Three disappointing food things:
- cold chips
- discovering your husband has eaten the custard tart you'd been saving for a snack during Masterchef
- dragon fruit
1. is redeemable: a few minutes in a hot oven. 2. could provoke an argument if you didn't find the bar of chilli flavoured chocolate in the kitchen cupboard while muttering to yourself about 'greedy gits'. But there's nothing you can do about 3.
Dragon fruit disappoint more deeply because of their vibrant exterior. Then when you slice one open the black seed-speckled bright pinky purple flesh almost makes you gasp. It's like nothing you've ever experienced in your life.
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| Dragon fruit: Pitaya or Pitahaya |
Google searches throw up descriptions of its wonderful flavour: like a cross between kiwi and pear. But that wasn't my experience in the kitchen this morning: solid pink water is the most complimentary I can be.
The BBC food site offers a reason: Pitaya is widely grown in the tropics and, when eaten near to where it is harvested, is incredibly fragrant. It loses some of its delicacy with shipping.
I imagine eating the carrots dug from my dad's garden only a few hours earlier and comparing them to the carrots, even the organic ones, I buy in a supermarket. The taste of two different worlds.
It's difficult to imagine only eating indigenous, and seasonal, fruit and vegetables: the 20th and 21st centuries have gathered food to our tables from all over the world and my culinary and gastronomic experience is richer for that. But that's what we did do, mostly, when I was a kid. Bananas and oranges were the only 'exotic' fruit Mammy bought. Pineapple came in tins. And there are plenty of popular and academic posts and articles on the web that promote the health benefits of doing just that.
I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or relieved to discover that last week was the annual week of eating indigenous food, according to the Facebook group, Indigenous Eating. But there's an itch in my mind that will probably grow to an inclination over the next couple of months. I'll let you know how I get on with food that looks more like this:
And this:
Hungry Writing Prompt
Write about a time when you were disappointed.
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