forget the lime...

...apparently Marco Polo was the first European to feed papaya (pawpaw) to his sailors to cure scurvy caused by a deficiency in Vitamin C...and while uncommon in modern Western societies scurvy still does occur which is surprising and shocking.

Native to the Americas tropics, explorers and traders took it back to Europe and the tropics and my first encounters with papaya were in Penang as a child where I'm sure we had a tree growing in the back garden (along with rambutans and mangosteens but that is for another time.)

Then we had a tree in our very tropical and bonkers garden in Darwin and the rediscovery of fresh slices of papaya with lime...double dose Vitamin C!