These dishes are part of what we’re calling the Fulunga Diet. It pretty much consists of what is being cooked when we’re in the village and when we’re on Charisma we cook whatever looks like it’s going to spoil next.

We left you yesterday with the picture of Mata hiking back to the village with a 50 lb load of octopus after spending nine hours in the water hunting them. Today at lunch time she looked chipper as ever and was serving the most delicious plate of octopus either of us have ever had. Cooked in the in ground lovo oven in coconut milk (what else), it was so tender with just a hint of a smoky flavor. Yum.

Back on Charisma this evening it looked like the pumpkin that I partially used last week before I came down with my um, disorder, was starting to mold and the tuna we froze from a couple weeks ago was coming due. No problem, thaw the tuna (not sushi quality anymore, but acceptable) and cut the mold off the pumpkin. Then add an onion, some vegetable broth, coconut milk and green curry paste and voila, you would have fish curry over rice. Pretty good too.

In between lunch and dinner Ann tooled around town with “her ladies” getting to spend some time with a variety of families just enjoying sitting out back and chatting while Joe found me and said we would continue to work on the wooden bowl.

The good news here is that it looks like a bowl. The bad news is the amount of sanding it takes to bring it up to finish standards. Joe is really looking for a high quality bowl so we spent at least two hours sanding today with 80 grit sandpaper and my homework for the weekend is to continue to sand with 150 grit and then 320 grit. Then Monday he will put a Fijian pattern around the lip and I’ll get to carve the final detail. He’s really putting in a lot of time helping me learn how to carve the Fijian way. We’re at something like 8 hours at this point. For me it’s a lot of fun. The other carvers are kidding me that I should just make it on a lath. My comment back to them is that yes it’s faster, but then you can’t hear what the wood is telling you. Lots of “io’s” on that (“yes” in Fijian) and knowing glances.

Ann also has homework. She is working on a couple pandanas weaving projects and brought back a bunch of the material to work on. The ladies really love her company and enjoy taking turns critiquing her work. Conversely Ann caught one of them making a goof the other day. Oh there were howls of laughter that a Pailangi corrected the master weaver!

We also had chats with a couple friends who are heading this way. Bright Angel thinks maybe a couple weeks and same with Orcinius.

Can we hold out that long? I’ll tell you one thing. There’s not a lack of things to keep us very, very busy.

Stay tuned (but send beer)!