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You are here: Home / Open Threads / How Produce Deserts Caused Me to Be Stuck With Two One-Gallon Containers of Papaya

How Produce Deserts Caused Me to Be Stuck With Two One-Gallon Containers of Papaya

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I don’t know if produce deserts are a real thing, just riffing off the food desert, though I imagine it is the same thing because produce is the healthy shit people are missing. At any rate, you can’t find fresh papayas around here anywhere. The Aldi’s in Steubenville is the only place this side of Pittsburgh. So every time I go there, I get a couple.

At any rate, I heard that Gerald’s wife Landrea was going to Aldi’s, so I called and asked her to pick me up some. She had no idea what they looked like, so I described them to her, and she found them. I told her I wanted four, and she asked “Are you sure,” and I said yes. An hour later, Gerald came over hauling a large box with four of the largest fucking papaya’s I have ever seen. Like bigger than two liter bottles of soda.

I have never seen them that big before. Ever. They were fucking ginormous. And Landrea, having never seen them because they are not a thing really around here, had no idea what they normally look like and that these were just ridiculously big.

So I now have two enormous containers of papaya in my fridge, but I am up to the task.

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  3. 3.

    moops

    Papaya has a kind of narrow time interval when it is at it’s peak.   Particularly those huge Mexican ones.  I’m not sure what your play is here.

  5. 5.

    HypersphericalCow

    If this story doesn’t end up with John attempting to cut up a papaya, screwing up, and then making things worse while attempting to mop up the mess, I will demand a refund.

  8. 8.

    MomSense

    I should probably try papaya again.  I vaguely remember trying it a looooooong time ago and not liking it, but it was probably just an unripe sample.

  9. 9.

    karen marie

    I went to a large Asian market that was new to me (in Chandler, AZ – Lee Lee’s), and they had the most enormous fruit and veg I’ve ever seen.  They had avocados that were as big as a baby’s head.  I really wanted to buy one just because what fun!  But I did not, because the one that I felt was rock hard, and I was under a time constraint, with no time to search for one that wasn’t rock hard.

    Giant fruit and veg!  What fun!

  10. 10.

    Ruckus

    John, I mentioned a Netflix film I watched last night, very early in the morning and thought that it is a wonderful testament to the things that some of us don’t know and take for granted, like someone would know how big normal papayas are or how some overcome issues that most of us never have to overcome. The movie is Rising Phoenix. It is a story of the Paralympic Games and I think it is worth everybody’s time to watch.

  11. 11.

    karen marie

    @MomSense:

     

    Some fruit have an aftertaste that not everybody likes (myself included), but cultivar is key as not all varieties exhibit this taste.

    I haven’t tried papaya since the early 1970s, when my family lived in Nigeria and we had pawpaw (aka papaya) that grew on several trees in our yard. I did not like it. The information above is new to me, although I do have a distinct memory of its latex qualities.

     

    There was another fruit that we ate there known as star apples that had a very distinctive latex residue that would stick to the roof of your mouth once you’d eaten a fair amount. It was delicious stuff, and I would often have to spend several minutes scraping the accumulation from the roof of my mouth once I’d run out of fruit.

  13. 13.

    cain

    Warning Warning: New Meme!
    It’s been going around.
    If you google “Florida man your_birthdate” you get a special news just for you. ?

    This one is for Betty Cracker. :-)

  14. 14.

    Mary G

    WaPo has a heartening story about a Republican coming to his senses and crossing the aisle:

    A New Hampshire state representative “reluctantly” switched his party affiliation to Democratic on Tuesday, citing state Republicans’ opposition to masks and coronavirus vaccines.

    Rep. William Marsh, a former Republican, said party extremists are edging out moderates like him, and that he had planned to quietly retire but felt his hand was forced by what he called Republicans’ refusal to take reasonable health precautions.

    “Politics, I’m afraid, is a team sport,” he told The Washington Post. “You’ve got to work with other people, and if nobody’s interested in what you have to say, you might as well go home.”

    He’s a doctor, so he didn’t drink the KoolAid.

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I don’t know if produce deserts are a real thing

    I would think lack of fresh produce is one of the main characteristics of a food desert.

    So, family of four, $42/week. A tank of gas, or 3/4 these days? that’s a big, expensive necessity for a lot of working families, vs frozen or canned stuff or dry cereal or whatever

  18. 18.

    cain

    So Baskin Robbins as a papaya flavored ice cream but it is only available in Canada – it’s like papaya, coconut, orange thingee – so good! I have not had it in 40 years or so. But I still remember the taste!

  20. 20.

    Steeplejack

    Maybe someone can answer a Zelle question for me: If you receive money from someone via Zelle, how are they identified in your notification?

    I like Zelle and have used it with my personal email address, but I’d like to also use it with another email address that doesn’t identify me by name. I was able to add that address to my Zelle account (at my Bank of America account), but all of the FAQ info is about how I can now receive money via both of those addresses. I don’t see an option to specify which one to use for outgoing payments—or if that’s even an option. Hence my question about how my payment would be identified if I sent you some money via Zelle.

    Thanks in advance.

  21. 21.

    BruceJ

    @karen marie: LeeLee’s is amazing! I have to drive a half hour to get to the one here in Tucson, but it’s worth it.

    Fortunately we also have a Sprouts within walking distance for produce. There are a ton of them in the Phoenix area and they have papayas on sale right now.

  22. 22.

    karen marie

    @cain:   If I lived in Florida, this might be me, except for the “man” part.

    A Brevard County man was arrested for standing naked in his driveway and throwing rocks at passing cars

  23. 23.

    Another Scott

    @Steeplejack: Looking at the BoA Zelle FAQs and Alphr – Create Two Zelle Accounts, it looks like the sender and the recipient know each other’s phone number and/or e-mail address. I would assume that any actual names wouldn’t necessarily be sent, but presumably one could find them out if one was interested enough.

    My reading is that if you want to use different addresses/phone numbers for different recipients, then you need different Zelle accounts. And you apparently can’t attach the same physical bank account to two different Zelle accounts.

    Kind of a pain if one wants to segregate emails, payments, etc., but it is banking so you want to make sure that the transfers are done correctly…

    NOTE – I’ve never used Zelle.

    HTH. Corrections welcome.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    cain

    @karen marie: ​ I had a naked man tased for yelling there was a bomb while at the airport! He was on the lugguwge courasal butt naked high on a molly lol ?​
     
    Eta what is it about being naked and doing crazy things there?

  25. 25.

    Mai Naem mobile

    Papayas are supposed to help you keep regular(i mean pooping wise.) If they’re rock hard  green papaya you can make a really good thai green papaya salad  out of it.

  26. 26.

    Suzanne

    @karen marie:

    I went to a large Asian market that was new to me (in Chandler, AZ – Lee Lee’s) 

    I MISS LEE LEE’S!!!
    Lee’s Sandwiches across the street is also really good. They only take cash, pro tip.

  27. 27.

    Peter

    Papayas have an enzyme in them that breaks down protein (which is why you can’t make papaya jello)  so they’re excellent as a meat tenderizer/marinade. They freeze well, and frozen chunks can be deployed to great effect in smoothies of all types.

    And yes, second the green papaya salad if they’re unripe!

  32. 32.

    Dan B

    The big Papayas are less sweet than the smaller ones but when they get 1/3 inch brownish spots, often depressed a but, they are delicious.  Like many tropical fruits they need yo blett – partially rot or ferment – to ripen.  Once frozen they cannot ripen further without succumbing to mold and fungus so ripen them to your taste before freezing.  A friend in the Peace Corps in Tonga ate them every breakfast.  The locals thought he was eating horse food.  This did not deter him.

  33. 33.

    Steeplejack

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks for your input. I was trying to find out what people see when they get a Zelle payment from me. I’ve used it only to send rent to my landlord, who obviously knows who I am, but I was wondering about using it to send money to strangers.

    I enlisted a friend, sent her $10 and found out that when she got the payment it said only that it came from “J. Steepleton”—not my full name but the one that appears on my Bank of America debit card account. I guess that’s okay. I’m not super paranoid about my on-line identity, but I would like to keep some control of my personal email address getting out into the wild. (That’s the one I have linked to my Zelle account.) It turns out that Zelle doesn’t reveal that (or the bank account the money is coming from). It’s a pretty good system, if you know who you’re sending the money to.

    You can attach up to five email addresses or phone numbers to your Zelle account, so you can differentiate yourself as a recipient, e.g., “[email protected]” or “[email protected].” My question was whether you could differentiate yourself as a sender; turns out you can’t. You can attach different Zelle nyms to different bank accounts, but as a sender you will be identified by the bank account name, not your email address or phone number.

  35. 35.

    Richard

    @satby:

    I think this is a good idea. I like dried papaya spears.

    Even one of those giant papayas would be too much for me. They taste pretty nice but they don’t agree.

    If i had 4 of those monsters i would keep 1, give one or two to friends, and feed the other one to the chickens and see how they do.

  36. 36.

    neldob

    The big papayas are best with some lime squeezed on them and can be beautifully plated by cutting in half lengthwise, cut off the skin, clean out seeds and cut into 1/4 inch slices crosswise seed side down. Lots of lime juice. How I wish I could have one. Enjoy.

  39. 39.

    barbequebob

    I lived in American Samoa in the mid to late 1990s. Papaya grew everywhere. The fruit bats loved papaya and  planted it everywhere when they pooped. All you had to do was not mow. We got these dwarf (plant) but huge fruit  papayas from the USDA Land Grant Program at American Samoa Community College. They grew fast and produced fruits that were as big as my 18 month old daughter. But, we learned that you had to pick them before they were too ripe or the bats got to them first. We left plenty for them anyway (they were the real natives). Sadly, it will be years before I get around to digitizing photos from the 1990’s. BEST PAPAYA EVAH (live in MA now).

  40. 40.

    AJ of the Mustard Search and Rescue team

    I am the only one disappointed to realize that John didn’t say “struck” with two one gallon containers?

  41. 41.

    quakerinabasement

    So I now have two enormous containers of papaya in my fridge, but I am up to the task.

    This makes me happy.

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