Another milestone
On Mid-Autumn festival evening several students visited bringing fruit and moon cakes. The fruit included pears, persimmons, oranges and grapes in addition to some chestnuts. We sat around talking over their bounty and the college’s moon cakes.
The grapes provided a bit of a challenge as health information for countries such as China tells traveller’s to wash fruit and vegetables well, avoid salads and to peel fruit. I’ve made the occasional exception, but rarely deviate from such advice. It makes fruit eating boring at times as rarely can I be bothered peeling fruit I would normally eat with skin on such as apples and pears. I never buy grapes or stone fruit so bananas are the staple fruit. I love oranges, but I have always found the flavour of Chinese oranges to be a great disappointment. I bought mangos in Jinghong and they, apart from a really delicious one in Hue, Vietnam, were the best mangos I’ve ever had. I could never understand how people could rave about mangos because the few Australian ones I’d ever had never encouraged me to have more. The further north I travelled in Yunnan the less tasty they became. I had a truly scrumptious pineapple in Jinghong too. I bought it from a roadside seller who slashed the skin off in a trice using a vicious looking machete and soon I was walking down the street eating a pineapple pieces from a plastic bag. So the secret, which really is no secret, is to eat fruit at their source. However, it’s not guaranteed as the apple from the orchard a couple of weeks back was nothing special.
I grew up eating grapes from the vine as we had several grape vines in the back yard when I was a kid. It was always a race between humans and birds to see who could get them first. One year my father ordered a giant long filament white web arrangement from Sydney or Melbourne and I still remember being fascinated by its uniqueness. It was thrown over the vine and pulled down to cover. I guess the birds lost that year; I don’t remember. Grapes have never had the same allure since those days of flavoursome old fashioned varieties.
I learnt to eat grapes in a different way on one of my many train or bus trips in China. I was sitting behind someone who was eating giant grapes. All I could see were two hands held over the aisle peeling a grape one by one. Again I was fascinated because I’d only ever read of it happening or maybe seen it in a movie like a Cleopatra a million years ago. Australians don’t peel grapes and it was quite beyond my experience. It was really into the realms of decadence or “why on earth” as I’ve not seen Chinese worry about salads or seen too many peeling fruit.
Now I had my own grapes to peel. They were large and juicy and peeled easily. While it was messy it was not the slow laborious task it could have been. Taste wise they were a disappointment. They are all gone now. So now I have passed the peeling grape milestone. I have no idea what it means apart from being able to eat grapes in China. Maybe I’ll judge future grapes by their potential peelability and flavor rather than simply consign them to the category of not worth buying.
The persimmons are still unripe so I will try them later. Australian friends have a persimmon tree, introduced me to persimmons and used to supply me with fresh and dried persimmons every season. I used to enjoy them so it will be interesting to see what the Chinese ones taste like. I have a peeler so guess I’ll be using it on my persimmons.
Some of the nuts and fruit. The chestnuts had a beautiful fresh green sheen to them when they arrived. All of the pears I’ve seen have been of the hard flesh variety rather than the soft flesh varieties common in Australia.
