Goosey goosey gander…

The other day, I blogged about these…

…that my ex-student, Raphael’s mum gave to me, something that I had never seen before, much less tried eating them. We thought they were tomatillos but my ex-classmate/friend, Robert’s sister commented on Facebook saying that they were gooseberries. I quickly went and googled but no, they did not look anything like these…so I told her that and then she said she should have specified that they were cape gooseberries or Physalis peruviana. Ah yes!!! They certainly look the same just that they have a much nicer colour than the ones we had…so I quickly went to update that post to give the fresh information thus obtained.

In the meantime, my friend, Mary, came back from Thailand and she bought these…

…in Bangkok and brought then back to Sibu. She said that they were labelled as just gooseberries there and she passed me some to try.

Frankly, I had never seen nor heard of this thing before – all I knew was the expression, ‘to play gooseberry”. If a couple go on a date and you go and tag along, you are said to be playing gooseberry – I think locally, people will say you are “playing lamp post” or boh ciak chang in Hokkien, literally translated as “you do not eat onions”. As the saying goes, “Two is a company, three is a crowd.”

The yellow colour of these from Bangkok…

…brought to mind our terung Dayak (Dayak brinjal) but no, these are not as sour – just a hint of it but mostly sweet and not only is there the difference in colour but it also tastes a little different from the ones I got from Raphael’s mum. I thought comparatively, those were sweeter but of course, they were very very much smaller, about the size of a pearl. Perhaps this is a different variety like how there are some tomatoes of different shades of red and orange and there are some green ones too or perhaps, our hot weather has stunted its growth so they are not as big.

The ones from Mary are much bigger, though not all that big but as big as a 20-sen coin

I cut one open to have a look and this is what the cross-section is like…

It sure does not look like a tomato, does it…or maybe, just a little? According to this website, it is a fruit of the potato family. Hmmm…it sure does not look nor taste anything like a potato…and it says that it has a lot of health benefits. You can click the link to go and read all about it.

Well, at least, now I know what cape gooseberries are and thank you so much, Mary, for the ones you gave to me. No, I only tried one and I am saving the rest for my girl when she comes home. She loved the ones from Raphael’s mum – I also saved them for her other than the few that I planted and she finished all of them in one sitting. I bet she will love these too…and hey! It’s Friday today and she’ll be home for the weekend. Yeahhhh!!!!