Guam Day 18/19 - Soursop or Guanábana or Guyabano fruit

 







3/2/2022 - My Wednesday this week, and Thursday for that matter, were a lot quieter of days. Hanging out at the tiny house is just that, a bit cramped, but as I close out some paper work its proven to be a good office space. So, since my content is suffering a bit, I wanted to go back to an early image and talk about the Soursop plant. 

These spiky, green, fleshy, fruits, known as soursops, grow on site here in our host families front and back yard. We have a number of fruit bearing trees that are feet away, personally I can't wait for the mangos to be in season! The Soursop looks to also grow in Latin America, called Guanabana natively, and the Philippines, called by the name Guyabano, from what I can tell from my internet searches. With our host family being from the Philippines it is no wonder we are given a number of these fruits a week with lots of excitement, a little piece of home is my take. Size wise the fruit is comparable to a pineapple fully grown, and the inside has a similar meaty texture. Cutting and cleaning the fruit for use can be a bit of a chore, as the fruit ripens the white meaty portion becomes soft and mushy, the seeds are poisonous in large quantities thus they each have to be removed by hand. To add complexity, the portion that is eaten, the white meaty part, grows in the these small pouch like shapes, each containing a seed that must be removed. Joan has elected that I take over the soursop cleaning procedure as its sticky, and can take a good 15 mins to finish a single fruit. Taste wise as you can image the fruit is sour, but also sweet, tasting like a cross between a pear, an apple and a melon. We add the soursop to smoothies, a bit of milk, ice, and for me a bit of vanilla protein powder makes for a great afternoon island treat. 

I have never seen a soursop on the Mainland, if you do come across one I would highly recommend trying it. Just know you are in for a Pomegranates worth of work prior to being able to enjoy. 

Retroactively Posted on 3/6/2022



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cars of Guam (COGs) - Ep 2 - New Vehicles

Image
  3/29/2022 - I know what you are thinking, if this ep is titled new vehicles, why of all the photos to choose from did you take a photo of a Prius? This one in fact as I stated from a previous post is our host families new car, and to drive for ride hail you need a fairly new car based on expectations of the stroll service.  The thing that has stood out to me here on Guam is most of the vehicles on the island are in US terms an import. Technically all things are imported on the island, as no vehicles are made here, but lets use the term "import" to mean external to the United States manufactures. This is a trend I see in both used and new vehicles, a large majority are from Japan. This has led me one to ask the question why is this the case, but also is there a way to get some data to back up what I am seeing? (what does a good engineer do to back up a claim, build a database) The next few images below are data tables, maybe less fun to read, but bear with me as I believe th...
Read more

GD 55 / Cars of Guam (COGS) ep 3 - Godzilla

Image
4/8/2022 - This car is so cool is gets both a COGs ep and a Guam Day (GD). If you haven't heard of the Skyline GTR before, let me tell you, you have missed out on a an amazing part of automotive history. This is an R32, built somewhere between 1989 and 1993. These vehicles were never designed to meet American road requirements, so these fall into that import law of the vehicle must be 25 years or older to register in the USA. One more sign of a cool Guam import culture from Japan, that's my learning of who live here on this vehicle.  The R32 Skyline GTR was made famous for its racing prowess right at the turn of the decade in touring car races.  It excelled so well, it received the moniker "Godzilla" as it beat any other manufacturer in its class during this time. The heart of this race car starts with its 2.5L inline 6, twin turbocharged engine, that produced a spec rating of 276 hp. Where this gets interesting is the Japanese automakers had an agreement that they wo...
Read more

Guam Day 48 - Return to Asan Beach

Image
  4/1/2022 - Can you believe its April? Where is the time going, Joan and I are just having too much fun on Guam I guess, the time is really going quick. I started out the morning getting a run in at Asan beach, still one of my favorite running spots on the Island. This time I read the history signage a little closer, Im not sure I have ever run anywhere where the signage literally says to keep an eye out for unexploded ordinance. No, this isn't an April fools joke. Luckily the main areas of the beach are well traveled and the national park service has done a great job over the last 70 years cleaning up and taking care of the preserve. If I see any white phosphorous I will be sure to leave it in the water. Eye opener though, even in a place where war has not been present for close to a century, this place continues to see the after effects of those events. We have more diving to come, but many of the sites will exhibit just this evidence as well, lots of discarding objects from WWI...
Read more