To Market

One of the great things about summer is the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Brisbane has them in spades this time of year.  Along with the hot weather summer has brought us ripe cherries, mangoes, papaya, tomatoes, passion fruit, kiwi, nectarines and just about anything else you could ask for.  Our first few weeks we found a grocery store and did most of our shopping there, now that we know our way around we are finding the farmer's markets.

It seems that every day of the week there is a market in some part of the city.  If you know where to look you could buy fresh produce cheaply.  There's a small market at the end of the Queen St. mall on Wednesdays.  We thought it was fantastic when we found it.  It probably has 35 or 40 stalls.  Then we found the West-End Saturday Markets, they have nearly 200 stalls and you really can get just about anything there.  Today we went to a sunset market in new farm and bought a kilogram of prawns for $15 bucks, the largest bunch of basil I've ever seen for $2 some fresh green peppers (they call them Capsicums) and hand made buffalo mozzarella.  We also found a jar of maccadamia nut butter that Leah couldn't resist.

Aside from the fresh veggies there are tons of other things for sale as well.  On Saturday we ate the most incredible empanadas made by an old Argentinian man.  Today we had some Turkish cheese bread and a Greek meat and potato pie.  We have decided we could make a killing with a taco stand.  This country needs some Mexican food.  (more on Mexican food another time)

Tomorrow we're scheduled to go with Melissa over to another suburb and check out their markets.  We're becoming regular little piggies.

Unintentional segue.

Speaking of little piggies. You should see the size of the cockroaches here.  I just took a shower and when I came out there was a school bus rolling across the floor.  If I had a leash I'd catch one and  name him Thomas the Tank Engine because it was about the size of one of my nephew's toys.  These things are big.  I whacked it with a sandal and it just looked at me as if to say "Is that all you got mate?"  I don't know what you'd do but I'm going to the store tomorrow and asking for an industrial sized can of raid.

Oh, and they fly...

Some observations for today:
-big freaky flying f-----g Cockroaches.  Nuff said.