Category: Photos

Bengal Currants (carissa carandas)

Mamuang hau manao ho

I only started commonly seeing these berry-like fruits this year. They seem to be growing in popularity up here in Issan, but I suspect they were brought here from another part of Thailand, where they are apparently have shorter names: Nam daeng and nam phrong.
They are apparently used in India for pickles.

I had started calling these Lao Cherries, but there are a couple other fruits already called that (plus they don’t seem to be from this area), so I finally just looked it up.

So the important thing: Do they taste good?

They taste like vitamin C punched you in the throat. Like the sourest mango and unripe lemon (hence the name? Mamuang = mango; Manao = lemon/lime) in the world are frolicking on your tongue. So naturally, Thais eat them dipped in chili sugar and stupid farang stuff three in their mouth at a time to see if it can be done in a sort of personal stupidity challenge.

So wikicheatia has a long paragraph on names for this fruit which, in the spirit of university plagiarism, I will only only slighty modify before pasting here:
Arduina carandas
Capparis carandas
Carissa salicina
Echites spinosus
Jasminonerium carandas
Jasminonerium salicinum

karonda (Devanagari)
karamardaka (Sanskrit)
kauLi hannu(Kannada)
karavanda(Marathi)
karauna (Maithili)
vakkay (Telugu)
Canta- (Konkani)
maha karamba (Sinhala)
kilaakkaai (Tamil)
karau(n)da (unknown)
karanda (unknown)
karamda (unknown)
kerenda (in Malaya)
karaunda (Malaya/India)
Bengal currant (South India)
Christ’s thorn (South India)
nam phrom (Thailand)
namdaeng (Thailand)
caramba (Philippines)
caranda (Philippines)
caraunda (Philippines)
perunkila (Philippines)
Karja tenga (Assam)
Koromcha(Bengali)

Our Big Boy

There’s this girl from school that likes Max. He’s chatting online with her right now in the other room; I can hear their little voices as they talk about whatever kids talk about. They’re only 10 years old. It feels… strange. Very cute but kinda funny?

All I can think of is:

Misushit?

This is probably the best Matsushita knockoff name, ever (combined with a retailer’s misspelling) – and that’s saying a lot since Matsushita and National brands were folded into Panasonic years ago. These trusted brand names live on in developing countries, even if new product lines do not.

I’ve seen quite a few Matsushita, National, and Panasonic knockoff names (and that’s just a few from this electronics group), but the most often honored here and elsewhere is probably Mitsubishi, including the following permutations:

Mitsuboshi:”Three hats”

Mitsubashi: “Three bridges”

Mizubashi: “Water bridge”

Matsuboshi: “Pine hat”

etc.

“Mitsubishi” literally means “three water chestnuts,” but “-hishi” is what we call a diamond mark so it’s just descriptive of the logo.