“I don’t know really, but I’m very glad and grateful to work where I’m at.” “I ask myself, how did I get here?” he says. A former IT professional at Indiana University Bloomington, he retired in the summer of 2019 to focus full time on his orchard, which consists of about 250 pawpaw trees. That was some 50 years ago, and Owens as a child would never have imagined that he’d one day be growing this unusual fruit for a living – under the clever moniker Hoosier Pawpaw, no less. “I had an open palate at that point,” recalls Owens. The pair found a tree bearing fruit and decided to try one. He said there's still about a week left to get out there and shake some trees.Richard Owens had his first taste of a pawpaw while squirrel hunting in the woods with his dad in Johnson County, south of Indianapolis, when he was about 4 years old. Louis' Lafayette Square and on the National Register of Historic Places. He, a Bohemian himself, restored a statue of a 300 pound angel and baptismal font at the oldest Czechoslovakian church outside of Prague, located in St. In 1992, during the First Unitarian Church of Alton's sanctuary remodeling, Vondrasek was commissioned and originally designed a three-sided kiosk to resonate with the church's 1917 architecture and color schemes. Vondrasek taught as a special education teacher in Chicago Public Schools for years before moving to Edwardsville, when he became a conservator and preservationist of rare fine art, working with nine museums, and restoring antiques and sculptures. He is a member of the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Citizens Utility Board, a charter member of Mother Jones Foundation for National Progress and a past member of the Ethical Society of St. Vondrasek, a naturalist, encourages replanting of pawpaw trees in the wild, easily done from the fruit's dark seed found inside the pulp, to repopulate woods. Pawpaw nearly became extinct after World War II. Its range extends from New York westward to Iowa and southward to Florida and eastern Texas. In fact, the pawpaw tree is sometimes called the "wild banana" tree, yet the fruit is a member of the custard apple family. The leaves have a distinctive smell when crushed. ![]() But don't forget to look up, as pawpaws grow on trees, in a grove, not on the ground, in a patch. When ripe, pawpaws will fall off their limbs when shaken from their trees. But the shelf life is short, about two days once harvested.Īnd pawpaws are relatively easy to collect. Simply break one in half and spoon out the pulp. He regularly shares his culinary creations with local food pantries, family, friends, neighbors, libraries and more. He originally discovered some pawpaw trees about a dozen years ago near Southern Illinois University Edwardsville while hunting for wild mushrooms. He's well known for cultivating the scarcest edible native items in nature into something scrumptious. Vondrasek's pawpaw pudding is to fall, what his morel mushroom recipes are to spring. He also has made bread and other treats out of the fruit, even harvesting enough pulp for milkshakes at Northside Dairy Haven. This season he reinforced the texture a bit with all three nuts (chopped) that Native Americans harvested in the Metro East region: pecans, hickory and black walnuts. Vondrasek calls his recipe a pawpaw tapioca-butterscotch pudding, which he tops with a rum-butter-mountain cranberry sauce and fresh-grated nutmeg. Pawpaws have thin skin, shaped like a potato (maybe that's why the fruit is "thin skinned") and grow in clusters, like bananas. Other folks have described the taste as an exotic blend of banana, papaya and custard, with a hint of pineapple. He created his own recipe for pawpaw pudding.Įxotic indeed, in that a pawpaw tastes like a cross between a mango and a banana, with a touch of an unknown, like, anise? But maybe that's just an olfactory association. "It took me several years to develop an original recipe that brings out the exotic overtones of the natural flavor," he said. "The fruits are exotically flavored, delicious and very nutritious," said Vondrasek, who could be described as an aficionado of exotic fruits, spending years of winters in the Pacific Islands, particularly Hawaii. The village of Paw Paw, Michigan, was named after the nearby river, which was named after the pawpaw fruit by the indigenous population. ![]() The fruit is in season only a few weeks in late August and September, though the tree is hardy to 30 degrees below zero.Īs the only tropical fruit tree native to the state, the village of Paw Paw, Illinois, got its name from a grove of nearby pawpaw trees on the edge of a forest. ![]() The species also bears the largest fruit of any wild tree type in the country.
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