tropical fruits

For the last several days of our Florida trip, we stayed in Florida City and visited the Everglades. A highlight of this stay was our daily visit to the Robert is Here produce stand. Here's Robert serving up some customers:

They grow some exotic (to me anyway) tropical fruits that I tried out. My favorite was the Sapodilla:

You have to let it ripen (it gets soft) before eating it. Then it tastes really good! It was described to me as like a pear with brown sugar. That's a pretty good description. I ate one before it was ripe and it was awful, so you definitely have to let it ripen!

Next on the list was Canistel:

This you also have to let get really soft. It's described as like "sweet egg custard." The first time I tried it, it seemed weird. But the second time I really liked it. It doesn't take long for my taste buds to adapt to exotic tropical fruit!

Then there was the Carambola:

aka, star fruit, and you can see why. This is not so exotic, as I've seen it in my co-op. But it was much better here. I see now I'll have to let my co-op version ripen before eating it. It's described as tasting like a cross between an apple and an orange. I suppose. It's more tart. It's good.

The Asian guava was interesting:

You eat is kind of like an apple, with or without the skin. But once you get to the seeds, you stop. It's good hard or soft--a little sweeter soft. It's like a tart but sweet apple.

Then there was the ugli fruit:

peeled:

It's like a cross between an orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime. Tart, but good and juicy. It's very ugly on the outside and that makes it fun.

And of course, there were the delicious tree-ripened oranges:

My favorites were the temple oranges.

And the grapefruit--I didn't take a picture of those.

And I also tried some passion fruit. It's extremely tart and strong, like very strong orange juice. It was good as a dip for raw sweet potato sticks.

I also tried some tamarind. It's very tart and sweet. I wasn't in the mood for it on its own, but it would be good in a dressing or dip.