Pick A Pawpaw: America’s Forgotten Fruit

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2019

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1916, agricultural experts voted the pawpaw the American fruit most likely to succeed, ahead of blueberries and cranberries. But today, most people have never even heard of it, let alone tried it. What is the pawpaw, and how did we forget it? Listen in this episode for a tale that involves mastodons and head-lice, George Washington and Daniel Boone, and a petite but passionate community of pawpaw obsessives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just a quick note before we start the show, we know that some of you listened to Gastropod
0:03.3	with kids, which we love. So FYI, the first couple minutes of the show includes a little bit of
0:07.8	Jokie and Ywendo. It's pretty PG, but if you want, you can just keep the sound down super low
0:11.9	for the next minute and half. You won't miss too much. It's just us acting a little silly.
0:17.2	We are Paw Paw Virgins. Yeah, this time to lose it. This is a big moment for us.
0:23.0	Okay, this is the sound of something very special, a moment that I shared with Cynthia.
0:30.0	A moment I'll never forget. Mickey and I did, in fact, lose our Paw Paw virginity together, but
0:35.6	before you start sharing, thank you. It was emotional. You might be wondering what are Paw Paws
0:42.4	anyway? That's what we were wondering too, and just what you're going to hear about this episode.
0:46.8	You're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science
0:50.2	in history. I'm Cynthia Graber, and I'm Nicola Twilly. And you know, Cynthia, I don't think it's fair
0:55.3	to leave everyone hanging like this. We need to get to the climax. Okay, Paw Paws, here we come.
1:04.0	We're about to lose our Paw Paw virginity. I'm very excited. Chris burst our bubble before the
1:09.6	grandi flowering. Well, no, this is frozen, which is not the same as because of the delicate sugars
1:17.2	in the Paw Paw. You know, there's really, there's really no substitute for the fresh Paw Paw,
1:22.8	but this is all we got right now. Okay, so just a backup for a second here. Chris is Chris
1:30.4	Schmiel, and we were on his farm, which is called integration acres. It's near Athens in
1:35.7	Southeastern Ohio. We're in the integration acres farm kitchen, I guess we call it. I'm
1:42.6	Chris Schmiel. They call me the Paw Paw man around here. We're, you know, the world's largest
1:48.9	Paw Paw processors. Our motto is Paw Paws to the people. Chris had taken us into his freezer to
1:54.7	retrieve a brick of deep orange frozen Paw Paw Pulp. Go ahead. Okay, here we go. Are you ready?
2:04.0	I'm ready. I'm ready. I love that we're going through this milestone together. This is a big deal.
	...

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