Adventures with Tropical Fruit

This post is dedicated to the people who went blueberry picking in Jacksonville on my birthday, you know who you are. I’ll gladly admit that you made me very jealous with your stories of billions of pounds of blueberries, but now, Ha! – I have passion fruit, papaya, mangos, zapotes, and pineapple—all grown near me. YUM

Although my initial vision of Peace Corps was living in a tiny campo with an abundance of free fruit and that is not quite my situation, I do live in a country of unbelievable fruits and generous people who share (and when all else fails, I can buy fruit off the side of the road).

Our adventures shall begin with chinola (passion fruit)—an ugly yellow fruit with an even uglier center and a very bitter taste, but when made into a juice, with incredible amounts of sugar, is delicious! Dona Juana gave me a lesson in juice making, which you can view here: http://picasaweb.google.com/colleengatliff/ChinolaJuice It’s quite a process, but well worth it in the end. Warning to men: the lore has it here that you should be careful with chinola. Consume too much and you’ll lose your virility. Oh—and I almost forgot—chinolas can also be made into margaritas at Mexican restaurants in the Capital—which is how I celebrated my birthday.

Adventure dos: Guineo. Simply, banana. They’re sweet, they’re fresh, they’re really cheap, and they’ve never seen an airplane. Twice now I’ve made banana bread (pan de guineo) for my family—using the oven that no one else uses—and both times while the oven was heating a giant rat has scurried out from under it, causing many screaming folks, including me, to flee the house. I’ve named him Guineo. The bread though is delicious and we eat it for breakfast sometimes.

Adventure tres: MANGOS, I saved the best for last! I waited very patiently for mango season and it’s finally here. I have learned to eat them without a knife, a process that involves peeling the skin with your teeth as you eat, careful to keep up with the juice, or else you’ll have a very sticky forearm. My first few times with this involved me nearly needing to bathe myself afterwards! But alas, I am now an expert and the world is full of mangos. Happy day. One afternoon two of my fishermen friends and I took one of their motorcycles on a mango hunt. We climbed through barbed wire and found a tree full of ripe fruit. One of the guys climbed it and shook branches, resulting in a literal raining of mangos. I stayed under the tree, guarding my head and collecting mangos as they fell (with one hand of course, as the other was occupied eating a mango). I ate 3 or 4 during that little excursion and carried home overflowing bags, which were used for mango batidas (milk, mango & ice in a blender), then shared mangos with “todo el mundo” and still ate 1 or 2 a day for about a week. Yum!