Fruit Party Number 1

There are few things as mysterious as an Asian grocery store.  Shopping in Japan had me (Leah) permanently baffled and fed a deep seated desire to try all of the unknowns from fermented soy beans (not a good experiment) to seaweed wrapped rice balls filled with all kinds of surprises - tuna, mayonnaise, sour plum.  With that as my jumping off point, supermarkets in Colombia have been somewhat of a letdown - they are very well stocked, but most of the products are familiar and therefore do not compel me in the way an unknown and untasted dried sea creature might.  That being said, there is one culinary area in which Colombia trumps every other place that we have been to, and that is in their fruits.  Colombia's climate is perfect for the cultivation of fruit and the diversity found here is incredible.  They are an integral part of the Colombian diet, with fruit and juice vendors on every other street corner.  And each region seems to have their own fruits endemic to their particular environment, integrated into their particular culture.  Upon discovering this, our goal quickly became to try them all.

So far, we are starting small and choosing at random.  The first fruits we tried were Granadilla (left) and Pitahaya (right).

Both spoons and knife ended up being necessary in order to eat them.  The inside of the Granadilla:

While the exterior was hard as a rock, the interior had the consistency and appearance of fish eggs. The flavor was surprisingly nice - mild with a hint of citrus.  Spoons were helpful, but Matt ended up just slurping his up in one go.  The seeds are very, very crunchy.

The Pitahaya was my favorite.   

The predominant taste was sweet and, at least in the one fruit we tried, there was very little else to it.  It's consistency was like a kiwi's, but with many more seeds.  Here's Matt enjoying the fruit (and not grimacing).  

The aftermath of a very successful experiment:

We've heard that there are between 28 and 100 varieties of fruit native to Colombia.  We've got two more months (at least!) in Medellin, so we'll keep you posted.