Well, that was fun. I can see posting pics on the fly with the iPhone. I promise to try it when I'm out and about, maybe just pics of places I'm going and people I see. Hmmmm... this could get really boring really fast, I'll have to watch that.

On a whole 'nother subject. I've been collecting pictures of tropical fruits I'm loving and thinking for awhile that I should do a post on them. The variety is amazing, the look and taste and smell of them is wonderful. I now buy any fruit I see that I haven't tried yet.

It's one small area of food that I am very adventurous with - my friend at Mexico Cooks! told me once that I was not an adventurous eater and she is really right. Except now, check it out Cristina, I'm an adventurous fruit eater!!

I also took the pic at left with the iPhone, so far I'm really happy with the camera on it. In that picture are some of my current favorites: 2 Pitaya on top, a Mamey on the left bottom and a red mango on the right.

Let's start with Mangoes. There are about 4 varieties that are in season now. Sorry but I'm not good with the names plus I think they change depending on where you are. The red one is not as sweet as the yellows but I like it a lot. I believe it is called Paraiso here.

We park under a giant tree of these over in Mérida. I posted a while back that they were banging on the RV so much that we had to cut them.

The trees can get enormous. I remember driving for miles through huge orchards of them on the west coast of Mexico. At first I thought they were avocados, they have a similar leaf and get about the same size.

Once I learned how to cut them without taking off my fingers I started eating at least 2 a day and that doesn't count the ones I make into smoothies or tropical hoo-has. The info on cutting them easily came on another blog I love, La Gringa down in Honduras. It was actually a commenter on this post that gave the simple directions that work for me.

An alternative to peeling a mango is to stand the mango on end, determine where the seed is, and slice as close to the seed as possible. Score the slice across and lengthwise down to the peel in 1" cubes. Turn the skin inside out and slice off the cubes.

The recipe for papaya milkshake on there is really good too!

Another big tree at the RV park in Mérida is the Caimito. They are small, rather hard, baseball sized fruit. They don't look like much from the outside but when you cut them open they are the most luscious white and purple and creamy with small dark seeds.

They were in season a few months ago, towards the end of the dry season. The leaves had started to shrivel and fall from lack of rain. The fruit stayed hard but turned a dark purple-brown and was easier to find on the almost bare tree. We had to really look to stay ahead of the grackles and other birds that pecked right through the hard surface.

It's worth it though, the taste is creamy and smooth and sweet. The way I ate them was to just cut them in half and get a spoon. I'd pull out the seeds and eat the rest of the middle. I'd read that they could be bitter towards the edge, the purple part, but these were sweet throughout.

Mamey, a wonderful taste. I've tried to decide how to describe the taste and finally decided it is a cross between a really sweet yam and a peach. They are a little stringy sometimes and those I throw into the blender. They are really good in anything blended from ice cream to cocktails. You can eat them with a spoon straight from the shell though, especially if you get one that is perfectly ripe and not stringy. They are still in season here but I've noticed that the quality is starting to decline and more of them have bad spots than at the beginning of the season around March.

I was told at a produce stand that they don't ripen well on the tree so they are picked hard. She said to choose a hard one with no green on the stem end, take it home and leave it out for a day or two until it has the feel of a just barely ripe avocado. I've followed her advice and it works for me.

There are so many types of bananas here and they are all good. I don't have a picture of the cooking banana, platano macho, because I rarely buy them. Mimi doesn't like them and I get my fill eating out. They are included as a side dish at many restaurants and you can even get a complete serving of just fried platano and rice.

The sweet or eating bananas come in various sizes and colors.

Above is the Platano Morado, a large, red and sweet banana.

In this picture the most common banana seen in the north is at the right, called Platano Roatan here although the sign I saw on these said they were from Chiapas. Perhaps the variety is usually grown in Honduras or maybe it is just a generic term for this common variety.

The small ones to the left, really not much larger than my thumb, are Dominicos. They are incredibly sweet. Ones I don't have pictures of that are slightly larger than the Dominicos are the Manzanas that have a little bit of an apple taste. I don't know the name of the small red bananas, they are only occasionally in the stores. It may be that they aren't yet in season.

Pitaya is a fabulous fruit, it is refreshing and a little citrusy with the crunch of a gazillion small seeds. You can cut it in half and use a spoon or peel off the skin and the whole inside pops out. Just eat the seeds, they have no flavor but they crunch nicely. They are in season now and there are vendors on all the busy street corners selling huge bags for very little. They come from a cactus looking vine that also has a wonderfully smelling night blooming flower. A cold Pitaya straight from the refrigerator on a hot day is a slice of heaven.

The last 2 fruits I have pics of are sort of related, Rambutin and Lychee. They are both in the markets now and have been for a couple months.

That's a Rambutin at the top and some Lychee at the bottom. You peel off the sort of leathery skin and there is a sweet but refreshing white meat inside with a couple of easy to pull out seeds. The Rambutin has those incredible spikey looking things on it but they are soft and pliable.

A final pic I found on the net of a pile of Rambutin. Beautiful aren't they?

Now that I can post pics from my iPhone I can get some better shots of the piles of fruit in the markets.