Fruit #1 Quenepa

My passion for passion fruit

This fruit bowl is my pride and joy

Joe is here in Puerto Rico as a launch pad for his research. He plans to consult universities and archives here in Puerto Rico, but he is also planning to travel (covid willing) to Miami, D.C., Cuba, Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas which either have archives or libraries containing information he needs to write a book about hurricanes and how a few destructive ones from the 1920s and 30s affected the art and architecture in the Caribbean. (Joe, did I get that right? I'll let him on here sometime to say more about the research.) Since he's trying to visit multiple sites in the Caribbean, it makes sense for him to set up headquarters here. Since I began homeschooling during the pandemic, I felt free enough to pick up our lives and join him for the greatest field trip I could ever hope for.

But still.

Sometimes, I ask myself what I'm doing here. Why did I agree to make all of our lives more difficult? Especially mine? Well, there are plenty of good reasons, such as learning a new culture, improving my Spanish, staying close to Joe while he researches, opportunity to make new friends, warm weather and beaches year round, piña coladas, exposing our children to life changing experiences and the list goes on. The reason that feels most important and fun and interesting for me, though, is food! All food, really, but specifically the fruits and vegetables that aren't available in the Midwest where I come from. This means I have a whole year to stroll through grocery stores, farmers markets, roadside stands, and even forage for new and exciting foods. In my year of college in Ecuador, I loved eating granadillas, chirimoyas, guanabanas, guava paste, and all other familiar fruits that grew there but tasted fresher, like pineapples and bananas. Fruit is a very simple joy for me.

Anyway, I was feeling a little homesick this week, so I walked to our grocery store to buy mangoes and plantains, and I saw a display of handfuls of small green fruits saran wrapped onto styrofoam trays. Some had twigs and leaves attached. They were labeled “quenepas” introducing tropical fruit installment #1: Quenepas

They look like this. The green skin on the outside is about as thick as a leaf. When you person it hard, or puncture it with a thumbnail…

…It pops open! The yellow-orange fruit inside is slippery and slimy and there's a big white seed inside.

You can pop it in your mouth and suck it a while, then spit out the seed. It tastes like sour candy!

It's hard to eat a lot of them, because there's not a lot of fruit in there. It's mostly a big seed inside. In my follow-up research, I found that the fruit is available in late summer in the Caribbean. I also found that it's possible to make juice, which Alice helped me with.

To make juice, I popped out all the fruits, covered in filtered water, let it infuse for 15 minutes, then squeezed out the fruit and strained it. Delicious on ice, or in my frozen daiquiri!

Look out for more news about fruit, and if you're curious about fruit or know of something I should look for, please let me know!