“Gabrielle Moriah likes Papaya”
This little rhyme has been true since the girl ate her first bite of solid food. It was when we were living in Santa Cruz that she got her first tastes even before she cut a tooth or could walk. My baby ate papaya like it was going out of style.
Now that she is eight she still enjoys papaya along with her two sisters. I eat it every once in a while. My boys won’t touch the stuff. Personally, I think it smells like feet. Not the pretty manicured feet. Nope. The stinky, sticky, hours-in-the-gym, hold-your-nose-I’m-coming-through feet.
The papaya tree is lanky and tall with very few leaves. To see the bulging fruit swaying at the top of the trunk you think that it will double over. Papaya: tropical and comical.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
ummmmmm. LOVE papaya!
That looks so cute and yummy! I love papaya.
I’m with you, I don’t like it. It looks like your papaya grows bigger than what I have seen here. Makes it smellier and stickier! Great pictures!
No, I do not like papaya either, but still the sight of those miniature things they sell in the States as papayas make me shake my head. It looks like a baby born too early – way to tiny and totally the wrong color!
Still, I ate papaya – simply because in my house you ate what we had. And then my parents ground up the seeds and fed spoonfuls to us when we had tummy upsets. Apparently, they solve all tummy problems. Still, I’ll opt for really strong manzanilla tea with sugar – now THAT stuff will solve a bad case of the gurgly tummy and runs. But skip the store bought stuff and brew it up strong from the plant.
I also don’t like papaya because our neighbor brought us one once as a thank-you gift for giving him a strong cardboard box to use as a coffin for their baby who died at birth. Never liked them after that as they just reminded me of the dead baby in a cardboard box.
Smelly socks is actually a step up from that!
Ellie, they say that olfactory glands have the strongest ability for memory recall. I can imagine that the association you developed with papayas in your childhood would create a very strong aversion. Thank you for sharing your story. I, also, prefer chamomile tea over the seeds any day.
the first and only time i had the stuff was in Panama. the flavor and consistency made me gag and throw up. yuck.
Funny thing: I actually ate a papaya today for the very first time ever. No joke. Before reading your blog! And … I didn’t really like it.
But then I really don’t know if the papaya I had was the “right” kind. I mean, I wonder if they taste the same after they’ve been picked early and shipped all over the world, as they do if they’re fresh off the tree. I don’t think they would. But … it was a really boring flavor for me. The one I had. So I shared it. 
Annie that is so funny!