Mike Wice

My wife and I went to the pinnacles this weekend and hiked to the East Pinnacle and Indian Fort Lookout. On the way up to the cliffs, I spotted something that I haven’t seen in a long while. My heart leapt, my mouth watered, and I knew what I had discovered.  The largest fruit native to North America, the PawPaw.

My wife was not as excited as me.  She had never encountered Pawpaws in the wild and had serious doubts about my fruit identification abilities.  My excitement was immediately met with “What?! You aren’t going to eat that!” and eventually developed into full blown terror as I started to taste this strange pod I had found on the dirty ground.  She thought I was nuts and started telling me about how I shouldn’t eat strange fruit, and she was not convinced that I knew this was actually edible.  She has the same reaction when I attempt to eat leftovers that have been in the fridge for more than a day.  She makes me smell the milk, long before its expiration date.

Yes, she is a worrier.  I think she just loves me so much she can’t bear to see me with food poisoning again (scottish eggs at the Eminence KY Renfaire, not a good time).  I would also like to avoid poisoning, but this time I’m not worried.  I have seen these fruits before, it is as natural to me as most people would eat a found apple or blackberry (or in my friend Aaron’s case, a found egg).

I set about gathering as many of the fruits as I could find for our hike.  I have a ravenous metabolism and knew that hunger would be clawing its way through my stomach soon.  I thought a Pawpaw would be the perfect snack.  They are excellent, and have a flavor like a Banana and a Mango had a mutant love child.  The consistency is similar to a banana, but the color is closer to mango.  There are several large seeds inside that are easily avoided.  I just eat the fruit off them and spit them out.  The seeds are approximately the size of a Lima bean.

This is what they look like on the tree. Their color changes from green to a green/yellow color when ripe, and they become soft to the touch.  They really have to be consumed within a day or two or frozen because they go bad quickly.  The animals love them and you will often find them with small nibbles from birds and insects (cut away the bite spots with a knife).  When they are ripe, you can just about touch the fruit and it will come off.  If they are green and difficult to remove, leave them and come back another day, they aren’t ready and they don’t ripen well in captivity (your kitchen counter).

Enjoy them while you can!  They are only available for a short while toward the end of summer.