Okay Friends - we officially have a tropical garden... I had to wait until we produced at least THREE types of tropical fruit before I felt like I could say that..
So here we have it...
First, we are proud to announce that our banana tree is having babies. Notice the blossoms; they emit a sweet liquid in little drops, which is quite delicious. I'll be sharing more about these upon their full maturation!
Second, I'm terribly proud of the papaya trees... I really didn't think I liked papaya - it's been known to have a distinct taste to it that never quite suited me, but I felt compelled to try them since they DID come from our garden...
Well it turns out that the variant that grows here in Angola is not like those that I have tasted before (less vomity smelling and tasting than the papaya from the Americas, I think). Yes, I said vomity and yes that's what I'm calling "distinct."
Anyway, our garden has three fruit-bearing papaya trees, so we're pretty much set for that. They seem to ripen at about one every two weeks, so I'll be enjoying this as a fortnight-snack on Saturdays, I think.
The tree itself is kind of weeny looking, but it can hold these fruit up, which are about 5 lbs each...
The best part and surprise with regard to these papayas was that they had NO seeds. Slice and eat. Fantastic. I could have let this fruit ripen another week, and it would be pretty rotten looking on the outside, but it seems that this sweetens up the insides all the way. That said, it was just fine with a medium level of sweetness this week.
Notice our water distiller in the background in the picture below... We save a lot of plastic bottles by using this baby. We keep about two pitchers of water in the fridge, and we try to run this whenever the first one goes empty.
Our new maid, Idalina helps by making water each day while we are at work, but I feel like we are making a dent in the plastic pollution issues that we have here in a country with little to no recycling and terrible water. You may note that I said NEW MAID... Veronica, bless her heart, was let go, as the sticky fingers she has had from the start continued to haunt us.... then she took us to a workers' tribunal... Yes. I have now been to a "tribunal" in Africa.
That WILL be an upcoming blog, by the way.
Third and unfortunately last on the tropical list is our passionfruit vines or maracuja, as it is known here. I think I will try to grow these back in Houston if I can as well. For one, they are really lush, and they also bear a boat load of passionfruit! They also have a really pretty purple and white flower on the vine, which is nice to look at.
The fruit are about the size of a tennis ball, sometimes a bit bigger. You need to let them get yellow, then start to look a little rotted... then they are ripe on the inside.... I've taken a few shots below to show you what the weathered, yet ripe/ready fruit looks like.
Once sliced open, I scoop the fruit and seeds into a bowl and slurp them up. Some add sugar, since it's pretty tangy stuff, but I like the tang, au natural.
You can just barely see the flower in the photo below and not quite blossoming in the photo above... they weren't out today.
This one has been sitting around the house ripening for about 2 weeks... the one beside it in the second pic below - looking a little worse for wear on the outside, but check the contents on the inside - bright orange-yellow, and delicious!
Yes... I eat the seeds... I'm sure they have some magical power. A common dish here is mousse de maracuja... it's effectively whipped cream, sugar, a bit of eggwhite, and a bunch of passion fruit all blended together into a mousse desert. It's pretty fantastic.
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