Baby Durians

Remember way back when I gave you a tour of our new, albeit empty, home and I showed you blurry photos of the big, spikey durians hanging off the tree behind our apartment?

Well, here is that same durian tree, flush with babies... aww, aren't they cute? 

Grocery Games: The Froo-its of the De-veel

Jakarta's nickname is "The Big Durian," because it has a tendency to be pretty stinky and sticky around town, just like the fruit.  Spikey, stinky, sticky; durian is a favorite around here.  Its pungent stench wafts out of all of the grocery stores here, and yet I feel like maybe I am really turning into a true Jakartan now that that smell no longer phases me...

You can buy durian whole or prepared at the grocery store.  It's also used in a lot of local dishes, ranging from shakes and desserts to curries and soups.

Don't eat this stuff before going on a date, though.  The durian burps are awful and last about 5-6 hours after you eat it.

Mangosteen (manggis in Bahasa Indonesia) : god, I love these things.  They look like little eggplants- round and deep purple- but on the inside the fruit is bright white and both creamy and citrus-y at the same time.  So good.

Scaly and weird, these little fruits are called snake fruit (or salak).  The ones I tried were crisp like an apple on the inside and pretty sweet... apparently the best ones are from Bali, so much so that they sell them in the domestic terminal in the Denpasar airport.

New Digs

As I said over at my other blog, Tim and I just moved into our new, more permanent digs here in Jakarta.  It's a nice apartment near some good restaurants, and Tim's company stores one of their cars in the garage, so Tim is able to grab a ride to work and back each day, which is highly convenient.

We still don't have most of our stuff yet, but there is a little bit of furniture in the apartment already.  None of our cooking gear has arrived yet, but we did purchase a grill for our back balcony this weekend, so we plan to do a lot of grilling over the next few weeks.  We're busy dealing with all of the little things... getting internet set up, buying all the essentials, finding some cool local-style furniture (daybed made out of an old Javanese carving, perhaps?).

Tim, building our grill in our new, empty living room.

Hazy view of some skyscrapers from our back balcony.

Durian tree in the yard next to us!  Hard to see in the photo, but if you look closely you can see the big old spiky things hanging down.