Markisa - Passion Fruit

Passion fruit or commonly known as Markisa by the local is a sour fruit with a lot of seeds. Just like lemon and limes it helps to add more acid to the stomach to help in digestion process especially cleaning fats. This fruit is good to turn into juice because of its tiny seeds - very slimy layer of flesh surrounding the seeds. When making it into juice add some salts to reduce the sourness and some sugar to make it a little sweeter and pleasant to drink later on.

Jackfruit

The flesh is simply sweet and the seen can be boiled and eaten. We called it Tibodak

When the seed is cooked/boiled it taste like peanuts - but eating it too much there will be repercussion your tongue will feel like there is toothpaste sticking on it. And it's not so pleasant to have that feeling. So take just enough.

Yellow flesh durian

The yellow fresh durian is the most sweetest of all durian species - these days people are making hybrid of the fruit between the thick flesh and the yellow flesh to make it even satisfying and sweeter to eat. This one in the photo is natural yellow flesh from an old Durian in the forest.



Read here how to reduce foul smell from burping durian

Hand crank juicer review

Highly effective juicer that will squeezed dry out of any fruits including ginger, turmeric, onion, garlic etc. You can make your own herb juice from this stuff by squeezing out the liquid from any plant. Completely natural thing and quite cheap

Pulasan - Weird rambutan

A type of rambutan family variants - it taste a mix of laici + rambutan nice

Sweet and sticky jackfruit

Sweet sticky jack fruit - the flesh is made of layer of natural sugar. The latex of the jackfruit is equivalent to paper glue.





The seeds are rich in starch and carbohydrate. It can be cooked by boiling and eaten very nice.





This is the jack fruit tree that has been cut down. The sticky latex flow out from the inside of the tree and fungus starting to eat them up. The white substance is already infested by fungus



The jack fruit tree was run down by strong wind forcing me to cut it down once and for all.

Tiny wild cucumber growing in the back yard

An interesting discovery on the back yard while doing some cleaning. This is what we've found a tiny mutant version of cucumber as small as little finger growing wildly. It's not growing any bigger and maintain its tiny size.

Mango fruit - sweet/sour, heat, and jelly

Just like durian the mango fruit is sweet and increase heat to the body due to the high sugar content. It will cause some burping too but the difference is mango doesn't produce bad burping smell. This is probably because of the present of citric acid that make up the sour taste of the mango. Surprisingly enough the mango fruit ripen flesh is full of stringy fiber and it can be as tough as nylon plastic.

The black area is formed by the latex when the fruit fall from its stem. In the wild there are mangoes where the latex can caused burnt to skin. I remember long years ago during my childhood living in the village - eating wild mangoes caused burnt to my lips after eating it and contact with the latex. It will turn my lips to almost black in color as shown below and it hurts. That is probably because of the higher concentration of citric acid in the latex.









See the actual fiber in the mango fruit flesh - very similar to nylon and it's as stuff. You can feel them when eating mango some of these fiber might stuck in between your teeth and try to pull it out - you will understand what i meant.



Extracted juice from the mango flesh - after sometimes the sugar will eventually formed soft jelly like below. I am wondering if that's how mango pudding are made?

Durian fruit great taste - reduce bad burping smell

Sugar and fat is probably the main characteristic to the gassy nature of the Durian fruit. Based on wikipedia article it contribute an estimated of 600+ kJ of energy and 436 mg of potassium. It taste definitely irresistible due to the natural sugar generated from the seed. However the gassy nature will bring out bad smell when it is burped out from the stomach - as a result some people avoid durian at all cost due to its unpopular burping smell. Apart from that it is also contribute heat to the body that can result in sore throat especially when eating too much during hot sunny day.



All these is not a problem if you know the trick how to calm down the gas using salt and reducing the foul smell using citric acid (i.e. lime). Though i am not a chemical expert but common sense just make me keep trying to find this solution and it seems to work. People use to drink salt - dissolved in plain water to calm the gas down and this has been practice for many decades ago until now. Despite of the reduction of gas through the help of salt the bad smell still being release during burping. So I thought since people use lime to clean plates, meat smells, bad breath, and washing their hands then it could be working for the stomach too. I use to try it back then whenever i was eating durian just squeezed some lime fruit, add salt and a little bit of water to add the volume and drink it. The result is quite surprising - although there is burp occasionally but the foul smell is reduce significantly - so ever since i keeping doing this after durian fruit. It works great.

Salt + Lime = To keep the gas down and reduce the foul burping smell after eating durian



Durian fruit with thorn skin - small but fleshy









In Bidayuh we call this bua' sikuk :)...very famous word that maybe you can't find in any other language. It's the durian flesh with the tips and usually very thick flesh and nice to eat.





Looking at these makes me want to eat more durian...good stuff to exercise my desire for durian.







Durian seed with a little bit flesh left after eating it. Look at the see through membrane of flesh made of natural sugar very sweet and tasty. Not like human made sugar it's just enough for the brain to think its so smooth and nice to eat.







Dried seeds after keeping for few days.



I have cut and dissected the seed and tasted it's not bad almost tasteless but there is something that make it edible. It can be cooked and eaten as it content protein and starch. The seed without the brown skin as below is slimy - there is a mucous liquid coming out of it and very slippery. I thought it could be natural glycerin but i am not sure what it is.  Have tried to extract it but not enough tools/method available to get the slimy juice coming out of the seed.



Notice there is yellow line in between the center of the seed - that is where the budding flower will grow out when it is planted.





The seed eyes where the budding flower will grow out.



This is how the seed look like when it is boiled in hot water. The slimy juice will come out and it's sticky.





I am pretty sure there is a lot of good thing about durian that one day we can get from it. For example the sweetness of the sugar, the gas, and also the slimy juice of the seed - It could be very useful for us at least nice food for now :).