We continue to try new fruits as we find them.  The latest is a pitahaya, not to be confused with the yellow fruit of similar spelling.  This is also a cactus fruit, and actually I’m quite confused about which one is actually the true dragonfruit.  I thought it was the other one, but now I’m reading that “‘Pitaya'” usually refers to fruit of the genus Stenocereus, while ‘pitahaya’ or ‘dragon fruit’ always refers to fruit of the genus Hylocereus.”  I’m sure you’re super intrigued.  The main point?  This time we tried the pink one; last time we tried the yellow one.

Before I had any say in the matter, Eric peeled the poor thing naked, leaving it looking like this:

Sad.  We were excited though, to find out that it looked like the yellow dragonfruit thing, but with more pulp.   Still like a giant kiwi.  Sadly, it was less sweet and just plain not as good as the yellow one.  Womp womp.  Still worth trying though.  Eric also learned a valuable lesson.  You don’t strip these things down because you can use the outside pink skin stuff as a bowl.  Otherwise you just have a giant slippery kiwi sliding all over the plate.  Luckily there were two of us, as eating it became a team effort.

We also tried a zapote.  This was my find.  I picked it up on a solo trip to the grocery store.  So when you get produce, you have to have it weighed and bagged and labeled in the produce section so that the cashiers don’t have to bother with it when they check you out.  Not a bad system actually.  So I was in line to have my zapote weighed and the old man behind me asked me what this thing was that I was buying.  I told him I had no idea and he laughed.  I then got into the checkout line and the bag boy asked me the same thing.  The cashier kinda laughed when I said again that I didn’t know.  She said it was a fruit (whereas I thought it looked kinda like a squash) and that she didn’t like them.

Turns out a zapote looks and feels like a pumpkin inside – it’s slimy – but it’s sweet.  Not my fave, but worth a try.

So…here comes the…er…interesting part.  I decided to actually look at the meat section at the grocery store rather than just going immediately to the chicken and hamburger meat and ignoring all the gross.  If you are a vegetarian or in anyway opposed to gross meats, you might not want to see this.  Look at all the weird things they sell in our normal, rather upscale (think Harris Teeter) grocery store!

Pigs’ Feet

Liver

Kidney

Tongue – it’s HUGE!!!

Pig’s Spleen – according to one translation…although that must’ve been a HUGE pig!

Bull testicles. Yep.

So yeah.  There’s that.  I’m sticking to the fruit sampling.  There are plenty of challenges there.  Check this out, for example:

Rambutan

I mean, that’s a fruit that’s trying not to get eaten.  I thought it was a sea urchin of some kind.  I’ll keep you updated on that one.  Might wait until our next guests get here to bring them in on the fun.

Another comment on food here.  These dear folks do a lot of things right when it comes to food.  If you want anything fried, they know how to do it.  They know their seafood.  They have weird fruits to try and will cook any part of any animal that you want to try.  However, don’t try to get what you think of as a salad.  If you order a salad, you will end up with a potato or pasta salad…something held together with mayo.  If you ask for a green salad, you will get closer.  However, there’s a good chance it will be this size.  And of this quality.  I can’t wait to visit the US to get a good crunchy bowl full of lettuce.

We also finally visited the Kosher market!  We always manage to think about visiting on Friday evening around sunset or on Saturday.  Oops.  That doesn’t work.  The size of the place and the selection were pretty impressive, however some things were obviously not to be found there.  Eric, for example, noted that he supposed they wouldn’t have the ham that he wanted.  I know I’m a horrible joke/story teller, but the way he said it just cracked me up.  Ah, cultural insensitivity!

Here are a few products that we found.  The kosher dino nuggets are by far my fave, although Eric’s attempt to fry some potato cigars did later result in a huge grease explosion in my kitchen.  Luckily he thought to grab Addie as he dove out of the line of fire, so I didn’t have to kill him.  He did, however, have to mop the whole kitchen.  I’ve resorted to hiding the oil and turning off the gas when I leave him alone.  He’s still allow to fry my favorite corn tortillas though.  🙂

Eric noticed at one point that there were amazing looking already prepared shish kabobs in one of the cases in the meat department.  They were not made of pork.  However, he was disheartened when he saw that there was no one nearby to help us get to them.  Luckily, his wife’s keen sense of observation kicked in and recognized that there was no glass standing between us and the kabobs.  I just waited there for a minute until he too figured it out.  He’s a smart man, but gosh this one took awhile to set in…