Fruit Tastings, Year Two

On our visit to Georgia, I decided to reprise my exotic fruit tasting adventure from last summer. What fun. We went back to the same two farmer's markets, but I picked totally different fruits this time (except for guava, but this guava was totally different.) Here are the results:

I found three that I did not like at all: Dragon fruit, Horn Melon, and Papaya. I don't think it was the fruits' fault though. Dragon fruit was so beautiful it really raised my expectations. The taste wasn't awful, it just wasn't as fabulous as the outside made me think it would be. Horn Melon must have some use other that eating it straight because it has absolutely no flavor. And then there is papaya - again, my expectations were too high. I fully expected to love papaya, but didn't like it at all!

And then there were three that were OK - not great, but definitely likeable: Korean melon, Pepino melon, and guava. The Pepino melon tasted like a combination of every melon you've ever had, which was fun. The Korean melon was a richer tasting honeydew melon, and the guava, well it tasted like guava, though I didn't like it as much as last year's pink guava. 

And now for my absolute favorites - the fruit I would eat again and again if I could: Mangosteen, Guinep, sour and sweet Tamarind, and Jackfruit, glorious jackfruit! Now, I'd had mangosteen juice, but a conversation with a Thai woman in the stored informed me that mangosteen juice is made from the skin of the fruit, while you eat the white flesh inside - oh how yummy it was!! Guinep reminded me of lychee in looks - eyeballs - but its taste is very unique, wonderfully so! Tamarind, sweet or sour, is just divine! There is nothing I didn't like about it. And now for my absolute favorite: Jackfruit! WOW!! It looks extraterrestrial, which in and of itself is cool; it tastes like everything good about tropical summer: bananas, mangos, peaches, mystery, heat, love, joy, everything heavenly and sweet! I adore jackfruit! I even tried a few boiled jackfruit seeds, which I think taste like mashed potatoes without butter and milk (which would normally be bad, but works in jackfruit seeds.)

I had a ball tasting all these lovely fruits, Gloria, my stepmom, had fun eating them with me and telling me stories about growing up eating many of these in her native Phillipines, and my dad and Michele had fun refusing to taste anything and watching me eat too much jackfruit and get an upset stomach! A grand time was had by all!

Fruit Tastings - Day Two

On this the second day of my fruit adventure, I tasted baby coconut, green mango - the one as big as my head, mango, sugar cane, golden kiwi, and two different baby bananas. The bananas, kiwi, and sugar cane are my favorites. The kiwi is so different from regular green kiwi - which I don't like. It's another indescribable flavor. I really enjoyed both the bananas, too. The smaller, yellower one was incredibly sweet and intensely banana. The larger, whiter one was so moist and creamy. You really had to bite it - it had a lot of tooth to it. Sugar cane was really surprising. It's really juicy, and, of course, sweet. It's like chewing on sugar water-soaked straw - an activity I enjoyed very much! Both of the mangoes were very tart - the green one was very under-ripe, as it was supposed to be. The other mango was just a bit under ripe, so that accounts for it's tartness. Now, the baby coconut was just wrong! It felt like I was eating thin slices of lard. It had such an awful texture that I could not get over. I wanted desperately to spit it out, but I muscled through it and actually chewed and swallowed the whole piece - much to the amusement of Daddy and Gloria. The taste was not that bad, though - much more delicate than a full grown coconut, which surprised me. I thought it would be more intensely flavored than it's fully ripe counterpart, as was the baby banana, but it was quite delicate. I also drank some the the juice from the baby coconut - it's clear, like water. I thought it would be sweeter. I followed both the flesh and juice with a chew of sugar cane to erase the flavor. I'm glad I tried it all, though! It was a great adventure!

Fruit Tastings

I tasted four fruits today: persimmon, lychee, Korean pear, and guava. They were all really good, but pretty indiscribable flavors. The pear really bursts with flavor - I think that was my favorite. The lychee came in second, but I had to get past the fact that once peeled, lychee looks like eyeballs with bloody, red irises. They are really tasty, though. Persimmon is a flavor I've never tasted, but I really liked it. Same with guava. I've had guava nectar, so it was not totally unfamiliar. I still have the baby coconut, two types of bananas, two types of mangos, sugar cane, and golden kiwis to try. My stomach is a little gurgly at the moment, though, so I am taking a break.