oh my goodness, the fruit in thailand… maybe it’s the exoticness of it all, but i swear fruit just tastes better in asia. take bananas for instance:
these look smallish, almost like the bananas from madeira, but somehow thicker and squarish. the looks might not be great, it’s the inside that counts, so let’s open it…
… and take a bite…
… whoa. they’re extra smooth, dense and so “banany”! :D i have never met a fruit i didn’t like, but these bananas at the top of the list. i want to go back…
around the end of june, some of our passionfruits started turning purple. i confess we’ve been quite anxious for this last step. the vine’s many fruits been growing for over 2 months now, and with an upcoming trip fast approaching, we were running out time to actually taste the literal fruits of our labour.
so when the first mature fruit (a tiny perfect one) fell on our hands last week, we rejoiced at last. let’s open it!
(pardon the dirty fingernails, i was gardening)
look at that! :D it was just as juicy as promised, and immensely satisfying to finally taste something that was 2 years in the making. there’s plenty more on the vine, but sadly i don’t think they’ll ripen before we have to go. oh well, hopefully there will still be some left for our return — and if not, there’s always next year. i don’t think we’ll get tired of passionfruits anytime soon!
i don’t think i’ve ever met a fruit i didn’t like, but passionfruit feels special. the taste is the definition of exotic in my book — sweet and alien-like.
they’re supposed to be fast-growing plants that enjoy heat, and therefore ideal for our southern climate. last year, a neighbor down the street gave us a couple of his own fruits to eat… but having seen their vigorous vines, we jumped at the opportunity to grow our own. we started them in a container back in 2016 and saw first sprouts some weeks later:
we planted them out in the front garden just under the fence, so that they had something to hold on to. after some dormant months, they begun their ascent in the spring of 2017…
fast forward to a year later, and they have taken over the whole thing. had we known they would insist in growing upwards at every chance, we would have made a better effort to pull them sideways while we could… well, too late now.
we also have our first flowers! they’re super pretty, as all passionfruit flowers are. incidentally, did you know where their name comes from? according to wikipedia,
“Around 1700, the name was given by missionaries in Brazil as an educational aid while trying to convert the indigenous inhabitants to Christianity; its name was flor das cinco chagas or “flower of the five wounds” to illustrate the crucifixion of Christ, with other plant components also named after an emblem in the Passion of Jesus.
The name maracuyá or maracujá comes from a Guaraní word meaning “nursery for flies”.
and just this week, we spotted the first fruit! i can’t wait to finally taste it and strike another item off the 101 list! :P
the search for new fruits goes on, this time aided by the fruit section of local semi-fancy supermarket!
granadilla was lovely. on the inside, it looks and tastes a lot like passion fruit, which was a surprise!
the sweet pepino on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment – it tasted of honeydew melon, but very mildly and not as sweet. perhaps it wasn’t ripe yet? oh well… the search continues!
berry farms are a thing in berlin (in germany?) – but i fear they’re the kind of thing that would never catch on in my home country. i can imagine the puzzled voices of my family members: you drive to a farm, pick your own fruit, and then have to pay in the end?! why would you go through all that trouble, when there are so many strawberries in the supermarket?
eheh, the portuguese are nothing if not practical. despite the imaginary raised eyebrows from my family members, we’ve gone berry picking twice now, in a nearby farm, and it was lovely. the first time strawberries were in season, and we brought home a few kilos which we ate and turned into rhubarb-strawberry jam (everyone at home raved about it!). the second time, a week ago, i was hoping to catch some raspberries, but they were all gone… so we brought blueberries instead.
we don’t eat fruit very often, so berries feel like a treat – and getting them from a farm makes them somehow even more special. plus, the advantage of picking the fruit at its ripest (and tasting it as you go along) is very nice. i don’t think i ever ate strawberries as delicious as the ones i picked there, in early june.
now that i am looking at this post, i realise that it berry picking doesn’t look that exciting – you probably wouldn’t do this if you were here on your holidays… but these little things are part of the reason why i like “living abroad” so much, versus “visiting a country”. it’s all in the details!