Fruits and Nuts

Our neighbors are urban farmers.  They have cultivated their entire lot with banana, fruit and nut trees, tomato plants, local herbs, and spinach that grows on a vine.  They have chickens and quails for eggs(they sell the eggs) and several bee hives for honey. If we ever have a catastrophe on the island we always say we will go next door and graze through their yard for food.  

This week they shared a Soursop (pictured above).  It's an awful looking fruit with a mushy pulp that tastes like grapefruit. You can't eat the seeds and the skin is covered with sharp nubs.  So you have to eat around those issues to get to the sweet and sour pulp.

These are Moringa seed pods.  They grow on trees all over the neighbor's place. They cultivate them for the seeds that they dry and press to get a fine oil that they sell.  The oil is used to lubricate things like watches and sewing machines. 

Our neighbors don't need the money from these crops, they just like growing things and living off the land.  She is a school teacher at the Dutch school and teaches English.  She is an American from Alamosa, Colorado.  Her husband is a nursing administrator at the medical clinics.  He is Dutch.  They met while working in Chile.  They have two kids, both born in Denver.  All of them speak English, Dutch, Spanish, and Papiamentu fluently.

This week, our neighbors, who we affectionally refer to as  Earth Muffins, also gave us Star Fruit. This is a nice normal looking fruit that tastes like a pear to me. It grows on a bush in their yard and is covered with the fruit.  

So there you have it...fruits to nuts.