Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

okay, i know i've been busy and haven't written in this journal... i'm considering making it a food journal - not what you're thinking!!! a foodie's journal, i'll give you an example: today i ate a murapo banana - "the baby banana is also known as the Finger Banana, Ladyfinger Banana, Nino Banana, Murapo, and Orito. Just about 3 inches (7.5 cm) long, when ripe, the baby banana has a thick, bright yellow peel and pale, creamy flesh." My opinion: it had a hint of ripe d'anjou pear in it and was a lot more dense than your typical cavendish (the most common store banana). though completely ripe it was still firm, which is what i like, because i often buy "green" cavendish bananas for their firm texture and sharper/more acute sweetness. (by green, i mean the square edges are green and the stem, but the rest is a light/bright yellow.)

i'd also like to add that a tiny amount of toasted sesame oil goes a LONG way for flavor (1 tsp per 2cups prepared rice); and i LOVE artichoke hearts, if only because after i eat them, my saliva for some reason just tastes sweeter. it's strange, i know, but i like it.

but, i was on my way to telling you about my day at work: today is sunday/funday. what do i mean by that? well, most of the heavy duty work gets done during the week and the weekend is more relaxed, and we have more time to enjoy the delights of the zoo. it's still career oriented: we go see the animals we prepare food for, and in today's case, feed them! i took a stop over at wegeforth bowl to see one of our part time helpers on stage (yay sara!) and took a quick tour behind the scenes, but they couldn't let anybody out... we had plenty of time, so we went to see the goats in childrens zoo and found out there's this really short pudgy one who only likes keepers, not kids, not other goats, just keepers or zoo employees. it was funny. she came out to us like she'd been waiting to get pet all day!

we made our way back to the forage warehouse, got a chs (collections husbandry science) keeper a head of red cabbage for the lynx. he said it'd be their first time exploring this, otherwise he'd have let us come and watch. instead he's videotaping it for us. (so he said...) from there we contacted the mammal holding keepers to ask if we could swing by and entertain the giraffes (which, anyone who goes to the world famous san diego zoo knows are off exhibit until their new enclosure is completely built over by the elephant's current exhibit) and got the okay. at first we approached them with acacia browse (what they'd eat in the wild) and they were happy for the attention. the browse was dry, though, and some weren't to keen on that. the baby born this year was too young to have experienced any public feedings so he was shy; and silver, our largest giraffe and adult male, was actively seeking a female in estrus, keeping them both busy. we ran into some bird keepers in bird holding (right between mammal holding and the old giraffe exhibit) and they got us some lemur-size leaf eater biscuits... which they went ape for! (ok, bad pun) they used to get gorilla size leaf eater biscuits, but this was all we could come up with. and as a consequence, some of the forage workers got licked with their huge black tongues. i was in awe of their massive heads.

i'll try to put a pic in another journal posting. until then... i'll be talking about food! mwahahahhaaha whee twisted