage in my life, I pretty much embrace my lack of chill, but I did offer a plea to my colleagues to please not tease me about how excited I was. Mercifully they did not tease me. But on Friday there was a huntsman spider in one of the offices. Thankfully it was moved outside before I learned of its presence, but someone cheekily remarked to me 'Oh, we should have told you, you could have experienced your first Australian spider'.

Anyway. Back to the non-horrifying story of trying new things. After I finished my lunch, it was time for the passionfruit. They are shockingly unassuming and un-passionate on the outside. A sort of mundane purple-y brown colour. It wasn't firm, but it wasn't soft. It actually feels hollow, which makes sense because it mostly is. This also makes it much lighter than you would expect. Again, remarkably unpassionate. My colleagues were all excited to watch me eat this thing, but didn't realize that I didn't know how. I had to ask them where to start and then requested step by step instructions. They told me to take a steak knife, cut it in half, but go fast and tip the halves open as soon as you can because there is liquid inside.

I managed to cut it without spilling too much. Once cut into halves, you could see the prupley outside rind, then an inner white, pith like part. Very similar to the white part of an orange or grapefruit peel. Then in the bowl like part of the center there are these black seeds surrounded by a bright yellowy orange liquid/jelly. I'm probably not making it sound very appetizing, but at this point it was. It smelled very fresh and citrusy as soon as it was open. Following instructions, I then used a spoon to gently scrape all the seeds and liquid/jelly away from the white. After being reassured a bunch of times that yes, you eat the seeds, I had my first taste of passionfruit. It was really good! Bright and fresh and citrusy, with a little bit of pucker. But also somehow quite rich. I don't think its something you could eat a lot of, even a small amount was surprisingly filling. Overall, 10/10, would eat again, and will probably use in desserts. I think it would go really well with a classic cheesecake, or even over some Greek yogurt.

On top of my first passionfruit experience, Justin's birthday was this week. For those of you who don't know, birthdays are kind of my thing. I can take or leave most holidays, but there is something about birthdays that I just absolutely love. Normally on Justin's birthday I take the day off and plan events/games/activities. Unfortunately I was scheduled to do some lab training in the morning, so we couldn't spend the whole day together. But I came home early and we still got to spend most of the day together.

He decided the night before that he wanted to have cake for breakfast before I went to work. That way he could eat cake all day, rather than having to wait until I got home. I realized at 10pm the night before that we didn't have anything to light candles with, so I ran to the convivence store around the corner as soon as it opened in the morning to get a lighter. After coffee & breakfast cake, and a couple of facetimes with family, I headed off to work and left Justin to solve the treasure hunt of mini-gifts I hid around the house for him.

We usually day drink on our birthdays, and this year was no exception. By the time I got home, Justin was feeling no pain. The merriment continued into the afternoon as we drank and played games, including a special birthday version of bananagrams where all the words had to be related to Justin in some way. At some point we decided to turn it into our own little kitchen party - we put on an east coast playlist and broke out the cribbage board. Because it was his birthday I was extra nice and helped Justin count his points rather than pegging them myself. Birthday dinner included lamb chops with rosemary gravy, green beans, glazed carrots and roasted potatoes (It was my first time cooking lamb - definitely will be making it again). True to inebriated form, Justin passed out on the couch only to wake up and make his way to bed sometime during the night.

We celebrated on the day of, but Justin's gift was actually experienced the next day. I think its deserving of its own post, but I will leave you with one word - Vaudeville.