Back in the days when I used to write things that were interesting, I did an occasional series on the unlikely cosmic fruits and vegetables that were on display in Russo's, the import market near our town. I haven't tried anything new from there in a while, but I was surprised to find this spiked battle-fruit in the normal supermarket - it fascinated me so much that I just had to bring it home and try it.
It's been a while since I've done this! As my image hosting has had to move, here's a hastily-assembled page of these brave experiments. The premise is simple - on the other side of the town from our house is an import market with an incredible fruit and vegetable section, some of which aren't even from this planet. I try to pick an unusual-looking one out every time we go, and then attempt to eat it if I can find out how to do so.
Here's another unidentified greenish object, photographed just outside its native habitat in the supermarket of madness. (The material in the background is a tarpaulin cover that they put over the outdoor fruit section when it rains - the supermarket is not inflatable.)
It's been a while since I did one of these! Perhaps the novelty of picking up a mad-looking fruit when we go to the import supermarket wore off for a while - the fruits go in and out a bit with the seasons, but there's still a whole array of potential there. This one came from an eye-catching bright orange pile near the checkouts, where most of the madness seems to be concentrated. It has the same rough shape and leafery as a strawberry without any seeds on the outside, but is about the size of an apple.
I keep on thinking that I'm going to run out of interesting things to get from Russo's, but they seem to rearrange them all and invent a few more every time we have the chance to go there. This one looks like an unripe overinflated orange, or possibly some sort of alien breast depending on your frame of mind - to me it seems to have chameleon-like properties, as it's one of the range of colours between green and orange that are indefinable to me and it blends in perfectly with the floor in this photograph, but I don't think that this will be a problem for anybody else.
I told you that we were going more often now! This time, I didn't see anything new that looked otherworldly enough to try out (though I was actually tempted to get a couple of rambutans having actually enjoyed them the first time), but this obscene-looking article was spotted by Whitney on the way to the checkout. It's a long thin hard semi-pointed... thing, roughly resembling a green and enlarged pine cone, which looks like some unlikely fruit form of the crocodile - it's very tough, and its skin is divided into these amazing hexagon shapes that you wouldn't think it possible to grow naturally.
I still haven't quite got over how much more accessible absolutely everywhere seems when you have your own car. I started this little series of entries because actually being able to get to the import supermarket was a special occasion that deserved some recognition, but now we're free to go there whenever we like. But even though our visits are more frequent now, its supply of fruit from other dimensions in space and time has not been exhausted, and this was what I decided to bring back with us last week.
This time, I was brought back to the magic fruit shop by a sudden craving for actual meat-like Danish/Irish bacon instead of the rectangular cuttings of pure fat that America attaches to the word. I had to smile to myself when I realized that thanks to our recent life transition, I had got there in less than Infinite Dreams' playing time (6:09) instead of the hours-long expedition that it used to be. A quick look around the boxes of weird things and I was home again in time for breakfast.
While we were at the Ford dealership we went to the market full of weird and wonderful things across the road again. At this time of the year, there are rather fewer of the more demented fruits that are within the range that I would consider trying - the rambutan and dosakai were absent this time - but I did find something that looked subtly geometric with apparent rivets.
We went to the big international fruit and vegetable market with my parents this weekend. I should say first of all that despite the weird and wonderful array of things on offer there, I still absolutely refuse to believe that this rainbow-coloured corn exists. I could accept that they might come in colours other than the traditional yellow, but not that they grew in a variety pack like a natural box of Fruit Pastilles.
This weekend, Whitney and I took a shopping bag out and boldly went one and a half miles to a family-run supermarket that's very popular in the area. I had thought from the description that it was a small corner shop, but as I discovered when we arrived, it's a large sort of combined market and garden centre with products from all around the world.
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