Well since arriving here I have seen and tasted some very unusual looking fruits. It has been wonderful to try them, some which are obviously not as they seem.
The first time I tried one of these I was sure I was going to have a wonderful fresh and sweet orange. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a lemon! There is a tree right outside my room, actually there are two or three of them, so I decided one morning to help myself after coming back from my run being really hot and thirsty. I could just taste the sweet and refreshing orange, anticipating the fresh, juicy flavour. So the sharp bitter taste of a lemon was certainly not what I was anticipating, but hey when you get a lemon in life – you make lemonade. Which is exactly what I did, adding panella rather than sugar and voila!!! Actually panella is sugar, just in its raw form. It tastes a bit like caramel in your coffee and is supposed to have good health benefits; quite nice. In the end, Istill got my refreshing fruit experience, just in a different form than expected.
I first saw this fruit when in Otavalo for the day, at a street vendor. From a distance I was reminded of strawberries, but when I got closer, I realized it was something entirely different. I saw a young couple who just happened to sit across the isle from me on the bus home with a bag of this unusual fruit and tried to watch how they dealt with them. I couldn’t really see much other than they broke it open somehow, but what was inside the casing was not visible to me.
There is a couple that comes by here weekly with a load of fruits and vegetable for sale which are purchased by the owners of the hostel. I have also begun to buy certain items, like lemons, which actually look more like the limes we buy back home, and pineapple, apples, that kind of thing. It’s nice to have a snack at night as I only eat one meal a day here. So the following Wednesday when the truck case by, I noticed a pail full of this unusual fruit in the back of the truck and decided to give them a taste.
You break the skin open and inside is a seed encased in a jelly like substance which can be quite juicy. So you just pop that capsule like package into your mouth and suck off the jelly like fruit. It is sort a sweet and sour experience, sometimes more sweet, others are more sour. Not really something you can chew, and there is not much fruit in them, but a good taste experience and I was glad I tried them.
They make fresh juice from most of the fruits here – just pick it wash it and throw it in the blender. Strain out the seeds and sometimes skin and you have your meal time drink. It doesn’t get any fresher than that, and I imagine if I ever get back to North America, drinking juice from a package found in the grocery store will not really cut it. Actually, I didn’t usually buy juice, but if I did, I imagine it would be quite a disappointment after having the freshest of fresh, nothing added, here.
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