Fruits

Some fruits you may not have been aware of but should try at some point in your life:

Rambutan-
The Rambutan is like the wacky cousin of the Lychee. The outside is covered in small cilia-like tentacles that start out bright green and darken through a neon to a deep red and eventual black as the fruit ripens and rots. They are somewhere in between the size of a pool ball and a golf ball. To eat them you dig through the peel with your figernail and ease it off the fruit, which is a whitish, translucent layer between the peel or skin and the pit. You pop the whole thing in your mouth and strip off the fruit from the pit, which is about the size of the top half of my thumb. Flavors are hard to describe (I'm sure my sister the wine merchant could do better), but to me they have a smooth, crisp sweetness and have a slight blunt tang. You can easily eat 5 in a setting and they sell for 20-40 pesos a kilo.

Atis-
The Atis is kind of like a cross between a giant green raspberry and monkey bread. When they are ripe you can ease them apart and dig into their white and gritty but almost creamy innards with a spoon. What you actually end up eating though is the fleshy parts around the many black seeds, about the size of an elongated skittle, that make up most of the bulk of the fruit. It can take some time to eat a whole one, but they have a very pleasant taste with an unoffensive, likeable sweetness. The one thing I dislike about them is that they often come complete with lots of little white aphids on the outside of the soft shell, that like to slowly crawl into the fruit itself and leave you wondering whether you ate one, or maybe just had a bit of something else crunchy in your teeth.

peanut butter

Anyone who paid any attention to my diet in the district will tell you that bread and peanut butter constituted a good half (or more) of my edible matter intake. They fit well with my utilitarian aka cheap tendencies.
Here in the Phils you can buy US style peanut butter for higher prices from some of the larger groceries, but mostly what is available is Pinoy-style peanut butter. Let's call it pinoybutter. (pinoy means filipino) Pinoybutter is not bad. The better brands are made of only peanuts, cane sugar, and salt, and are authentic enough that you even have to mix the oil back in. There are some local ones you can buy too. There is no such thing as chunky, though, and they are all super sweet by american standards. I've gotten used to it a bit, but it's still a lot of extra sugar.
Since peanut butter is relatively easy to come by, at least in Pinoy form, it's been something I've been buying for myself for breakfast in the morning. I put it on bread and on the cheaper chinese apples that I eat with my cheaper australian oatmeal. In theory I'm supposed to supply my own breakfast food. However, my host family also likes peanut butter and when it sits on the shelf it tends to disappear rather quickly. This is alright since I often eat things like fried eggs that my host mom prepares for me without my asking for them, and they do buy their own peanut butter which I, of course, haven't felt guilty about eating. Anyhow I figured I might simplify things and I could just pay them some extra pesos and we would all just share the peanut butter.
I'm not sure it will work out any better, but I'll keep you posted. Because I'm sure you're dying to know!