We had our niece and nephew visiting with us from Houston
for the week. They love helping out with
all of the farm chores and have named our guinea fowl interesting names such as
“Beak” and “Marshmallow” and “Pepper.” Our niece and nephew have spent a great deal of time out in the pasture and up in the loft of
the barn where they discovered a broody hen sitting on a nest of 13 eggs. (No wonder we’ve been collecting fewer eggs!)
In the evening we have been playing games. They taught us a game called “sardines,”
which is simply Reverse Hide and Seek.
In this game, one person hides, the others look for them and as they
find them, they hide with them. The last
person to find the hiders is “it” and they hide for the next round. We also have had interesting conversations at
supper time and we got to talking about our favorite fruits – mine is mango.
We got to talking about durian fruit. Yuck!
I would NEVER try that. Then,
Noah, our nephew, told us about Dragon Fruit.
I had never heard of it. He told
me he’d like to try it. So, at lunch on
Monday, I went driving around Lake Charles in search of strange fruit. At Albertson’s I found the following “strange
for us” fruits – from left to right: Mango, Papaya, and DRAGON FRUIT!!!
Mango, Papaya and Dragon Fruit |
Who would have ever thought? Noah was pretty fired up!
Dragon Fruit, also called pitahaya, is the fruit of a
cactus that grows in Mexico, Central America, and in Asia. The flower of this cactus blooms only at
night and are pollinated by bats and moths.
It is a weird looking thing – a bright pinkish-red thing with fleshy
soft spines with a yellowish tinge on the top.
Dragon Fruit |
Time to try our cornucopia of tropical fruits. We gathered in the kitchen and cut up the
mango and promptly devoured that thing.
Delicious! Even the huge seed was
stripped of all its flesh. Then we cut
open the papaya. As opposed to the large
seed of the mango, the papaya has many small seeds resembling the poop of our
baby goats. That’s not very appetizing,
I know. I scooped out all of the seeds
and sliced it up. It was good, but it
doesn’t really compare to the sweet awesomeness that is the mango.
Papaya |
Alright, time for the pièce de résistance. I cut the Dragon Fruit in half, revealing a bright fuchsia outer layer and white flesh, speckled with tiny white seeds!
Cutting open the Dragon Fruit |
Ain’t that something else?!
Our Strange Fruit Tray |
The Dragon Fruit had a subtle scent, reminiscent of a rainforest with a slight oakiness, hints of leather and a finish of berries, vanilla, coupled with cherries on the tongue. Okay, I’m lying. The Dragon Fruit smelled fresh and had the taste of a kiwifruit with a bit of watermelon. You can eat the seeds, similar to kiwi. It was really good, but from a sheer taste standpoint, we agreed the strange fruit ranking was:
1. Mango,
2. Dragon Fruit,
3. Papaya
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