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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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.
@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.
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.