Jack is So Sweet!

For the past 38 years, family, friends and strangers have asked me, "Why do you go to India?" I remember last summer, while serving Gordon coffee in the Busy Bee in Glover, he looked incredulous: "You go to India in the winter? Why?"

(Jackfruit in the tree)

I have lots of answers, more every time I spend more time is this paradise. India feels like the heart of the planet, the people so joyous, the colors so bright, the flowers exotic, and the fruit, well, like nothing I've ever tasted.

Thursday, my friend Rashi arrived with a bag of Lychee nuts he had gotten at the Aurobindo Ashram in Bangalore. They look like the big old Christmas bulbs of my childhood, with the appropriate colors of unripe green, ripening pale pink and super-ready-to-eat pink red. What fun it is to peel the thin skin and bite into the white sweet pulp. Yum. Most here agree that nothing is better than lychee ice cream.

But while the Lychee is tasty, my real first love is Jackfruit. Jack is the most unlikely fruit to steal my affection....what an unattractive bloke! I thought it was a pendulous growth hanging from the trees for years. Like a giant rising loaf of bread someone forgot to put in the oven: misshapen, huge. Opening it up is no easy task, either.

Here on the farm yesterday, Narayan took a machete and hacked a Jackfruit off the tree, then spent a good deal of time on the floor chopping away at the fibrous skin and inner rinds.




Within this big ole green bag are triangular shaped yellow pieces that are as delicious as M and Ms! Jackfruit tastes like the offspring of a secret marriage between a pineapple and a mango.

So, the winter of 2008 has provided another reason I come to India. For the fruit. Especially the Jackfruit. And the Lychees. And the Mangoes (I had a mango milkshake for breakfast today.) And the Chicoos (look like a kiwi, taste like candy). And the Papayas (we had those for lunch) and the bananas, figs, oranges, limes, dates, coconuts, cashews. I think even Ronald McDonald would have little trouble being a vegetarian here. Thank you, Mother India, for such a delicious banquet!