Sweet & Spicy Stir Fry + Mystery fruit!

I had worked up an appetite for lunch today. I spent like 4 hours deep cleaning. I even pulled out my oven and cleaned under/behind that…yuck!

Since I hadn’t gone the store yet, I was thinking about what to make with what little I had on hand. Since I love stir fry’s so much, I decided to make one. I only had onions, carrots and frozen green beans, so that was going to have to do. I also had a chicken breast in the freezer, and leftover rice, so things were looking good.

For the sauce I added these together:

I only had about 1 tablespoon of the Saigon Sizzle stir fry sauce, I added about 2 tablespoons of the Ponzu with Lime and a tablespoon of the chili garlic sauce (it’s spicy!) and I also added about a 1/2 cup of orange juice.

In a skillet, add cut up chicken, and cook that until its almost done. Then I added the veggies and the sauces on top of that, and cooked for another 5 minutes or so. I couldn’t believe how tasty the combination was! I think the orange juice really added a nice flavor to it!

Now, onto the mystery fruit. My daughter and I went to Tony’s finer foods. It’s a HUGE store, and their veggie/fruit department is about 1/4 of the store. I love looking at all the unusual fruits and vegetables I haven’t seen before. One was called a banana fruit:

It’s purple and has these leaves, and when you pull down the leaf, there are those little tiny flowers thingy’s?? I have no idea what to do with it. Have you ever seen anything like that before?

According to www.recipetips.com, this is how they describe this fruit:

The flower, which may also be called banana blossom, grows on the end of the stem holding a cluster of bananas. Considered an Asian or tropical vegetable, it has a deep crimson color and consists of tightly packed leaves or bracts that wrap around rows of thin stemmed male flowers. It is the inner pale colored bracts that are used for food dishes. Banana flowers can be sliced and served in meat stews, soups, rice or noodle dishes, and cooked vegetable dishes. Or the banana flower can be used as a decorative food “plate” or holder for prepared salad ingredients as they are placed into the leaf for serving. When preparing for slicing, steam the entire blossom for approximately 20 to 30 minutes before slicing into it. In various Asian countries this vegetable is also known as banana blossom, banana heart, banana no tsubomi, dok kluai, jantung pisang, kehel mal, kere kafool, ngapyaw phoo, puso, and shang chao fua. Most often, this vegetable is available in Asian or tropical food markets.

That kind of clears things up, although I’ll have to search to see if I can find any recipes using this unusual fruit!

ALSO- Check out Jen@priorfatgirl’s blog today, she has a great give-a-way!!!