Our trip up to Northern Queensland was magic. The amount of tropical fruit growing there is intense. We went to a tropical fruit tasting, and got to try Jackfruit, Yellow Sapote, Rolinia, and Sour Sop for the first time.

Jackfruit is soft and slippery, and absolutely delicious. You open the fruit, and the only raw edible part is a little casing around each seed that's a bright orange colour. The rest can be used like cabbage in stir fry's (we're not likely to do that, so will probably not buy jackfruit).

Yellow Sapote has the taste and texture of a rich and creamy cooked pumpkin. Really. It was quite incredible, and if I even get my hands on more I'll definitely try making a raw pumpkin pie with it. It's would be the best ever! It was even slightly savoury, with such an unusual texture.

Sour Sop needs a name change. Piers and I went to a ice cream stand that did tropical fruit ice creams, and asked if we could buy some fruit instead of the ice-cream. Ice-cream was $4; we got a fruit 10x the size of ice-cream for $1.50. Figure that out if you can!! It's like custard apple, with so much juice it will run all over the place if you're not careful, and tastes like tangy lemonade! I think it should be called Lemonade Fruit.

Rolinia was the most unusual. This fruit is almost never exported or moved around a country because it's so fragile that the slightest bump will ruin it. It's another relative of the custard apple, and has the texture of lemon meringue pie. Really. It's soft and creamy and incredibly smooth. Tastes a little like apples. Delicious.

We're considering moving north (from Brisbane Australia). Cairns (about 1600 km north) is like Hawaii. Palm trees, coconuts, tropical fruits everywhere. A dream come true!

Everyone complained that food was expensive where we were travelling. Again... I'm seeing a pattern. I think we ate for less than $15 a day. We bought fruit at all road side stalls, and veggies where we could. Our most common mal was a half red capsicum (pepper) stuffed with baby english spinach, then topped with avocado and red onion. It was tasty and very easy to eat in the car. Bananas were also very common, so we ate more than a few kilos of them (at times it was all we had available). I've never been so glad to have a sack of bananas in the car!!

Other people travelling the same area were having to spend $20 on meals in restaurants... and probably didn't enjoy their food nearly as much as we loved ours!! There is something so magic about eating with your hands too... especially under the moonlight on the beach!

Our favourite (and weirdest looking fruit salad) was tasty and very ugly. I think it would be a wonderful salad for kids to make. They could call it bugs and mud or something.

* 1 custard apple, peeled and segmented (it will naturally break in certain areas into small pieces)
* 1 Black Sapote (otherwise known as chocolate fruit), peeled and mashed
* 1 large passionfruit, sliced in half and seeds added to mixture

The black sapote mixed in looks like MUD! Tastes a little like chocolate. The passionfruit gave it zing and the custard apple gave it a delicate sweetness that couldn't be matched. We ate it out of a 2 litre water bottle Piers cut in half down the centre (we had nothing but a knife) on the beach at a world heritage national park). Absolute magic!!

Cheers,
Sheryl