On fruits

Pop quiz: what food is this?


If you said 'tomato, duh' you are WRONG. As wrong as I was when I bought one last week and put it on my ham sandwich only to find out that it is in fact a persimmon (called caqui here). The inside is far more gushy, far less seedy, and very sweet. The tomato/persimmon mix-up was just the first lesson in my ongoing fruit education. During a given breakfast about 6-8 different kinds of fruit are presented in either solid, smoothie, or liquid form. I'm slowly developing an exotic-fruit palate. (Haven't had a banana in daaaaaays.)

I've learned that I really like goiaba (guava, yet another fruit the Milaca Supervalu doesn't / will never stock)
and that I really hate papaya (seriously spit it out the first time).

Carambola is deec, but involves waay too much work to find the worthwhile parts for eating.

Totally forgot until now you could cut it up into stars! Gonna be having too much fun at breakfast tomorrow.

Brazilians love sucos (juices) and the juice aisle of the supermarket can be incredibly overwhelming. I've made myself try both maracuja (passionfruit) and caju (cashew fruit? i know right?) but still love a good old carton of strawberry juice -- morango, in case you actually care about the italicized vocab lesson here.

Picked the grossest pic I could find



















Spending the summer at Camp Nectar


But my favorite Brazilian fruit is and forever will be

açaí, which, I'll be honest, is never this well-presented -- usually the sorbet that's synonymous with the fruit's name comes in a 300mL plastic cup. About R$2 and full of antioxidants. Perfeito.