We've gone International

For my birthday Mike and I took a trip to Vienna by train. It was such a great day out. About two weeks later we were blessed once again with another trip to Vienna as a whole family with the ITI. While there we went to an open air international street market, filled with an array of unknown smells, colors, and items. It was fascinating and we loved it. While going through the market I decided what a great home school teaching moment it could be. So we picked out the craziest, wackiest fruits that we had never seen before and brought them back home with us. Then we went to work at finding out where they come from in the world and did a geography class/taste testing party and here are our results.

Our Top Winners Are (Drum Roll Please!):
#1 - The Passion Fruit from South Africa - With its tart tropical flair and its gushy, frog-egg like insides.

#2 - The Cherinoya from Spain - With its lumpy, green exterior and its cool, sweet creamy filling of a smooth tropical custard.

#3 - The Rambutan from Malaysia and Sumatra -With its hairy, scary, horrifying exterior but a interior with a smooth, refreshing white interior much like a Litchi from China.


Our Top Losers of the Bunch:
#1- The Dragon Fruit or Pitaya from Vietnam - With its magenta/blood red flesh and thousands of tiny black seeds it rated pretty low tasting like our old granny's perfume, but it rated high on the humor scale when Mike shot that nasty red flesh clear across the table.

#2 - The Jack Fruit from India -One of our most exciting entries, one of these bad boys can weigh in at 100 lbs and it grows on a tree branch. It also can permanently ruin the knife you use to cut it, due to a latex build up. If we wanted shoot it or make the next new innovative undergarment with it we would have been in business. But its rubbery, stretchy, yellow flesh and giant seeds got the thumbs down at our house.

#3 - The Physalis or mangosteen from S.E. Asia tops out our losers with its slimy, snot like flesh that permanently stains your body for weeks. Yikes, makes you want to try this one doesn't it.

We also tried the Java Apple from Thailand, which was like a watery, no flavored apple, the prickly pear or Indian fig from the Mexico, with its daunting stickers, red flesh and tons of seeds, it turned out to not be a favorite also. We also had a Mango from Malaysia and India, which is still one of our families favorite fruits. Then there were our last entries fresh figs from Greece with their crunchy seeded middles, that we loved. We had a great time tasting, peeling, smelling, and touching all these great fruits from all over and are looking forward to our next culinary, geographic class filled with fun, laughter, and a really big mess to clean up the next morning.