Seasonal Fruit
My nalgene still smells of orange-pomegranate juice. That was our breakfast in Cairo: fresh, squeezed,blended juices --any combination of orange, strawberry, pomegranate, and banana. A glass for 2 Egyptian pounds (5.5 Elbs = $1, u do the math). Mixed fruit was all four + ice cream and fudge. God it was so good. Too bad it wasn't mango season, though the three of us had just come from countries where we were pulling the juicy, nature's candies off the trees in Ghana and Guatemala.
I have always loved fruit and juices, but until I came to Korea, I don't think I quite appreciated it like I do now. When I first came in July there were only melons. Green melons and cantelopes. And a few bananas. Melons aren't my favorite, and all I wanted was a peach. However, as we went into August and September, and the melons started getting replaced by the biggest purple grapes and juiciest peaches I've ever seen, all I can remember is looking forward to the end of lunch or dinner time when the fruit would get brought out. Peaches in homemade yoghurt, and a race to squeeze the pulp of those grapes out of their skins.
As it started to get colder, my co-teacher told me she would have to start replacing the peaces with apples in the yogurt. I was frantic. I remember desperate one day, I went through the market looking for the last of the candy-like peaches. I didn't have to be too worried for long, though. Mrs Kim brought me figs --my first time! Real figs! They are cross between a raspberry and and orange on the inside and just a plant on the outside. You have to peel the green leathery skin to get to the soft ball of pulp on the inside.
The figs came and went too quickly, but my host mother made jam from the figs so we would eat that swirled into our morning yogurt. The colder months brought a short time of another kind of grape --this time so deep a purple, it was almost black-- and then of course apples, and now kyul. We're not sure what to compare kyul to, they're and easily portable and peel just like a clementine but taste like a tangerine.
Thankfully, Korea isn't the only country that had delicious seasonal fruits, afterall, I was going to tropical climates. Where we were staying in Accra, Kristofer and I were only able to scrounge 3 mangos off of those trees, but they were so perfectly perfumy and minus the stringiness. Lucky for us, Kristofer's good friend and radio co-host has generous trees that were always weighed down by the biggest mangos. Also lucky for us, his friends were just as giving and would always cut and cube at least 3 mangos at a time because they would all ripen together.
As I said, Cairo gave us pomegranates and the sweetest, pulpy oranges. I brought some onto the plane with me in my nalgene--it was the only thing that would soften the sadness of leaving Egypt and Hilary. My bad that I left the orange juice in there the whole week we were in Bombay. O well, it doesn't smell fermented anymore, just pomegrorangey.
Bombay had guavas --white ones and pink ones. Sweet, ready pineapples....mmm...and strawberries. Strawberries with cream was our dessert at dinner and the rest was brought to us at breakfast.
I was afraid I would be sad without the mangos or pomegranates, but Korea still has plenty of kyul sold on the sidewalks and the sweetest and CHEAPEST strawberries I've ever had. They're skinny, too, and not such a deep red. None of that mutant stuff we get back home.
Even though I'll leave before I get to have real figs again, and at home you can have any fruit you want at any time or month, I still think this system of eating home-grown fruits in their respective seasons is so much more fun. I never really realized fruit seasons. Back at home, the only fruit that I can really remember looking forward to was watermelon in the summer months (o yeah, we had lots of beautiful watermelons here during the summer melon season). In Korea, when there was a new fruit introduced, someone always explained what region was well-known for yielding it, and this would bring me back to the tropical countries that share some of the most unique, juiciest, natural candies (it's the most proper metaphor. with those mangos, I never needed anything artificially sweet from a store), but the rest of the temperate climates can only import or dream and remember.
I have always loved fruit and juices, but until I came to Korea, I don't think I quite appreciated it like I do now. When I first came in July there were only melons. Green melons and cantelopes. And a few bananas. Melons aren't my favorite, and all I wanted was a peach. However, as we went into August and September, and the melons started getting replaced by the biggest purple grapes and juiciest peaches I've ever seen, all I can remember is looking forward to the end of lunch or dinner time when the fruit would get brought out. Peaches in homemade yoghurt, and a race to squeeze the pulp of those grapes out of their skins.
As it started to get colder, my co-teacher told me she would have to start replacing the peaces with apples in the yogurt. I was frantic. I remember desperate one day, I went through the market looking for the last of the candy-like peaches. I didn't have to be too worried for long, though. Mrs Kim brought me figs --my first time! Real figs! They are cross between a raspberry and and orange on the inside and just a plant on the outside. You have to peel the green leathery skin to get to the soft ball of pulp on the inside.
The figs came and went too quickly, but my host mother made jam from the figs so we would eat that swirled into our morning yogurt. The colder months brought a short time of another kind of grape --this time so deep a purple, it was almost black-- and then of course apples, and now kyul. We're not sure what to compare kyul to, they're and easily portable and peel just like a clementine but taste like a tangerine.
Thankfully, Korea isn't the only country that had delicious seasonal fruits, afterall, I was going to tropical climates. Where we were staying in Accra, Kristofer and I were only able to scrounge 3 mangos off of those trees, but they were so perfectly perfumy and minus the stringiness. Lucky for us, Kristofer's good friend and radio co-host has generous trees that were always weighed down by the biggest mangos. Also lucky for us, his friends were just as giving and would always cut and cube at least 3 mangos at a time because they would all ripen together.
As I said, Cairo gave us pomegranates and the sweetest, pulpy oranges. I brought some onto the plane with me in my nalgene--it was the only thing that would soften the sadness of leaving Egypt and Hilary. My bad that I left the orange juice in there the whole week we were in Bombay. O well, it doesn't smell fermented anymore, just pomegrorangey.
Bombay had guavas --white ones and pink ones. Sweet, ready pineapples....mmm...and strawberries. Strawberries with cream was our dessert at dinner and the rest was brought to us at breakfast.
I was afraid I would be sad without the mangos or pomegranates, but Korea still has plenty of kyul sold on the sidewalks and the sweetest and CHEAPEST strawberries I've ever had. They're skinny, too, and not such a deep red. None of that mutant stuff we get back home.
Even though I'll leave before I get to have real figs again, and at home you can have any fruit you want at any time or month, I still think this system of eating home-grown fruits in their respective seasons is so much more fun. I never really realized fruit seasons. Back at home, the only fruit that I can really remember looking forward to was watermelon in the summer months (o yeah, we had lots of beautiful watermelons here during the summer melon season). In Korea, when there was a new fruit introduced, someone always explained what region was well-known for yielding it, and this would bring me back to the tropical countries that share some of the most unique, juiciest, natural candies (it's the most proper metaphor. with those mangos, I never needed anything artificially sweet from a store), but the rest of the temperate climates can only import or dream and remember.
posted by jacquelina at 1:39 AM
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