Did I forget to tell you that the Pawpaw Bread made me sick?

After eating two slices of divinely delicious pawpaw bread and some Little Caesars pizza, my sister and I went to the grocery store. About half way through our excursion I started not feeling so good. Not horrible, just off. But by the time we got to the register I was rather queasy and my sister didn’t look much better. We made it home, but by then I was feeling really shaky and Tim wasn’t well either. Needless to say, my dinner didn’t stay down.

Of the two things I had eaten, I honestly felt the pizza was to blame. I don’t picture Little Caesars as the height of restaurant hygiene practices and the Pawpaw Bread had been made in my own kitchen!! Also I had eaten plenty of pawpaw when we were harvesting and they hadn’t bothered me at all.

Finally I decided to consult Dr. Google. Come to find out, pawpaws can make you sick when you cook them!! Wait a minute?? Since when does something make you more sick when it’s cooked than when it’s raw??? And if they do make people sick when they are cooked… WHY ARE THERE PAWPAW BREAD RECIPES?!?

The heartbreaking thing about this sad pawpaw tale is that the bread was probably one of the best breads I had ever eaten. RIP pawpaw bread… If only we’d had more time.

With that said, I’m not deterred. We are on to our next foraging adventure. We have a large black walnut tree in our back yard and it has been dropping walnuts for the past few days. So this afternoon, the kids and I donned our bike helmets (safety first!!) and collected our walnuts. There’s a whole process to harvesting them, so we will see how it goes. Hopefully better than our Pawpaw shenanigans.

If you have any walnut experience or sage words of wisdom to pass on to me, now’s the time to do it. Hopefully in a few weeks our harvest will be complete!

Oh and we found an American persimmon tree back there too! They aren’t ripe yet, but they are next on my list!