Shopping for a picnic...

We've had around 10 days of very windy, cloudy and rainy, rainy, rainy days so we thought we'd take advantage of the nice weather on Thursday and have a beach picnic. We shopped at our two favorite stores on the way to the beach. The first one is Marg's Kitchen. The woman holding Norah is Rita Cabrera. The kids will be playing with her niece's kids later this week. In another blog we'll have to share some of the clapping games Amelia and Elise have learned playing with some other local kids. I especially get a kick out of Rock, Paper, Scissors Saipan Style. :-)

Marg's Kitchen is a great place to get sweets and meals at a very reasonable price. We especially like the homemade lemonade (limes I think). A very tall icy glass for only 65 cents. The girls like the brownies for dessert and I really like the bread pudding. A super large block for under a dollar. For meals we like chicken kelaguin and tamales gisu...both have spanish and pacific islander influences.

Our next stop was the Saipan Fresh Market. There are lots of markets like this but we seem to end up at this one a lot. This is where the girls like to get fresh coconuts and bananas. For a dollar you get to drink the juice out of the coconut then they'll use a long hatchet type knife to crack the coconut in two pieces and scrape the inside with a scraping tool, then you get to eat the soft, jelly coconut. There's a photo here of local ginger. They said that this is used to make teas and other drinks. Either way, both local and regular ginger sells for around $1.50/pound. Much better price than at home! The purplish thing is a banana flower or heart. I was told this is very tough and needs to be sliced thinly and cooked a long time. The girls are seen holding a local mango and jackfruit. Next blog entry we'll talk about the picnic! :-)