I attempt to treat the winter blues with some oddball fruits.
When I finally reached the head of the checkout line, the cashier picked up one of my items: a dark pink, pincushion-shaped fruit. It had no sticker, so she didn’t know what code to enter into the cash register.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A persimmon,” I said.
She looked at her laminated list of produce codes, then grabbed a cashier from a neighboring register. “You know the code for this? It’s a prostimmon.”
The other cashier responded, “What is that, a tomato?”
“Persimmon,” I said. “P-E-R-S.”
My cashier glanced at her list again without success. I sighed heavily and, for the benefit of the people behind me in line, waved off the persimmon. “Never mind,” I announced. “I won’t buy it.”
Meanwhile, the bagger had tracked down the code. “Persimmon,” he declared. “5718.”
My next fruit arrived down the conveyor belt, this one bright yellow and spiny, about the size of a hand grenade. It also had no sticker.
“You gotta be kidding me,” said my cashier. “What’s this one?”
Only this time, I couldn’t remember.
She turned to the next cashier. “You know what this one is?”
The next cashier responded, “Is it a gourd?”
“It’s not a gourd,” I muttered. “It’s a fruit. I can’t remember what it’s called.”
It may have been a dragon fruit. Maybe a cactus pear. But I thought I remembered a sign in the produce section that read something like “kiwilo.” (Subsequent online searches have turned up no such fruit.)
I finally gave it up, embarrassed that I’d been exposed to my fellow shoppers not as a connoisseur, seeking out kiwilos for a special ethnic recipe, but as an idiot in search of weird-looking fruit.
• • •
Until recently, I thought “persimmon” was a deep purple shade of paint. I would have guessed “Pummelo” was Spanish explorer from the 1300s. And the “kumquat”? I always assumed it was a fictional fruit, like the Lymon or the Crunchberry.
But winter has arrived in Chicago, and with it a bout of seasonal affective disorder. The days all have the dim, dirge-like glow of late evening, until about mid-afternoon, when it starts to look like 11p.m.
To coax myself out of my doldrums, I devised an experiment. I’d improve my diet and elevate my mood by sampling the most whimsical fruits I could find. I timed the experiment to begin just as I was going out of town for two days of focus groups with my marketing agency, an experience that brings its share of depression and frustration.
Early in the morning, before I left for the airport, I tried a star fruit. I’d researched online how to prepare it: slice off ends, slice off edges, slice into stars.
(Google was a great resource. A search for the phrase, “How to eat a kumquat” turned up an adorable instructional video. “How to eat a persimmon” led me to a steamy poem by Patricia Wellingham-Jones.)
The star fruit was fascinating. It was crisp and tangy, which surprised me in light of its thick fleshiness. The taste was a cross between a honeydew melon and a potato chip, with a touch of sweat sock.
It was still green and unripe, but Google told me that it still should have been edible. Still, after about four slices, some mild tremors in my stomach suggested that I toss the rest. (The slices would have looked like Chinese throwing stars at airport security anyway.)
• • •
The drizzly gloom of that Monday was compounded by the fact that I was spending it in a dark chamber whose only window was a two-way mirror into a neighboring conference room.
The morning shift was fairly typical. Prospective shoppers picked apart some copy lines I’d written. Lines I’d liked met with negative reactions, and vice-versa. The only nourishment consisted of a bowl of candies that had already been thoroughly pawed over. It was time for a dose of sunshine.
During our break, I rinsed off the ripest kumquat I’d brought, bright orange and thumb-sized. When the afternoon focus group started up, I surreptitiously popped it into my mouth.
It was very disappointing. It was like eating a segment of orange peel, not bitter or sweet enough to make much of an impression, with only the tiniest pinch of juice inside. It was as if a coalition of baker/scientists had tried to genetically engineer a species of orange that was all zest.
Crestfallen, I reached for a handful of chocolate-covered peanuts.
• • •
That night in my hotel room, I glanced wantonly at my pummelo.
A pummelo is a big, yellow bowling ball of a citrus fruit. I carried it into the bathroom – along with a room service dinner knife.
Red juice swirled down the sink as the pummelo and I wrestled gruesomely: I hacked away at its flesh, and it spat feverishly at my eyes. I sawed through three-quarters of an inch of springy, white peel to a surprisingly deep pink interior. Having finally subdued it, I managed to extricate some of its flesh.
The flavor was schizophrenic. The first bite was bitter, the second sweet, the third bitter, etc. It was a sad payoff for the amount of work. Frustrated, messy, and certainly no happier, I gave up on its battered corpse and dropped it with a thud into the garbage.
• • •
As day two began, a co-worker asked, “What is that, a tomato?”
“A persimmon,” I said.
“Do you eat it like an apple?”
I was about to say “yes,” but I was interrupted by a voice behind me.
“No. You peel it.” She was from another marketing agency.
“Really?” I asked. “I read that you just eat it, skin and all.”
“Not that kind,” she said. “That kind of persimmon, you don’t eat the skin.”
She’d grown up eating persimmons, as it turned out.
Once the focus group started, I contemplated the persimmon. I was ten times more self-conscious because an expert sat behind me.
Finally, I made a slice straight down, off-center from the stem. The fruit inside was a lovely, shimmery shade of pink. The flesh struck me as somewhere between that of a peach and that of a plum, stringy but yielding, positioned in concentric arcs that mirrored the curve of my spoon.
I held the fruit like a bowl in my palm and scooped out a portion. It was very creamy, both in texture and in taste, and it filled my mouth with a very subtle perfume. My tongue reeled and tried to identify something to cling to. This was not a blatant fruit.
The flavor haunted me long after I’d swallowed it. But it seemed a little too delicate, too precious, for me to see myself returning very often.
• • •
One long day and one delayed flight later, I arrived back home and sought one last attempt at a fruit that would entertain and transport me.
It was an ugly little football, purplish-red and sinister. A cactus pear. Its needles and barbed glochids had been removed, and it looked resentful.
I sliced it open, revealing a stunning, deep red interior, glistening with tiny seeds. I scooped a taste into my mouth. It resembled pomegranate in scent and flavor, but the seeds eliminated any joy I got. They’re tough and inedible, so after I did my best to suck the flesh from them, I opened the garbage to spit them out and came face to face with some rotting star fruit segments from the previous morning.
• • •
It may have been naïve to think I’d fall head-over-heels for a bunch of undiscovered gems. Our fruit pantheon exists because the passage of time has acted as a huge focus group for the American palate. Some fruits don’t do well:
Customers confused as to whether or not to eat the skin.
Customers see no significant competitive benefits of pummelo over grapefruit. Many expressed low desire to switch.
Frustration expressed about cactus pear’s package design. Representative verbatims: “Why is the skin so thick?” “Does it have to be covered in spikes?” “It’s nothing like a pear.”
Oh well. Eventually it will be spring. Good old strawberries and pineapples will be in season. And I’ll be able to look outside without bursting into tears.
The Banquet of Life is a bi-weekly look at one man's life through the food he eats.
