Sunday, August 23, 2009

Strange Fruit




That funny picture that looks like a greenish-black baseball is actually a ROUND avocado. They grow here. One of my students that I'm tutoring brought it back for me from his family's village up in the mountains. I'd never seen one before. But cut into one, and the flesh looks and tastes exactly like the pear-shaped avocado we're most familiar with. A ROUND avocado, who knew?

The weird spiny-looking thing is a rambutan fruit. They call it a lychee here. Whichever you prefer, it's a fruit native to southeast asia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambutan
Evidently the trees are easy to grow, because the rambutan fruit are sold on the streets by dozens of vendors peddling them IN WHEELBARROWS! It takes a bit of getting used to, but you hail the street vendor like you would a cab. You pick out the individual pieces of fruit you want; he weighs it on a little scale and bags it for you. You pay and he's on his way again, wheelbarrow rolling down the sidewalk. The spiny shell isn't prickly--the "hairs" are quite soft. You just split the shell and remove the white flesh. It has a large seed in the center of the flesh. But the fruit is really quite tasty.