Healthy Surprise

I have been trying to go from the “Try Everything” phase of just getting here to getting back into my healthy eating and daily workout program.  Across from the California WOW which I workout at I usually get something from 7-Eleven and something from a street vendor.

Up to this point I have usually bought corn-on-the-cob and I never noticed that in the giant steamer they have these little red sweet potatoes.

One of the best active diet foods are sweet potatoes and yams which are stacked with complex carbs and  B-Vitamins.  Up until this point I had not seen sweet potatoes anywhere except for grocery stores which sometimes the ones from the USA are very expensive.  The bag of sweet potatoes is only 10 baht (30 cents) and it is the perfect food to eat before and after workouts.

I plan to make these little bags of sweet potatoes a big part of my active diet as they satisfy the sweet tooth and are very hard to pig out on.  The only thing which is yet to be determined is if my stomach can handle them.

I don’t know if it is true but I have heard that some fruits and vegetables with peels can get you sick because they store enough water to irritate your stomach.  I have downed a 2 bags of these little potatoes while I walk back from the gym at Sukhumvit Soi 23 to my apartment at Sukhumvit Soi 1 and have yet to get sick and I’m crossing my fingers.

Fruits Common to the USA

I just went across the street and spent I really can’t speak for the rest of the USA but being from California I can tell you that many fruits I eat here in Bangkok on a daily basis are readily available in supermarkets.  There are a couple major differences.

Fresh fruit is very convenient.  I already blogged about the yummy Thai oranges which are usually juiced. I have yet to find a street in Bangkok without at least 1 (there are usually 2 or 3) fruit stands.  From my apartment I have to walk about 5 meters to the nearest!  You go there, point to the fruit you want which is usually chilled and sliced and they put it in a little plastic bag with a skewer so you can eat it while you’re walking down the street.

These fruit stands are open from early in the morning (I can’t actually tell you if this is really true because I usually wake up around 2pm but I assume to be true) to late in the evening.  I have gotten fruit around 11pm but most of the food stands in the street are closing down by then.

The price is also very nice.  The little pre-sliced bags of fruit cost 10 baht (29 cents) each!  All 6 bags of fruit which you see above cost a total of $1.74!

Types of Fruit Readily Available

I’m not sure about the seasonal aspects of the fruits but the most common fruits I see are papaya, watermelon and pineapple.  There is also canetloupe, mangos and Thai guava to name a couple.  I will give a quick rundown of how the fruits taste as certain fruits are more likely to be sweet and ripe while others are often unripe.

Papaya

When I first moved to Bangkok I didn’t really like papaya.  It may have been because I never had good papaya in the US.  I remember papaya to having a pumpkin-esque after taste in the US.  I can tell you in Thailand I have eaten papaya every day for the past 3 months and I have only had a couple of poor tasting bites.

Watermelon

I’ve yet to see any fruit stand without watermelon.  It is fresh, sweet and delicious most of the time.  It comes sliced without the rind.  Sometimes you can find yellow watermelon which tastes the same.  Sometimes the watermelon is de-seeded and sometimes it has the seeds which you can spit out in the street if you like.

Pineapples

Pineapples are pretty much in every fruit stand as well.  The slices come ready to stab with a skewer and be eaten.  I had pretty good luck with pineapples as they are almost always ripe, sweet and tasty.

Mangos

Mangos taste different every time you get them.  Sometimes you will find them hard with a little bitter taste to them.  I think this is how some people like them.  I actually like them hard sometimes as they are not as sweet.  The soft mushy mangos are absolutely delicious in the Thai dessert mango sticky rice which is so delicious it is going to get its own blog entry.

Thai Guava

I learned in my Thai language that the Thai word for guava is ‘farang’ which also means foreigner!  I put 2 + 2 together and figured that guavas were not native to Thailand which is true, they originate from the tropical Americas but have been in Thailand since the 17th century and are available year round.

I’ll admit, up until now I had no idea what this green fruit with a white hard inside was.  I thought guavas were pink on the insdie and I figured it was some kind of apple.  I have had some Thai guava which was very bitter and some which is sweet.  The Thais sprinkle salt? which is avaiable at the fruit stands on the guava.  I like the sweet kind better as it is very crunchy.  WARNING:  Don’t eat this stuff fast unless you want to visit the dentist.  The little seeds can sometimes be very dangerous for the ole’ molars!

I’m not too sure how ‘common’ this type of guava or guava in general is in the US but I decided to put it on this page because I had heard about it before.  Part II will be devoted to some of the fruits I have recently discovered and had never heard of before I moved to Bangkok.

The Fruits of Thailand:  Part II

Eat your Greens

When I came to Thailand for the first time I saw the green these ground green fruits on street stands.  There are so many delicious fruits on the street stands ( which I will blog about later) that I never bothered to ask what the fruits were.  Even if I asked what they were, I would no doubt hear a Thai phrase which I couldn’t understand anyway.

Well it turns out, these green fruits about the size of small apples are one of the most common fruits in America, they just look different.  In Bangkok they taste a little different.  They have a wide variety of tastes, some sweet, some tart and they always seem to be ripe.

Green Juice ?

The juice is sold more often on the streets of Bangkok than the fruit.  The juice sometimes is very sweet and sometimes has a little tang to it.  It is sold in containers of around 400ml for 20 baht (58 cents) and 40 baht on the street, usually chilled.  It is quite refreshing on a hot humid day walking down the streets of Bangkok.

What exactly is this Tasty Green Fruit

I figured if I was going to blog about something as mundane as a normal household fruit for every American I would leave it a mystery for a bit.  The last hint about this fruit and juice is, the juice can kill you!

Have you figured out what this mystery green fruit is yet?

Oranges!