Frutas!

On our one full day in Quito we got to go to the local grocery store. Grocery stores in Quito are very similar to those in the United States, with one big difference: the selection of produce. Last time I visited my sister I bought one of every kind of fruit that I had never even heard of before. I left the store with over twenty different fruits that were completely foreign to me.

At this grocery store I didn't buy every fruit that was new, but here are some of the pictures from the store. From left to right in this picture are coconuts, guanabanas (goo-ahn-ah-bahn-ahs), and babacos. In the background are watermelons.

This is a picture of the bananas and plantains, which are a very common side dish here. Most of the time the plantains are fried. You can see more pictures of fried plantains in my blog about Mindo!

Once I got home, I took some of the fruits (frutas in Spanish) and cut them open to see what they looked like inside. Then of course we tasted them. Some of the them taste better plain, others are better in a fresh juice drink.

First, we have a sweet cucumber, which tastes pretty much like a sweet cucumber. It has a slight taste of a honeydew melon.

Next is the sweet tomato. This one tastes like, you guessed it, a sweet tomato! I like it better in juice than eating it plain.

Next we have the tuna fruit, which grows on cactus. It has lots of seeds, but the fruit is sweet and tangy.

Then, we have papaya, which is pretty easy to find in the States. It has a creamy thick texture like an avocado, but it is sweet like a melon.

Of course, there was also a green fruit that turned out to be an orange!

Here they all are, waiting to be juiced! We had a great batch of juice for dinner, including the babaco, which tastes a little like apples. Mmmm... Nothing like fresh fruit!