Baby Veggies

This is really quite a coincidence with Ann's "Balimbing" post where she shared photos of veggies and fruits available in their market. The weekend before reading her post, my wife and I were at the market in Baguio for Pinakbet ingredients. I took photos of the small versions of vegetables which are getting quite popular there and here in Manila as well. Ann had a photo of baby potatoes included in her post, and I thought it would be a great blog topic here too.

I'm not sure how these baby veggies came about; for sure, they weren't around back when I was still a permanent resident of Baguio. But these veggies indeed give variety to everyday recipes.

These are baby bitter gourds (ampalaya). My wife simply slices these into two and removes the seeds for Pinakbet. They're not as bitter as their "full-grown" counterparts. At the right side, you can see the greenish baby eggplants.


These are baby tomatoes, also known as cherry tomatoes. This is great when cooked with coconut milk, though I haven't tried that yet. Strange thing is, this plant grows rather wild. We have a couple growing outside our house; I took this photo from there. We had actually "harvested" a handful some weekends ago and added it to one of our veggie meals.
Here's a really nice shot of baby bitter gourds and eggplants.
And here's a photo of baby corn, perfect for chopsuey!

And here are the popular baby potatoes! Preparation of this is quite simple. After washing off the potatoes, boil it until tender. No need to remove the skin! Drain off the water, and add either cream and melted cheese (yummy!), or melt butter on it and add crispy bacon bits. Care to share baby potato recipes?


Me hungry!

PS Thanks to Cathy for suggesting that I watermark my photos! I used Photoshop for the above three photos, though I'm looking for a more lightweight software to do this. Any tip for the Mac? Much appreciated!