The Jungle Book. A story about a boy and his jungle friends in India. Including a pack of wolves he calls family, a panther named Bagheera, a bear named Baloo, and all sorts of crazy monkeys, vultures, snakes, and a tiger. In the end, it's a girl that gets him to join the man-village, as she sings about fetching water and cooking in the home. Talk about lacking in the food section, Jungle book only has a few things in it. There are lots of fresh bananas, prickly pears, papaya, and ants. Yum…

Basically, we're making a jungle fruit salad! You know what they say… "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in your fruit salad." Ha ha ha. Our fruit salad turned out okay. We used pears, bananas, black plums, fresh coconut, and papaya. We had to use regular pears because we couldn't find prickly pears anywhere. Black plums were a stand-in for a fruit called jamun, which is also called an Indian black plum, but it looks more like a berry. Baloo also sings about paw-paw, which is another word for papaya. I have to say, we either got papaya that wasn't ripe, or fresh papaya by itself isn't all that sweet.

I thought the fruit salad needed some kick, like pineapple chunks would've been good. However there wasn't really pineapple in the movie, so we didn't add it to the salad. We did add a tablespoon of lemon juice, but it just didn't quite cut it. I will also admit, I really didn't mind the fresh coconut at all. I have never liked coconut, but the fresh stuff tastes nothing like those dry flakes you find in the stores, or in almond joy's. You may also remember Baloo eating the "fancy ants." I don't know what the difference between fancy ant and regular ants are, but regular ants don't have much flavor. Not something I really want to eat again.

So what do you do when you have a whole bunch of papaya left over that didn't even make it into the fruit salad? I was ready to just throw it away because I didn't figure we were going to eat it. My husband, however, had a different plan in mind. He went online and did a little research and came up with a recipe for papaya BBQ sauce. I still wasn't so sure… Until I tried it. Wow! It blew my mind. It was a little sweet, a little tangy, but boy did that stuff have a kick! We had so much of the stuff we put it in jars and shared it with our friends, and so far have only had positive feedback. We stayed fairly close to the recipe he found, but he made a few modifications. I will share this delicious recipe with you.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon	vegetable oil
1	sweet onion finely diced
3/4 cup	sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons	crushed red pepper
1/2 teaspoon	chili powder
1/2 cup	lemon juice
1/4 cup	rum
1 cup	water
1/2 cup	seasoned rice vinegar
5 cups	large, diced papayas
2 teaspoons	kosher salt

1. Heat the oil in a pot over medium heat, and add in the onion.
2. Cook, until the onions are translucent, stirring continuously to ensure the pieces do not brown.
3. Sprinkle the sugar, peppers, chili powder, and lemon juice over the onions, and stir until the sugar dissolves.
4. Pour in the rum, water, and vinegar.
5. Bring the ingredients to a boil.
6. Add in the diced papaya, and adjust the seasonings with the salt, if desired.
7. Bring the mixture to a boil again, reduce the heat to med-low and simmer covered for 45 minutes.
8. Take the pan off the heat, and let the mixture cool slightly.
9. Mash with potato masher for a courser sauce or transfer the mixture to a blender, and puree the sauce until smooth.
10. Transfer the BBQ sauce to a bowl, and set aside until ready to serve.

Add Recipe to Cook'n

There you have it, PawPaw BawBawQuaw. Or, Papaya BBQ.

Up next: Aristocats! Head on over to disneymeals.wordpress.com for more fun adventures any time.