Passion Fruit Ferment

So yesterday I was a little unsure of whether or not I should harvest my little fermented bowl of passion fruit seeds (I recently came home with a few passionfruits, and I wanted to try and save the seeds of one of them so I could plant them on my patio garden).  Today it was clear that they were ready.  The molds had spread across the top and I decided to take them out and separate them from their flesh.

The interesting thing about this little concoction, was that it smelt amazing.  Maybe it's just the smell of passion fruit that remained.  But even as it had fermented, it still had this amazing smell.  I threw away the top part, but I decided to keep the juice.  Currently the juice is sitting in my refrigerator.  I didn't really have the guts to try it, I spent a while online researching about fermented fruit drinks.  Basically I found really no evidence that it was harmful, unless you are sourcing your products from farms which aren't organic, you may have more of a risk that a fruit has had some exposure to contaminated manure.  But for my case, I was the one who picked up the fruits, and they had been planted in the forest, so I see little reason for them to have been contaminated.

I also googled about fermenting cultures.  Most fermented foods either use, salt, whey, kefir grains or other freeze dried cultures (that is the ones you make at home, 'fermented' foods from the supermarket, typically don't really have the health benefits of ones made at home, since the ones from the store will most likely be pasteurized and full of preservatives).  From what I found, and please correct me if I researched this wrong, it's not so much about the danger of not using any of these cultures while fermenting (for example- getting some crowd of organisms growing on your vegetable or fruit which is harmful to your health) as it is, just not having a pleasant taste or a pleasant texture when consuming it!

I found this to be fascinating!  Which means, my fermented little passion fruit drink is totally safe.. to an extent.  I did use tap water, which I may be immune to it by now??  But I caught myself mid way through and started using filtered water, incase I work up the guts to try this drink!  I'm sure I would be okay, I could also spit it out and wash my mouth afterwards?

Anyway, it is sitting in my fridge, so if any of you Pune residents are feeling brave, I'd be happy to let you try it out!

The next step, is sprouting the little seeds.  I have no idea if it will work, but I'm gonna give it a shot.  I'll sprout them, just as I would regular sprouts.  I'll make sure they stay damp in their little bowl, and I'll water them 2x a day.  I also planted a couple of papaya seeds, we'll see how they do!

I also set aside some cantaloupe seeds to ferment. Which now that I think about it, probably won't work, because I know when it comes to pumpkins and other squashes, you have to wait for the fruit itself to basically go bad, and not until then will the seed be viable.

So cantaloupe may very well be in the same category.. and if any of you have any insights on this stuff, please leave a comment :)  I'm always happy to learn more.