Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Why do Papayas Taste Like Vomit?




Am back home again and the Papaya trees have (literally) 100 or so papayas on them. The trees in the photo are two of about 15 trees in the back yard. Unfortunately, I think they taste like vomit. However, every day, our gardener scurries up the papaya trees (about 20 feet tall) to retrieve them and he is so proud of his accomplishments, therefore I act extremely grateful in accepting them. The other day I was explaining my papaya predicament to a neighbor and he said "Oh just put some sugar on it and it tastes much better." Hmmmm, sugary vomit? Are you serious?! I wish I liked them b/c they are great sources of Vitamin A, C, fiber, and digestive enzymes (great for testy tummies)--they also make a great meat tenderizer b/c of the enzymes. But I would rather just take a vitamin and eat some yoghurt. On a more positive note, many of the papayas end up with our gardener and the monkeys/goats are very appreciative of them as well. The banana trees are starting to make some headway though and I can't enough of them so all is not lost on the local fruit vibe.

The trip South was a wonderful getaway. It is much cooler there and I managed to bring back multiple bug bites, an intestinal parasite and several wasp stings. Now if I could have just encountered a few wild bush baboons scratches and a hippo stomp, it would have been the perfect trip. Maybe next time.

So how annoyingly evil are these Somali pirates? I want to kick all their arses. A friend of mine recently said "It's people like that who make me wish I would have gone into military special forces to do in jerks like that." I say let's put a team of Navy Seals on one of those tankers. That'll show'em. Then send them over to the Sudan and then down to the DRC. Speaking of, I want to highly recommend a book called "Unscathed" by Major Phil Ashby (he is one of the British Royal Marine Mountain Leaders) and it's a non-fictional story about his time in Sierra Lionne with the UN. If you know anyone who likes real-life-adventure-hero stories--this is perfect. Ladies--a great Christmas/Chanukkah gift for that special dude in your life.

1 comment:

shinta said...

here, they make the difference between papaya and paw-paw ... same fruit but the first one is more orange/pink... the secone orange/yellow...

and what about the green papaya ?
maybe you can eat them when they aren't ripe yet ???

love !