Adventures in new fruit: Papaya

It all started when I bought these at Wegmans. I was feeling adventurous.

Yes, they were incredibly delicous - I highly recommend them.

Well, it got Lou and I talking about tropical fruit. I told him they had the same cookies in "Guava" flavor, but I didn't know if I liked Guava (never had one), so I chose the safe Mango flavor (LOVE mango).

So then I was curious as to how a Guava tasted, so I decided to get one at the store. Alas, they didn't have any, so I ended up getting a Papaya, since I've never had one of those, either.

I LOVE fruit - all fruit. Well, okay, so cantaloupe is my one exception - not nuts about it, but I love everything else - everything from the boring apples and bananas to the more exotic starfruit and plantains, and everything in between.

So anyhow, I was excited to try the papaya...

I did my research before I went to the store so that I would know how to pick a good one, and according to everything I read on the internet, the one I picked at the store should have been the best papaya in the universe.

So I get it home and begin to cut it up, just like I saw on a handful of Youtube videos. Kind of freaky-looking inside, isn't it? Those black seeds look like caviar - nasty. I read that they have a sort of peppery bitter taste, but I was too weirded out by their fish egg appearance to try one.

Anyhow, so I cut up this papaya and now I had a huge bowl of beautiful salmon-colored cubes of fruit that seemed to have the texture of canteloupe or honeydew. I was so psyched to taste it - it was just so pretty...

Okay, the seeds are not pretty, but the fruit is, once you get it all cut up.

Anyhow, so I decided to smell it first (a weird habit I picked up from Lou after years of seeing him do this to ALL food). I took a step back - whoa, this stuff smelled nasty - I mean NAS-TAY. Okay, no big deal, I tell myself, maybe you can't judge a fruit by it's smell (although, generally, you can...).

Then I pop a piece in my mouth and...gagged. Oh mother of all that is good and holy in this world, this was THE most disgusting thing I have ever had in my mouth - BAR NONE. I didn't want to spit it out, because Maria and Josephine were watching and I didn't want to set a bad example, so I finished chewing, facing away from them, so they couldn't see the expression of absolute horror on my face.

"Who the heck would eat this stuff on PURPOSE?!", I thought frantically as I swallowed the sickening stuff. Seriously, it tasted like puke - and no, I don't mean that in the "oh, it was so gross, it was like puke" sense. I mean it ACTUALLY tasted like I was eating puke (which, by the way, is what it smelled like, too).

Now, I know it wasn't rotten. The skin was part yellow, part green, just like it was supposed to be, and it had just the right amount of give when I pressed it. So maybe I just hate papaya, but I really don't understand how anyone could like it!

All over the internet, websites are touting it's virtues as one of nature's most healthy fruits - it aids digestion, it's a wondefrul meat tenderizer, it's chock-full of vitamin C, folate, potassium, fiber, vitamins E & A, and it has tons of antioxidants & flavanoids (touted as being able to stave off cancer). Christopher Coloumbus nicknamed it the "fruit of the angels"...

...yeah, too bad it tastes like VOMIT!!!

Oh, and FYI, the girls thought it was gross, too. Maria agreed with me: "Mom, not to be rude, but it kind of tastes like barf".

So, now I have all these cups of papaya, and I don't want to WASTE them (that junk was expensive!!), but I certainly don't want to EAT them. I wonder if I put them into a smoothie, will the bananas and honey and lime juice cover up the taste, or will I just end up with an up-chuck-flavored smoothie?

Hmm...I wonder.

Any ideas?