paw paw, book talk, and west allentown

 My friend Pam is editing a book her father-in-law wrote. I'm designing it. The project is finally coming to an end so we often walk and have book talks. Early in the week we planned to have a book meeting, brunch in the sukkah and a walk. We'd start at her house in West Allentown.

By now you should know I love tasting odd fruit. I remember seeing on Azur's FB page that they had Paw Paws. Just gaining in popularity, pawpaws are actually native to the eastern United States and Canada and were favored by the indigenous people. They are ready in September and you get a lot in a short amount of time. Like mama's persimmons, you eat them when they are bruised and battered. That's when they are the ripest. After work on Thursday I stopped at Azur's and they were out. I was disappointed.

 

I arrived at Pam's at 8 and there was something odd on her kitchen table. Green potatoes? We talked about the book, we dug for photos and we finished the meeting. As we cleaned everything up Pam asked if I ever had a Paw Paw. I said no and told her the Azur story. She has three trees in her back yard. I went out to meet them.

We headed out for a walk around her neighborhood going past Max Hess's mansion and the W house which used to be a school, then we head back to her place. We probably only did about a mile, mile and a half because Pam is having issues with her back.

Brunch was homemade yogurt, homemade granola, blue and black berries. And paw paws!

They taste tropical, sort of like mango, banana and pineapple. They have a soft, orange-yellow creamy custard-like texture inside, although on the outside they look like a yucky decaying stubby bruised greenish blackish potato. My friend Lorraine has been told they are also called "custard apples". They are nothing like an apple to me. 

 

I borrowed these photos from Lorraine's FB page.

 

To eat one, you just cut them in half and then scoop out the custard with a spoon. You can also peel them and sort of slice them if they aren't as ripe. Spit out the seeds! They're not good to eat - they look like a big black bean. The skin is also not supposed to be eaten. Pam throw her pawpaw waste into the trash instead of the compost because she doesn't want all those seeds sprouting. There's a lot of seeds in one paw paw. (BTW they were not in my Noom food log data base. Hmmmm.)

 

Some of you might be curious about the sukkah. Hers is made from fabric samples and old clothes. She made it when her first two children were little and they've been using it since. Sukkot is a week-long Jewish holiday that comes five days after Yom Kippur. Sukkot celebrates the gathering of the harvest and commemorates the miraculous protection God provided for the children of Israel when they left Egypt. It's a temporary shelter. Hers is made on an aluminum pipe frame.