Talked Jefe into letting me make him some latkes for brekkie a few weeks back – forgot I’d taken a snap of it.  Smoked salmon, sour cream, green onions, capers (only on mine), some applesauce and fresh sliced nectarines.  Heck of a way to start a beautiful Sunday.

Rambutan

At Russ’s Market one day last week, El Jefe and I saw a poster describing Rambutan, an Asian fruit that really resembles some type of sea anemone.  Yesterday, when I got done with Farmer’s Market, I stopped in to grab some lunch supplies and they were doing free sample day.  In the produce dept. they had some tasty new red pepper hummus and – tada! – Rambutan.  The color and texture are very like a lichee/lychee, and there’s a seed about the size of a long peanut in the center.  It’s sweet but also kinda bland.  While it’s incredibly cool to look at and fun to touch, I have to admit I’ve gone overboard about excess packaging.  It seems like such a waste for the amount of fruit you get out of it!  Hey nature, how’s about a little conservation of resources, ah?

Last week during the Farmer’s Market, we posed the question: what is a coconut?  Like, what IS it?  A seed?  A nut?  A fruit?  Do you know?

Well as it turns out, it’s a drupe.

“A drupe is a fruit with a hard stony covering enclosing the seed (like a peach or olive) and comes from the word drupa meaning overripe olive. A coconut, and all drupes, have three layers:  the exocarp (outer layer), the mesocarp (fleshy middle layer), and the endocarp (hard, woody layer that surrounds the seed).”

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/coconut.html

Apparently, they used coconut water as IV fluid when it was in short supply during WWII and Vietnam.  Betcha didn’t know that.  And it takes almost a year for one to mature!  I didn’t know that, either.

So the answer to our question was: it’s a nut, a fruit AND a seed!