Once Upon a Jackfruit...

Since moving to India we have discovered a whole new world of produce!  We have enjoyed trying many new types of fruits and veggies.  One of these fruits is especially unique in my opinion.  I had never heard of it or seen it until we moved here.  It is called….Jackfruit.  What a cool name for a piece of produce, right?  It's big, it's fragrant, it's messy, and it's very tasty.  

This first picture shows how jackfruit grow.  They grow in a tree.  We spied these babies at Cubon Park back in May.  

This is typically how you would see them being sold.  Just all stacked up on the side of the road waiting for someone to buy them.  

We heard that Jackfruit are a beast to cut and peal, so we had never been interested in buying a whole fruit ourselves.  But thanks to Margaret (Kris' secretary at the office), we were gifted with this baby.  

This one is a medium sized fruit.  I've definitely seen smaller, and I've also seen larger ones. 

This is what it looks like when you start to cut and peel out the pieces of fruit.  It is a sticky mess.  You have to put oil on your hands prior to digging in so that your hands don't get too sticky.  

This is what the fruit looks like once you get it all peeled out.  Our medium Jackfruit probably contained at least 50 pieces of smaller fruit inside.  

This is the Jackfruit cut into a quarter size.

These are the pits or seeds that are in the middle of each smaller piece of fruit.  You supposedly can eat these too once boiled or cooked.  I didn't feel like trying that however.  

Molly absolutely loved the fruit, no surprise.  

Just thought those of you back home would be interested in seeing such a unique and wonderful fruit.  PS... my hands smelled like Jackfruit for at least a day or 2 after cutting that thing.  It got a bit nauseating after a while.  It didn't matter how many times I washed or lotioned my hands.  They still smelled like Jackfruit.  I think I've had my fill of it for a while now :)

While on the topic of new foods...Another quick photo of Kris and Molly eating at one of the local Indian restaurants.  We decided to try the North Indian Thali.  This basically means you get to sample a lot of different gravies and rice.  This by far was not the biggest Thali that I have seen, but it was extremely delicious.  What you are seeing on Kris' plate is 5 different gravies, naan, rice, curd, and a small dessert.  We are totally going to have to try this again, but maybe try the South Indian Thali next time.  

Oh and buy the way, we ordered this Thali meal, a plate of vegetable fried rice, a masala dosa, poori, a bottle of water, and a tea for only $7!!!  We couldn't believe how much food we got for that price!!  We are definitely loving the Indian food!