Interesting ingredients add flavor..and other things

in the pics: my mom and I attempted to make keke pua'a (pig and veggies stuffed in dough). It didn't really turn out how I remember it in Samoa. We decided to steam the keke instead of frying them (they get fried in Samoa). The steamer didn't really cook the dough adequately. Oh well..good first attempt. the pork (this is the way we do pig in America), mixing the dough, and stuffing and wrapping. no picture of the steamer.
Also a picture of some of my souvenirs from Samoa when they were set out on a table.

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Things I liked to eat in samoa

Keke saina (the ones I bought at the KK mart)
Corned beef
french dressing
punjas rota wrap
Oranges/apples/
pringles
cheese
dark bread
CRUNCHY p-nut butter
Weet Bix (coconut honey)
bananas
cucumbers
tomatoes
ginger
…
Fish

Speaking of fish..in samoa, the fish on my plate had ingredients of: fish, sometimes oil.
I just ate some gorton’s frozen crunchy fish sticks. I really liked those growing up. Something has changed. They weren’t as good.
The ingredients in Gorton’s below. A LONG list. I like to read ingredient labels now.

Minced Pollock, Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid)Vegetable Oil (Cottonseed, Canola, Soybean, and/or Rice Bran)Water, Yellow Corn Flour, Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Salt, Whey, Dextrose, Dried Yeast, Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate)Caramel Color, Hydrolyzed Corn Gluten, Monosodium Glutamate, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Onion Powder, Colored with Paprika, Annatto and Turmeric Extracts, Natural Flavoring, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, TBHQ Added to Protect Flavor, Sodium Triphosphate (to Retain Moisture)Methylcellulose, Rice Flour, Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein.
(side note: I did not put those hyperlinks in. but I think I copied this text directly from a web site, before pasting into notepad to clear all formatting..)

Not being in the Peace Corps anymore takes away your obvious interestingness, and interestingness is the main reason to keep a blog.
Well I think I can be interesting and not be in the peace corps. Being in PC just means you are interesting from far away. People have said that I’m interesting in the past. Maybe they were lying. People have said I have weird quirks. Do we want to go into those now. Not the best topics for a first date. Let’s go. I like to collect things. From the side of the road, of wherever. I was “found object man” one Halloween. I didn’t find anything during the party though.

Back to the US: I had very limited access to the internet while in Samoa. Not so in the US: internet is back, and I’m making up for lost time. But it seems there is SO much information and things I want to look at, and only 24 hours in a day./ I must say that right now I have 6 or 7 job leads. Who knows (says the pessimist in me), maybe none of them will turn up jobs, but I haven’t even started on the career/job website list given to us at our close of service.