A Fruitful Paradise

One of the perks of living in Haleiwa now is that we actually live in a neighborhood again, as opposed to on the side of the Kam Hwy. It's a much nicer, homey feel and Eve loves all the kids being around to entertain her. She actually wants to go outside and play. This has never before happened in life. One of our neighbors is this sweet Brazilian guy that mows our yard for a ridiculously low price (although we have a ridiculously small yard)and he brings us fruit from the trees in our neighborhood. We have a mango tree in our driveway, but no mango picker and once they fall they are pretty much not edible. I came home last week to papayas on my front steps. Today I drove up and he was harvesting our tree and gave me a huge bag of mangoes and guavas. Now, I am still learning what to do with all of these delicious tropical fruits and mostly I bake them into things. I've made mango and papaya bread that have both turned out great (if I do say so myself). CRH makes a spicy shrimp nacho that calls for fresh mango, but our repertoire is limited. The first time this man brought mangoes over, he told us about this mango ice cream he makes but wasn't overly specific in the recipe. CRH has asked me several times to find out the details and today when he dropped off the latest batch, I inquired. It's super easy and I decided to make both mango and guava ice cream. The mango rules, the guava not so much. Guavas confuse me in that I don't know which parts you can eat and if you scoop out the seeds, you are left with very little fruit. Halfway into the guava cutting, I had CRH ask a local girl how exactly one eats this fruit. She said the seeds are edible, but sadly they give ice cream a really weird texture. So, the guava ice cream didn't make it, but when you visit be sure to ask for the mango one...super yum.