Papaya

I have another post that I'm working on but it's coming together slowly, and requiring more ruminating than I had expected.  And here it is Wednesday and I haven't posted a thing this week.  So I give you papayas.  Not just any papayas.  These are papayas from our backyard, that we planted.  Do I sound proud?  We are proud of our papayas.

Papaya is not to everyone's taste.  My older daughter, who happily eats almost everything, hates them.  My younger daughter (she of hopelessly fussy palate) loves them.  Maybe it is because she was born in Costa Rica and has been eating them since she was a baby.  I don't know why, be she has always liked papaya and I am glad.  She won't take it in her lunch to school though; she's embarrassed to be seen eating something so healthy.  Actually, it smells strong when it's been cut a packed into a container--it's sort of like taking a tuna sandwich for lunch (potentially mortifying).

If you think you don't like papaya I think it's worth giving it a second chance.  Sometimes it's flavourless (Especially the really big ones) and if it's been cut and sitting around for a while it gets mushy; also sometimes it smells weird.  A good papaya is firm and sweet and it shouldn't smell weird.  I noticed at the all-inclusive hotel we stayed at, that the papaya wasn't very good.  I thought it was a shame if that hotel papaya,  was the only papaya foreigners got to taste; it's really so much better than that.