As a Vietnamese-American, I'm always super excited when I find a perfectly GREEN papaya to make papaya salad with. The recipe is coming soon, but did you know the papaya, or "Đu đủ" comes with a folklore? The legend has it....

Once upon a time, there was a poor farmer who loved to have birds around him. He treated them like pets and sang and played with them as he worked. One day, one of his birds ate THREE CORN SEEDS from the nearby field that belonged to a government official.

Three years later, the government official demanded the poor farmer to repay the debt. The farmer agreed to pay the THREE CORN SEEDS. However, the government official shouted: "You don't just owe me 3 corn seeds. From 3 corn seeds, I could grow 3 corn stalks, and each would make 1 corn, and each corn would make 1500 seeds and in 3 years, that would be 1500 corn stalks...and such and such and such...." The debt grew from THREE CORN SEEDS to ENDLESS.

The poor farmer, already mentally sickened with the news, had to work to the bones to repay the debt. One day, as he was plowing the field, he deliriously moaned, "Đâu đủ, Đâu đủ!" ("Not enough, not enough!") He then collapsed to the ground and died.

One year later, a mysterious tree grew from the spot the farmer had died, bearing fruits with black pearly seeds. The locals named this fruit "Đâu đủ," but eventually, the name evolved to "Đu đủ."

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It appears that through this story, the ancestors wanted to highlight the cruelty of the upper class towards the working class - a story that we still resonate with today. Not all of our folklores have a cathartic ending. Sometimes, they're meant to highlight the injustices in this world that we should never forget.