Pawpaws

                  Where oh ,where oh, where is Kimmy? Where oh, where oh, where is Kimmy?

                                       Way down yonder in the paw paw patch!

Goodness how the month FLEW by. I wrote several blog entries in my head but couldn't carve out the time to type! There is the one about healthcare, the one about camping buy they'll have to wait. Today I'm talking paw paws. At the coffeeshop I offered a free coffee refill to anyone who could identify the sweet smelling fruit but none were able. I was surprised. I gave them plenty of clues. Like: I picked them yesterday by the river, they are native to this area and a popular children's folk song features this fruit.

So, after picking pawpaws, wading in the river and lounging on rocks I brought my bounty home. When I awoke the entire house was laden with the nearly cloying,sweet fragrance of pawpaws. I went to work and couldn't wait to come home and make some paw paw bread (which is baking as I type this).

Pawpaws  (Asimina), according to Wikipedia, are  is a genus of small clustered trees with large leaves and fruit, native to North America. The genus includes the largest edible fruit indigenous to the continent. They are understory trees found in well drained deep fertile bottomland and hilly upland habitat. Pawpaw is in the same family (Annonaceae) as the custard-apple, cherimoya, sweetsop, ylang-ylang and soursop, and it is the only member of that family not confined to the tropics.

Indeed, one would think they are a tropical fruit. The flesh resembles that of a mango. They taste like a mango-banana-papaya hybrid. One of my field guides says the pawpaw is the largest indigenous,edible fruit in North America.

A brief Google search brought about MANY paw paw recipes from jams and pies to paw paw wine and custard. Personally, I'm making a quickbread that would usually call for banana and I'm substituting paw paw! Apparent;y, there is even a Paw Paw Festival in Albany ,Ohio next weekend. If I were nearby, I'd definitely be checking it out. There's also a town called Pawpaw in Michigan. There are even articles and website dedicated to pawpaw research, which is being studied for its use in fighting cancer.

Foraging for food and identifying plants and animals is a hobby of mine. As a young girl I was always fascinated with my bestfriend's mother, who was able to point to something and name it. There's a jack-in-the-pulpit, that's a Lady Slipper. I remember her growing rhubard, canning, and talking about pawpaws. So in a way, I have Janet Howard (longerbeam) to thank for my facination with naming the flora and fauna in my world and for introducing me to pawpaws!

Comments

[mama spang]

yup, we're heading to the Pawpaw Festival this coming weekend!! wanna come? the pawpaw is now the official native fruit of ohio - yeehaw! the guy who heads this festival makes some tasty pawpaw pawpsicles....come on, you know you want to enter the pawpaw cooking contest...

[Lynda Perry]

Kimmy--- I used to love foraging for plants when I was a girl--my bible was Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus---my childhood friend Cole and I haunted the woods where Larus Park and Stony Point Mall are now, foraging for wild edibles and wildflowers. Now he's a native plant expert & lives in Free Union (near Charlottesville) ---we should take the kids for a field trip to his garden come spring!