Citron

I am fascinated by nature and biology.  I'm also fascinated by trying new foods.  As a kid, I had a pretty strong opinion about foods I didn't like, which weren't many, but once I tried it and didn't like it, you wouldn't get me to go there again.

That could be a real problem as I had two parents who grew up in the impoverished mountains of West Virginia and had lived through the Great Depression.  I NEVER heard the words, "What would you like for dinner?"  Food was prepared.  If you didn't like what was on the table, that was fine, but you either ate it or you didn't, and if you didn't, you damn sure were not going to get to eat any dessert, on the rare occasions there was any.  I seem to recall that dessert was something you got once every couple of weeks, if that.  Desert was more often in the summer when fruit was more available.

The only foods that come to mind which I really don't like are okra and licorice.  Licorice actually makes me gag.  I can tolerate okra battered and fried and with lots of ketchup to hide it, if I have to eat it, but only if I'm being served it as a guest and don't want to hurt the feelings of my host(ess).

The first time I tried sashimi, I loved it.  Yellowfin tuna that one of our passengers caught when I was working as a deck hand on a sportfisher out of Oxnard, California.  I like most kinds of sushi, but of course I can't eat the shrimp or crab or eel.  But the salmon, tuna, and white fish are great.  And I drool over smelt roe.  If you've never had it, just put the idea of sturgeon caviar out of your mind.  No comparison.  It has a sweet, yet slightly salty flavor that is indescribable.  That brings up another thing I want to comment on.  The old cliché, "Tastes like chicken."   I think the phrase, "Tastes like chicken," is the catch all, sarcastic response to the question: "What's it taste like?" when there is no adequate answer.  The funny thing is, whatever the food in question happens to be, the fact that the question is being asked means that it's a food unfamiliar to the questioner, and if it's unfamiliar, it's probably not common.  I've eaten a lot of treife in the past, or unclean things that I won't eat now. I only ate them then because I didn't know any better.

Three varieties of citron or etrog in Hebrew

 I remember going frog gigging on the Okeechobee with my cousin Lloyd on his air boat. Maybe someone who smokes two packs a day thinks that frog legs taste like chicken, but I don't. They aren't bad, but they're not chicken. But no more amphibian for me.

 When I was 15, living at the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch, I killed a six foot diamondback while on a work crew raking up leaves.  We cooked it on a campfire that weekend.  Didn't taste at all like chicken.  I could eat one again if I were starving, but I'd prefer not to.  I actually paid money to eat alligator tail at a nice restaurant on the Courtney Campbell Causeway in Tampa.  It was only slightly better in flavor than the rattlesnake, but chunkier and tougher.  The calamari appetizer was far better that night.  I've even had turtle soup.  Let's just say that I don't feel any deprivation at the idea of never eating another reptile.When somebody asks me what they tasted like, I reply with a wry smile, "Tastes like chicken."  And when they see that I'm kidding and inquire further, all I can say is, "You just have to try it for yourself."  You know, domesticated swine has a very different flavor from wild boar.  Same species, (Please spare me any efforts at taxonomic subtleties) but very different flavor of meat because of diet.  Same reason grass fed and corn fed cattle taste so different.

Wait.  Isn't the title of this post citron?  Yep.  Some people might look at one and think, "lemon," since some of them can look exactly like a lemon.  They are related, both being citrus fruit.  I could tell you that a citron tastes like a lemon, and to a certain extent I would be right.  But if you passed up the opportunity to taste one, you'd be depriving yourself of a worthwhile experience.  Twyla's brother Larry brought us fruit for Thanksgiving, and it was obvious he'd been to a farmer's market and not just the local supermarket, because one of the things he brought us was this little gem:

Buddha's hand citron on our Shabbat table

Just looking at the Buddha's hand citron makes you think that it's just grown to be a curiosity or a table decoration.  Which it did for almost two weeks. But when the tips began to get dry, Twyla decided it was time to make some more cranberry relish.  Normally she makes it with orange rinds.  It is wonderful as a fruit topping for vanilla ice cream.  But this time she made it with the citron, and I have to say the flavor was unique.  It merely hints of lemon, but it has it's own flavor, and the subtle differences are beyond my ability to describe.

In suppose if I try really hard I can understand why they picked the name Buddha's hand.  Is it because Medusa's head was already taken, or because that doesn't sound as appetizing as Buddha's hand?  If Buddha's hand looked like that, he really needed to be healed.  Anyway, that's my food post for the day.

Thanks to those of you who commented to show that I have the settings correct now.

Passion for Mystery

We walked across the road this afternoon to see if we could still get some grapes from the neighbor's vine, or maybe a few blueberries, but, alas, we had waited too long.   Pretty much all but a very few of the grapes were all gone except for a few little clusters here and there, but nothing worth carrying a pot over to collect anything.  But we gave our neighbor a dozen eggs and chatted, and while looking around, I spotted this fruit that I'd never seen before.  It's about the size of a goose egg, and I managed to get  one picture along with some grapes next to it for perspective on size.

Those tri-lobed leaves with the holes in the foreground are on the same vine as the fruit.  The third shot shows a flower but it's either on its way to closing or opening, I can't tell for sure.  It has fine little purple petals. The leaves are younger and easier to see in that shot.

Now, neither Twyla nor I have ever seen one of these in situ before, so we didn't have a clue what it might be, although I've seen pictures of paw-paws and thought it might be, since paw-paws are indigenous to this area.  But paw-paws grow on trees, not vines.  Being up here in the mountains of North Georgia, I would never suspect a subtropical type plant.

The neighbor said it was poppy, and that it was also a hallucinogen. None of that made sense to us since poppies are a flower that does not grow on a vine and poppies are an opioid, not a hallucinogen.  Well, curiosity got me, so I asked if I could take one and check it out.  After surfing the internet, I think I may have found the answer, but I would like to have someone with more experience confirm this for me.

You see, the fruit that I took is obviously pretty immature, and if the fruit is what I think it is, there are quite a few varieties and they can look very different from type to type depending on where they are grown.

Some varieties are purple and some are yellow.  Some pictures on the net show seeds about the size of apples or grapes, which is what I seem to have here, while some descriptions say you need cheesecloth or a fine sieve to separate the juice from the seed.


So help me out folks.  What do you think this is?

I will wait until another one of the fruits is ripe, and then cut it open and see if it more closely matches one of my suspected species.  Until then I'll just do a little more searching, or maybe one of my dear readers will make a positive identification.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think it is.  Maybe I should come up with a prize for the first person who correctly identifies it.