I had so many pawpaws this week that finding a way to preserve them became critical. I know from prior experiments that they don't always cope well with being cooked; someone told me a few years back that some of the flavor elements of pawpaw degrade with heat.
This morning I set out to remove the flesh, de-seed it, and freeze it. My hope is that it will contribute nicely to a smoothie once frozen. I got a layer of yellow mush in a gallon ziploc bag and put it in the freezer. Then I took the seeds, quite a large pile of them, down to the creek bottom to scatter them.
Pawpaws are a bit tricky to grow, and good horticulturists do a complicated moist-peat-moss-in-the-fridge-over-winter thing to enable them to germinate. I know absolutely that I don't have the ability to keep a bag of peat moss and seeds moist but not mouldy for months on end, and then remember the dratted things to take them out and plant them in the spring. My strategy is to fling the seeds down in an appropriate stream-adjacent area, then let winter keep them cold. They'll germinate or not - but they won't turn into a horrible mess in the back of my fridge.
Prepping them was the squishiest, muckiest mess I've had in the kitchen since the Great Fudge Disaster of '07. Hopefully, they will freeze well and make good smoothies.
