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Fresh and Seasonal

February 26th, 2013

One of the things I really miss is all the fresh seasonal tropical fruit from my childhood. It’s hard to come by a really good mango in Ohio and Maine. Though you can occasionally find a passable piece of fruit, they’re just not the same as the ones plucked right from the tree.
Tropical Fruit 2
Tropical Fruit 1
While we were in Colombia, I was able to enjoy lots of delicious seasonal fruit. We enjoyed watermelon, mango, pineapple, guanabana, mandarin oranges, oranges, mangoes, limes, pomarosas and star fruit.
Tropical Fruit 3
Tropical Fruit 4
I also enjoyed seeing all the trees blooming. This star fruit tree, or carambola as I know it, was blooming and fruiting at the same time. When I was a kid, I didn’t notice the blooms or the foliage, I was mostly interested in the fruit.  Now, as a gardener, I can appreciate those aspects of these fruit trees.  Growing up, mangoes were my favorite tropical fruit, I have very fond memories of eat green ones with salt and plucking ripe one from the tree.

Do you have any fruit that you remember from you childhood?

13 Comments to “Fresh and Seasonal”
  1. daisy on February 26, 2013 at 6:42 am

    My farmer friend grows most of the fruit you mentioned. What a treat for you in the dead of winter to be able to eat tropicals! I hope you were able to bring some home with you.

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  2. kathi Cook on February 26, 2013 at 7:31 am

    As kids, we were big foragers of wild edibles. We would play outside in the woods and fields all day and pick wild strawberries,blackberries,wild concord grapes,and rhubarb from a neighbors yard. We knew where all the patches were and when the fruits were ripe. I still like to pick wild blueberries now when I am hiking.

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  3. Adriana on February 26, 2013 at 8:22 am

    I grew up in Peru and Brazil so I know how you feel about the tropical fruits. I don’t think I’ve had a truly good mango in a long time!

    Reply to Adriana's comment

    • Lilly on February 28, 2013 at 12:14 am

      I too grew up in Brazil and i loved picking jabuticaba, sugar apple (also called suggar pineapple) (fruta do conde) and sucking on sugar cane or going to the craft and farmers market and drinking sugar cane juice with “pastel frito”. Oh so goood! Now I live in South GA and because it’s so close to Florida i still can get sugar cane juice and just found a nursery that has jabuticaba and sugar apple trees for sale! http://www.bendersgrove.com

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      • Adriana on February 28, 2013 at 11:01 am

        I love sugar cane juice! My family moved to NJ and there is a brazilian neighborhood in Newark. They have a bakery there that sells pastel and salgadinhos, but they were always sold out of cane juice. My aunt and uncle used to sell pastels at the farmer’s market in Brazil and during summer vacation we would stay with them for a few days. I was so much fun going to work with them and eating all the yummy foods.

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  4. whit on February 26, 2013 at 9:07 am

    Prickly pear fruit and leaves were a big hit when i was growing up. There used to be a plant on our way to our neighbourhood pool, we all called it honeysuckle but i am not sure what it was. You could strip the small flower off and suck a little sweet nectar out of it. The owner of the place must have been growing the desert version of a cottage garden. All i remember of that place was cascading mesquite trees and thick brush underneath.

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  5. Jennifer Fisk on February 26, 2013 at 10:08 am

    My Mom used to take me Wild Strawberry picking in upstate NY. It was usually hot and humid and not what I wanted to do but the strawberry shortcake for supper made it all worthwhile.

    Reply to Jennifer Fisk's comment

  6. amy on February 26, 2013 at 10:33 am

    There were many berries I recall us picking when I was a child….but my favorite fruit as a child…was from our big old cherry tree…..I loved to eat them straight from the tree…..They were so sour they would sqwooge your mouth up…..It was wonderful:)

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  7. Maybelline on February 26, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    Apricots. I ate them until I was sick. Nothing much has changed.
    As kids our parents would occasionally take us out to the orange shed where we sampled all kinds of citrus. Now I have those trees in my yard and enjoy my own samples most all year round.

    Reply to Maybelline's comment

  8. Melanie in Ca on February 26, 2013 at 12:58 pm

    The only childhood fruit memories I have are of old, mealy apples in my lunch box that turned me off fruit for a long time. But now? Woo hoo! This morning I picked an orange off the tree, so ripe it didn’t even require much of a tug. Yes, Brian, we keep all the GOOD ones for ourselves, lol.
    :>)

    We are blessed to have “serial” seasonal fruit in our little family orchard. I have citrus now, my strawberries will be coming along shortly, and then we segue into cherries, apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, pluots and then toward summer’s end our different varieties of table grapes are ripening.

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  9. KimH on February 26, 2013 at 1:41 pm

    Growing up in the sub-tropics, I too loved picking mostly limes, oranges, grapefruit, bananas, cumquats, peaches, pecans, mesquite beans, prickly pear fruit, and some little red fruit off a plant that today I have no clue what they are.. but I loved them..
    At my grandparents house in North Texas we always had pomegranates,& mesquite near the back door.. and then we moved up there when I was 16, I found the pastures full of dewberries, black berries, asparagus, yellow & red wild plums, pears, and more pecans..

    I was never really a fan of guava, mango, & papaya thought they grew all over my childhood region.

    My dad still lives down there & grows countless amounts of papaya especially..and he can grow a tree in a New York minute according to my step-mother. I enjoy seeing all the papaya trees with the fruit on them, he probably has at least 20 in his yard and more at his folks home place.. He saves his BEST papayas for me when I come to visit.. ack! I tell him he REALLY doenst need to.. REALLY.. haha.. he never listens so Im forced to eat papaya. ;)

    Reply to KimH's comment

  10. Nebraska Dave on February 27, 2013 at 2:06 pm

    Susy & Brian, maybe you have answered this question in one of your early podcasts. I was just wondering who sings the theme song and what is the history behind it? It sure sounds allot like Brian. I just came into your podcast at about week 8 or 9. I always have good intentions about listening to the earlier ones but time just never allows me to get back to them.

    Have a great week recuperating from Storm Rocky and the vacation trip.

    Reply to Nebraska Dave's comment

    • Susy on February 27, 2013 at 2:11 pm

      It’s our talented friends, Justin & Tasha Golden who are Ellery. They’re currently working on a theme song just for our show.

      Here’s their website: http://ellerymusic.com/

      Reply to Susy's comment

About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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