Iitu and my package!

Iitu and the Papaya

Last night, I collected the fruits and vegetables that had arrived direct from Thailand. I told Annikki that I would be eating into one of them for breakfast.





In the morning when I unpacked, our 16 year old cat, Iitu, was greatly intrigued by the packaging and the contents.



When I unpacked, she tried her get her claws into it. However, when she smelt the papaya, she lost interest, and decided she would watch what I did with this strange object she has never seen before. She lay down on the table in front of me, appearing bored with the proceedings, but actually she was watching me through the corner of her eyes.





I cut the fruit in a way that I got my 1/3rd share. I consumed it the way I have been taught to, scraping down to the skin with my spoon!





The taste was good although Iitu obviously disagreed.

Being rather a connoisseur of papayas, as we used to have about 400 trees of several different types growing in the factory garden, I have tasted many types which were considerably sweeter than this, especially the seedless varieties that Philip John had given me to test grow. His factory, which was next door to mine in Maddur, Karnataka, extracted the papain enzyme from the white fluid that exudes from the skin of the raw papaya when it is cut.

Papain has many uses, the largest being to clarify beer. The main supplier used to be the Belgian colony, Zaire (Congo). With political instability in that part of the world in the 70s, the Belgians turned to India, and Philip John started to commercially exploit this fruit. He gave the seeds and help to the farmers to grow this and he would send out his tappers to get the fluid. This fluid would be concentrated and the papain extracted as a white powder. Since my factory garden had plentiful water, he used to give me seeds of all the different varieties of the fruit to plant in the garden. That meant plenty of lovely papaya fruit which we used to distribute to family and friends in Bangalore and Mysore.

One pinch of papain powder dropped into a vat of beer, removes the cloudy protein in the beer, making it sparkling clear. It is also used as a meat tenderizer. It became a hit in Oulu when I introduced some elk hunters to it. They cull the elk every autumn. The meat of elk is rather tough. I gave a small quantity to one of my friends in Oulu way back in the 1980s. He, and his elk hunting friends, were amazed that the elk meat, which normally takes hours to cook, was tenderised in just 15 to 20 minutes!

Papain is also marketed in tablet form to remedy digestive problems. It is also popular in the treatment of cuts, rashes, stings and burns. Papain ointment can also be made from fermented papaya flesh, and is applied as a gel-like paste.

Papaya is a great fruit to have for breakfast because of the health value in helping digestion.

I hope I can get the Pailin folk to find us the seedless variety!

In the meantime, I will try to grow these seeds in the greenhouse, just like I am trying to with the sweet Thai tamarind, brown, and the mango seeds I got from what I tasted last week. This service of getting fresh fruits and vegetables direct from Thailand is simply great.

Maybe we will try Rambutan next week, and then if we have the courage, we will get hold of ONE Durian fruit! I do not expect to be thrilled by the smell of this fruit, but I have heard the taste is great.