What's THAT!!!

At a flea market last month Vikki and I came upon a fruit we'd never seen before.

The thing was HUGE.........

and warty...........

Here it sits in front of pineapples and snuggled between mangoes and papayas.

We figured it must have come from farther south in Mexico

or maybe Central America

or even South America

The vendor had a limited use of English but eventually understood that we wanted to know what the name of the fruit was. 

It's jack fruit, and sliced in rounds you can see the edible yellow-orange pulp.

The taste was not particularly pleasant; very sweet and pithy.

Still intrigued with the exotic fruit we struggled through the language barrier to learn where it came from.

From farther south, just as we thought.

Australia!

Yes, Australia!

Just about that time the woman's husband asked for $2 for the photo and our geography lesson ended.

I have since investigated jack fruit and found they are related to the osage orange, or what we in Missouri call hedge apples.

We bought the mangoes and had fresh mango daiquiris.

The daiquiris were also too sweet but we powered through them.