A fruitful summer :)

A trip to the grocery is not always the most fun or exciting item on my to-do list. But in the summer, when the fruits and veggies are diverse and plentiful, it’s so much fun to try new things. Our 11 year old is especially fond of fruit..he once ate a pint of wonderfully sweet, ripe blueberries in a sitting. He then asked me if I had added sugar to the berries and I explained that the berries contained “natural sugar”. He was a bit perplexed (he might subsist on packaged pop tarts, brownies, and the like if it were up to him :) but that conversation prompted me to begin searching for new and exotic fruits in our quest to add more “natural sugar” to our diets.

One week I purchased five new fruits, and each night we sampled one new fruit from the bowl. Not only was it fun and a great learning experience, but dessert was ready-made…by nature!

Here are the fruits we sampled, favorites first:


Cherimoya = Custard Apple: This South American tropical fruit is shaped like a pine cone and has a gray-green, scaly skin. The soft white pulp inside has large black (inedible) seeds and tastes like a creamy blend of tropical flavors.


Lychee: This popular Chinese fruit is about the size of a walnut, with a bumpy red shell encasing white translucent pulp that’s similar in texture to a grape. The flavor is sweet, exotic, and very juicy. Don’t eat the shell or the seed.


Prickly Pear: The pulp of these cactus fruits is a brilliant red or, occasionally, a yellowish green, and it tastes a bit like watered-down watermelon. Cooks exploit the color by adding slices of the pulp to fruit salads, puréeing it and straining out the seeds.


Guava: These bruise easily, so markets usually sell them while they’re still hard and green. Allow them to ripen at room temperature until they become yellow and very aromatic, then either eat or refrigerate them. Don’t peel, just remove the seeds.


Passionfruit: This aromatic fruit has a tart, tropical flavor. The red is more highly esteemed than the more acidic yellow or sweeter purple. They’re ripe when their skins are wrinkled. The seeds are small and edible, so leave them in if you like.