Fruits

As I was buying fruits the other day, I realized how much our knowledge of said yummy things has increased. I thought someone should benefit from this knowledge besides us. After all, what is the point of being knowledgeable if you can't show off for others?
Many of the fruits we eat here are the same as the ones we enjoy at home. Apples, plumbs, peaches are all imported from California and are just the same as those at home. Almost no one here eats them, though, because, relatively speaking, they are way expensive. They are $1.00Bz each (that's 50 cents American or like nothing Canadian).
Some of the fruits look familiar until you bite into them. These definitely include pineapple and bananas. When you buy a 'fresh' pineapple at the local SaveOn, the taste, as you know, is lovely and sweet but quite acidic. Then you eat a pineapple lifesaver and think 'why do they taste like that? That's not how pineapple taste.' WRONG! That is how pineapple taste. Sweet and juicy and no acid to speak of at all. And they also cost between $1Bz and $3Bz each depending on the size (that's between 50 cents and $1.50 US or like nothing Canadian!) Bananas the same. They taste like banana flavoring. The ones at home have absolutely no taste in comparison. Banana's cost 8 for $1Bz (that's 50 cents US or like nothing Canadian - you get the idea) Oranges at 7 for $1Bz, look awful. They are green skinned and rotten looking. BUT peel them and they are the sweetest, juiciest oranges I have ever eaten. We squeeze them for juice and never add sugar.
A few of the fruits are sort of familiar looking. I've seen them at the local SaveOn but have never bought them because of the cost. Fitting squarely in this category are dragon fruit. They are pink skinned fruit about the size of a small apple and the skin kind of peels back in spiky 'petals'. Here they are $1Bz each. so we buy them and YUM! You cut them in half and eat them with a spoon like a kiwi. They even look sort of like a kiwi, if kiwis were fuchsia colored instead of green. The taste isn't as sweet as some other fruits but very pleasant and refreshing.
Then there are the weird looking, sounding, tasting fruits that seem to be unique to the Caribbean. Sapodilla looks like a kiwi on steroids. Cut it in half and eat it the same as a kiwi or dragon fruit. The meat is kind of a burnt orange color and the taste is strong and not really pleasant. It is a taste, though, that I could see getting used to if you eat it with like 1/2 a gallon of ice cream. Star fruit look like opaque green stars and are very sour but juicy. People like them as juice but they are so much work to make taste good that it's hardly worth it. Craboo, on the other hand have absolutely no redeeming qualities! They are small yellow fruits - about 1 inch in diameter - and they look appealing ... till you bite into one. Kori describes the taste as vomit flavoured sawdust and I'd say that's pretty accurate. The locals love them and eat them by the handfuls. If you get stuck on a bus with a lot of craboo-eating locals it is awful - craboo smell like they taste.
The one type of fruit that is conspicuous in its absence are berries. We so miss berries! Strawberry is almost every Belizian's favorite flavor because they just don't have any. Cravings for blueberries and raspberries are common occurrences in our house lately. I'm sure that when we get home it will take ... maybe forever before we get over missing the good, cheap fruit we are enjoying but the thought of a world devoid of craboo sounds like heaven!