Rosh Chodesh Elul has passed.
The High Holidays approacheth.
The Holy Days are nigh.
Heavenly judgment is being passed.
And you’re busy looking for the ideal shehecheyanu fruit to garnish your Rosh Hashana table.
Is it your imagination, or did this task used to be simpler? Back in the day before antioxidants became all the rage, when you could buy a pomegranate and be sure that none of your guests had tasted it in 354 days. Doubtless those with a house full of boys have often wished the mandate included vegetables – wouldn’t it be so much easier to just serve up a salad as shehecheyanu food?
The real problem is that if something is rare, there’s often a reason for it. Usually, it’s because the taste is just plain lousy. Take quince as a shining example of a fruit that is mostly unemployed because not only did it flunk out of fruit school—it didn’t even manage to get a GED. If you can’t eat a fruit without heavy-duty processing first, what good is it?
Oh, there are rare fruits that taste good. Starfruit, if you can find it, or prickly pear (sabra), if you haven’t seen it on sale in the past year and been unable to resist snapping it up. Lychee nuts pass with a small number, but there are always those who object to eating a fruit that tastes like something you keep in a jar in the bathroom to improve the scent. No doubt about it. Buying a new fruit is a really tough job.
The very worst part of new fruit purchasing is buying something that just looks sooo good and being terribly disappointed. And then telling someone about it and hearing that they tried it last year and already knew that it was a flop. So here's a proposition: if you've done the legwork and tasted a fruit, please render a review for the edification of the public. I'll be puting up a few of my own in the coming weeks. Share yours as well.
In my family we always get an adventurous new fruit and then a more normal one that we've probably had in the past sometime, just in case the adventurous one turns out to be inedible.
ReplyDeleteWe are usually quite relieved to have a back-up new fruit. :)
It's so much easier to just not eat fruit all year. Then they're all new! :D
ReplyDeleteROSS: Ok. [browsing the apartment] Wow, you guys sure have a lot of books about bein' a lesbian.
ReplyDeleteSUSAN: Well, you know, you have to take a course. Otherwise, they don't let you do it.
--vihamevin yavin
If you're having difficulty finding your fruit, B4S may still have a bit of durian left to share ;-)
ReplyDeleteIf you're having difficulty finding your fruit
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like if you're having difficulty finding your bashert.
Miracle Fruit!!!
ReplyDeleteIts awesome. Check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_fruit
I totally hate leechee nuts! They look like eyeballs! Gross!
ReplyDeleteBack in the day before antioxidants became all the rage, when you could buy a pomegranate and be sure that none of your guests had tasted it in 354 days.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the practice of saying a she-hechiyanu on a fruit that one has not eaten in a year is a misconception. The Shulchan Aruch clearly states that the qualification is that it must be a fruit that one has not eaten since it newly came into season, regardless of how recently one has eaten it. Piskei Teshuvos notes that in our day, when fruit is frequently imported from around the world, certain fruits never go "out of season", so that one can never make a she-hechiyanu on them.