Fruit Tree of Yesterday: Canistel
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A day late on this one too, but at least it’s here. This fruit tastes like a cooked sweet potato, and has the same texture, too. It has an unfortunate nickname: Eggfruit. It doesn’t taste or look like an egg, but maybe it’s like eggplant where it originally did?
Eggplant
Anyway, this is a neat fruit that grows in Florida. I’ve seen it at my local Asian markets. They’re $6 a pound, though, which really isn’t worth it since it tastes exactly like sweet potatoes, which only cost about $1 a pound. It’s a lot less effort to grow yourself than sweet potatoes, though, since it’s a fruit.
If you want to grow it, you need about the same climate you need for citrus–so zone 9a, minimum (unless you can protect it during a freeze). It doesn’t need a lot of fertilizer, but of course keeping it on a regular schedule with a regular amount of fertilizer will make it produce more fruit. Follow UF’s guide for proper care (actually, this applies to all the trees I’ve posted: Google “grow x tree Florida,” and a UF link is usually within the first few results—they’ll have all the information you need there).
This is the last of the fruit tree series, but I still have a few fruiting plants to post about—after a detour for today’s post.
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@Weboh No Key Lime?
What is wrong with you, Florida Man?
@mike808 There’s nothing remarkable to add about them. I assume everyone knows they exist and what they taste like, and I already did a post about how to grow citrus in Florida. If I were really strapped for ideas, maybe. I still have about 10 day’s worth of material though, and then I’m free!
I’m a good Florida Man though–I love it here wouldn’t live anywhere north of Florida. …But I haven’t ended up in any newspapers, so I guess I’m not too good a Florida Man.
@mike808 @Weboh Newspapers are choosy about their FM stories. You’d have to do something new, and normalization has taken the edge off so much extravagance.
A Key Lime Pie Tree would be nice.
@mehcuda67 Heh. Just like how @Kidsandliz wants a “real” chocolate tree that gives off the candy, and not the “defective” chocolate trees we have now that need to be processed to make it taste good.
Though key limes are a lot easier to make into a pie than cacao is to make into chocolate. Next to apple, it’s probably the easiest pie to make.
So the raw canistel fruit tastes like a cooked sweet potato? Do you just eat them the way you’d eat an apple or something, or do you mash it up, or ?
@Kyeh Both. I’ve eaten it just like an apple, but I imagine it could be mashed or served just like a sweet potato and nobody would be able to tell the difference.
@Weboh Interesting!
I think I was reading about this on the linked page from that pineapple looking fruit that people chew on. It said that people use it to make eggnog and eggnog flavoring.