Sunday, March 13, 2011

First Pawpaw Harvest

All right, PAPAYA.  I just like the word 'pawpaw', it's South Pacific equivalent. My tropical cookbook from Fiji has great recipes: pawpaw slaw, pawpaw seed salad dressing, lote, mousse, fresh green pawpaw pickle, and mango pawpaw punch, to name a few.  There are some creative uses for papaya and I was thrilled to harvest the first ripe fruits today.   Below is a photo of the tree, growing in the front patio, from what may have been sunrise papaya seeds from Guatemala, or not. 


They are huge and have been ripening fast.

Pablo stood on the ladder and used the new weapon we created:  a strong kitchen knife well-taped to an old squeegee pole...not too tall but effective for now. Look how beautiful this fruit is!
Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of one cut into thirds because it was so sweet and delicious it just didn't occur to me!  We got caught up in the moment! 


This week I have to get back out into the yard and finish cleaning up the garden areas.  The cilantro below is flowering and will soon go to seed. Must stay on top of that.  My project these past few weeks has been to add dirt to the perimeter of the yard where we try to grow things.  The dirt washes away and all that's left is a shallow bed of tierra and lots of limestone rocks.  The plants are very happy with their new beautiful black dirt.


I think tiny flowers are interesting, they are so intricate and delicate.  These are the cilantro flowers. I'll try to get some closeups and maybe post them another day with the rosemary flowers from last week. 


2 comments:

Merida Mikey said...

The pawpaw look yummy!

I learned two things from your blog. (Ignorance rears its ugly head.)

1. I did not know that pawpaw and papaya were one and the same.

2. I also did not know that cilantro flowered!

It's definitely true: you can always learn something new!

Thanx!

Linda Dorton said...

One pawpaw has your name on it if you're interested. Glad to see you still learning, see, you can teach an old dog new tricks!!! heee hee

ps. It tasted like strawberry papaya from Hawaii, sweet and delicious, AND it doesn't have that smell and aftertaste of my dad's feet!!!!!!!! Really the perfect pawpaw.