What is the fruit/vegetable that makes you feel like, "heck yeah it's fall!"
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@teajaygrey Ooh, persimmons and pomegranates! I've never heard of feijoa but that sounds very intriguing. Do you know if the "pineapple guava" nickname is because of the taste or the appearance?
I don't think they look anything like pineapples, yet maybe they taste sort of like them? They might look sort of like guavas (and sort of taste like them; though the fruit insides are very different in color, more pale almost yellow, whereas guavas I think are usually pink?) though I have no idea about the etymology!
Most folks probably don't eat the skins? Though in my experience, the skins can be eaten.
The way I learned they were edible was mostly thanks to a friend (RIP Frank Allard) visiting when we were kids and walking around my parents' home's yard and noticing that there were a couple of bushes which had dropped a lot of their fruits on the ground. Took a bite, it was good! Heck, might be better to let them fall off on their own accord before eating (since again, most of the starches will have turned to sugars by then); though the ones I've been buying in markets seem, unripe? Best to let them sit for a while in my experience.
My parents' house also had a loquat tree and a plum tree (though the small plums used to make 梅干し「umeboshi」[Japanese pickled plums], Latin name: Prunus mume); so whoever the previous owner was had some relatively unusual tastes for rural California! None of those fruit species are Indigenous to the area as far as I know!
@teajaygrey That's a lot of great fruits for one yard!
@baconandcoconut Just don't try and eat the decorative gourd! Many of them are poisonous
@baconandcoconut I remember a friend casually saying "don't eat mystery squash; if two edible varieties of squash cross-pollinate and grow a mystery squash in your yard, they can poison you" and I was like WHAT that can't be true
AND IT IS
@cwebber @baconandcoconut this is true though it's not as dire as people make it out to be imo. Cucurbitacin tastes bitter, so you can pretty safely taste test the squash first. You have to actually ingest the toxin for it to cause problems https://www.poison.org/articles/toxic-squash-syndrome-if-it-s-bitter-it-s-not-dinner
@ehashman @cwebber @baconandcoconut this applies to summer squashes too! watch out for rogue bitter zucchini.
@ehashman @baconandcoconut it's still a good thing I was informed because I will happily eat a terrible bitter thing for the novelty of it
@cwebber @baconandcoconut How far does a squash have to deviate from the phenotype to qualify as a mystery?
Persimmons are starting to show up! My parents' place had a Hachiya persimmon tree and once I figured out how to let them sit until they're soft (and the starches have turned to various fructose) z0mg, it's Mother Nature's jam without a jar! So good. I am a little less familiar with what to do with the Fuyu cultivars and I know there are others, yet I don't think I've ever encountered a Jiro in a market in California?
Alas, the ever so short lived Pink Pearl apples are now gone (Berkeley Bowl seems to source them for a few weeks and those were a delicious few weeks this year, as in previous years at least).
I've had two pomegranates so far this season, neither was particularly good? I admit, I was spoiled by a Farmer's Market in Santa Cruz (and also San Luis Obispo) vendor which sold juices (raw, no pasteurization; frozen usually) which are INCREDIBLE and take a lot of the mess and fuss while retaining all of the deliciousness. Pasteurized/etc. pomegranate juice doesn't hold a candle and is worth avoiding (similar to pasteurized orange juice, a total waste).
Berkeley Bowl has also started to have Feijoa (my parents' home also had two bushes) or as I learned one of their vernacular names: "pineapple guavas".
Kinda sad that I have to pay for fruits that I used to enjoy in my parents' backyard; yet still tasty and I am grateful that local (at least, in state) and organic sources are finding shelves on the markets.