Cherimoya!!!

While browsing through a market in Elche, Spain in 2013, I spotted a vendor eating, and from the look on her face, thoroughly enjoying something very strange looking. It had a green outer layer that looked like a hand grenade and a milky-white interior that was dotted with peanut-sized black seeds. Using sign language, I asked her what she was eating. She responded, "Cherimoya" and kindly tore off a couple of chunks from her fruit and handed them to us. (Ah yes, life before Covid).

You know that classic drug dealer line about your first taste being free? Well, it certainly held true for us with cherimoya. We were instantly hooked and, ever since that day, always seek it out when we travel. Yeah, you can get it back home, but it's usually not very good and always REALLY expensive.

Saturday morning we made our weekly trip to the JJ market with the intent of only buying some greens. As we were perusing the other vendors' offerings, Brenda cried out, "CHERIMOYA!". We've found it here in the past, but on very few occasions. Examining the fruit, we found it to be rock hard and far from ripe enough to eat. But our common cherimoya jones wouldn't let us pass up this fruity fix. We convinced ourselves that it would ripen eventually: we only have to be patient and give it time. We bought four of them and made our way home.

Every once in a while on Saturday, I'd give them a little squeeze, but there was no change. Sunday was the same so I moved them closer to the bananas to help them ripen. All day Monday they remained impenetrable, but that night, I detected a little softness in the largest of the four. Tuesday morning found them all beginning to yield and by 10:00 Brenda could wait no longer and cracked open the big one. Heaven!

Mark Twain was quoted as saying it is the most delicious fruit known to man. It's taste is hard to describe, but this is what Google has to say: "the flavor is a heady mix of banana and pineapple with perhaps a little strawberry and kiwi thrown in. Its fruity taste is light and refreshing, but the creamy, custardy texture is also comforting to eat. Like a homemade pudding made virtuous.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Now we're both counting the days until Saturday when we can hopefully replenish our stock.Read more