First visit to a vegetable market at Fort France, Martinique/Carlos Pueblo

First visit to a vegetable market at Fort France, Martinique/Carlos Pueblo

On my way back to the ship, I ran into a nice vegetable market inside a high

ceiling building which I guessed was an old rum factory or an ethanol refinery

from the un-crystalized sugar pulp. My readers would question that how I

could be so well learned. I was from a sugar factory in the central south of

Formosa with some set up of refining sugar, ethanol and one small mountain

township with Sake factory. A major building in the Caribbean must be

something to do with sugar and rum can be one of the chain product down

stream.

Passion fruits were abundant as usual because they were easier to grow in

the wild and just required to be picked up. The kinds in Caribbean are the

same as in Houston park; however, their sour taste could not compare with

with the purple skin kinds in Taiwan or Spain. I can only imagine that the local

prefer to these yellow skin one for juice mixed with sugar syrup. I saw dark

skin seedless watermelon 10 lbs. or less weight and looked delicious. I saw

bread fruit yet no free sample to be tried. I was informed that the bread fruit,

jackfruit, and Julian fruit were in the same family with funky smell when ripe.

I saw plenty of cassava on the side of sweet potato on the vegetable stands. I

have been keen to this crop ever since my father’s duty in my first home town

on the central part of Taiwan, Puli. He was an engineer in charge of the cassava

powder plant. I was familiar with the plant, root, and how the factory crashed

the root to make juice for the powder procedure and dried the pulp for hogs’

feed. I think that Mexican use the powder to make tortilla. Some other regular

vegetable were familiar to me because of my sub-tropical area childhood back

ground.

Pineapple was not in season obviously that I didn’t see very many; otherwise I

would attempt to pick a ripe one to eat. I love pineapple all my life and even

have learned how to pick and eye check the sweetness. The sound like when

you clap your neck that means the fruit is ripe while snap the fruit with a wood

sound means not ripe. In the U.S. market, I don’t see ripe sound often; however,

some pineapple are still very delicious, i.e. at the Garden Café, the pineapple

stray is my favorite.