We invited Dan and Sarah to join us in our produce-sampling game, and they drew the short straw. This week’s pick was a borojo. Borojos are brown, about 12 cms in diameter, and unsettlingly squishy. Kinda like those balls filled with some kind of goo that were popular about the same time as Koosh balls were. They are high in protein, ascorbic acid, calcium, and iron, and are often referred to as superfoods. They are used in the preparation of jams, wines, and desserts and are said to have aphrodisiac effects.
Raw and plain, however, they are quite disgusting. Extremely flavorful, bitter, squishy, almost sour at points…quite hard to describe. I tasted it first and used the words sour, pungent, bitter, lemon, and sharp cheddar cheese. I believe Sarah likened it to spoiled lemon Pledge, even after adding sugar to it, as recommended. Dan said it wasn’t bad (with a 1:6 borojo:brown sugar ratio), but did not go back for seconds. Eric wasn’t a big fan, but couldn’t quite find the words to describe it.
It was disturbing how easily a dull knife went through it. Here are a few pictures…
In other mundane news, our dog has produced what appears to be the makings of another dog, or at least a sweater. This is the fur Eric took off of her in only about 20 minutes of brushing her.
Then we did it again the next day. On the upside, she’s looking awfully trim recently.
I also realized I forgot to fill y’all in on the bachelorette party I attended a week ago. It was a surprise for our friend Lourdes, so we were playing it like it was just going to be a girls’ night. Two nights before the party, Lourdes mentioned on our group chat on Whatsapp that we should go ahead and get a stripper for her that weekend at our “girls’ night.” Shoot! Was she kidding or did she really want one? Did she know our plan for the party? Did anyone know where to find a stripper?
First, I’ll say that this is a pretty naive and innocent group of ladies. No one had any experience with strippers. We did, however, have a prolific salsa dancer in the group, and she just happened to know a friend of a friend who had, ahem, entertained before. Uncomfortable as we all were, we wanted Lourdes to be happy, so the hostess hired this guy:
Three comments I have to add here. 1) I already discussed this with Mom and I’m pretty sure she thought it was hilarious, so I don’t have to do my usual shoutout and apology to her. 2) I don’t know what the laws are regarding age in Panamá, but for the record, he IS over 18. Not by much though. EEK! 3) Yep, he’s serious with those poses and that face. Haha.
So let me also add that none of the other ladies had ever been to a bachelorette party before. I, however, have been to more than my fair share of them (not that they haven’t been lovely, if you’re reading this and I went to yours!!!). I’m just saying that all the traditional themes and silly games were not old to them, so they wanted to do it all. There was even talk of costumes by some, but luckily we got that shut down. Whew.
The thing that was not shut down, however, was the cake in the shape of, well…you can guess. And the woman who chose to make the cake…had never made a cake before. In her almost 40 years of life! So she came to my house to make it. And Eric, precious sweet husband that he is, helped us with it since we were also preparing most of the other food for the party and getting ourselves ready too. My friend was shocked, I think, that he was so comfortable with the idea of holding a cake in that particular shape. No silly machismo keeps this one from helping out his wife in her hour of need. 🙂
While we were preparing the food, we got a call that Lourdes would have to bring her two daughters, ages 7 and 10ish, to the party with her. Now remember, she has no idea that there will be an inappropriate cake and a stripper there…so what’s the problem? The girls hang out with us all the time! Uhh…we scrambled for a solution…and finally decided that they would just watch movies upstairs and we would delay the entertainment a bit and hope they were asleep. Oh jeez. Brilliant.
Luckily, all went according to plan. Lourdes was surprised. Blown away even. None of her surprise guests (friends from her Portuguese class) ended up coming (punks!), but our capoeira group had a great time. And although we were all nervous about it, the stripper was as tasteful as I imagine something like that could be, and stayed comfortably decent through the whole show. I think we could safely call him a dancer instead. Phew! Also, since he was a friend of a friend, he just had a beer and chatted (fully clothed) with us for a few minutes afterwards, which alleviated any weirdness from the previous few minutes.
Mostly, it just ended up being a fun night with a group of close girlfriends!
