Our grandparents' orchard

11th January 2012

We have mentioned about the orchard a few times now. It's only fair that we publish it here to give our hard working grandparents some credit. We actually visited the place during the new year holiday recently and took lots of fruits back home. So what types of fruits do we have?

Firstly, pulasan or also known as maritam. Its similar to rambutans, except that its skin is thicker.

Secondly, buah tarap. According to nini laki, this fruit is quite fragile. It must be picked at the right time and it cannot fall on the ground (it'll break). When stored, it's best hung using a string rather than sitting on its own skin since the flesh may become ruined. The taste however is worth all that tender loving care!

We also have jackfruits...

... as well as rambutan. This is called "rambutan budak sekolah" or translated directly as "school kids rambutan". Nini bini says that its named that way because it doesn't take long to bear fruit after planting, and more importantly because the fruits grow close to the ground, making it easy for small kids to pluck them.

We also have durian trees ...

... and membangan too!

Local fruits "fever"

10th January 2012

As we Bruneians must have already realised by now, local fruits are in abundance. Here are some more fruits that we enjoyed recently...

The first is of course "buah tarap". Luckily, our grandparents' orchard produce lots of these. As a result, we can happily say that we eat this fruit almost everyday!

Another fruit that is in abundance now are local durians, which comes in assorted colours and flavours!

In addition, we are also lucky to be able to taste "durian sukang" which is quite rare. Even according to some people, it's almost extinct. Coincidentally, a local newspaper had just published an [article] about this type of durian yesterday.

The fruit is small in size which can almost fit the palm of one's hand. Interestingly, this type of durian has to be cut in half because it's difficult to open unlike other types of durian, which means that it's almost impossible to plant since the seeds are already cut as well. However, mummy didn't know this and opened the fruit the usual way (and succeded!). Our family's mission now is to try plant the seeds and hopefully future generations can also taste the distinctively sweet and delicious flesh.