“Look my tongue is purple!” Raimy greeted me at the gate of her friends’ house where they had passed the afternoon. Promptly she went on to explain that they had been sucking on ‘granada’ fruit. The English term for this historic fruit is pomegranate. The boughs of this full bushy tree growing beside their house were decorated with dozens of pinkish colored balls of fruit. There are hundreds of bright red seed pods inside this fruit. You scoop up a bunch and put them in your mouth. Squishing them around the seed pods burst open and you swallow the tart juice then spit out the tiny cream colored ‘pepa’. And your mouth is tinted purple. Pomegranates are common trees to have in your yard here in Cochabamba.
For an interesting history of this word click here: pomegranate etymology
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
fun!
I don’t think there is a single fruit bearing tree on my parent’s property. I lived in a house once that had a pineapple growing in the yard, and a mango tree. Now I am craving pomegranate.
Natalie – I might have to do pineapples on my next funny fruits – there are so many varieties, sizes, flavors, and colors. I never knew it before coming here. Mangos are great too. yum.
i hear pomegranates are all the rage suddenly back in the usa.
Alece – you will get to verify that factoid for your self here pretty soon.
Ah yes, indeed, pomegranates are the latest rage. They followed blueberries. Everybody’s excited about antioxidants. So … a few enterprising companies have come up with the novel idea of combining them. Blueberry/Pomegranate juice. mmmmm. I did have a pomegranate last fall – just for the experience. It’s a very … strongly flavored fruit. I juiced out all the juice of the seeds and drank it – I could only manage small sips at a time. Wow. Lots going on there.
I like funny fruits, though! And I’m very curious to know about fruits and veggies that we never see here in North America. Do you guys have snot balls down there? We had them in Venezuela – but I don’t remember their proper name. They were weird, but yummy.
litchi?! we had them in nicaragua, and also called them snot balls!
everyone here in south africa loves the things. not me.
Annie – I think that the name they have here is achachairu. If you click the tag ‘funny fruit’ you can see all the posts I have done in this series.
Here is the direct link for the post I did for the fruit I think you may be describing. The one pictured has soft spikes. But we do have other varieties with smooth orangish brown shells. One fruit fits into the palm of your hand. We really enjoy them. Yum!
achachairu
And girls – snot balls!?!? You’ve got to be kidding me! With a name like that I don’t know how the thing made it pass your lips!
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angie – the bolivian name for it is enough reason to call it snotball. it sounds like a sneeze, for goodness sakes!
HA! HA! HA! You are right!
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Dave would be in heaven- this is his favorite fruit… which we can only get for about a month during the fall here… and he eats them up!!!
Angie, How did you combine your two blogs to be the same.
Susie91793?
I have an account here.
lol girls … I’ve been at work all day. Missing the great comments.
Thanks for the links Angie! Haven’t followed them yet. And yeah … I don’t know where they acquired the name snot balls – perhaps just for the benefit of the Americans and because of the weird texture. I did find them tasty, though. And yes, most of our team would not eat them because of the name.
And Alece – right on with the name sounding like a sneeze.
this comment showed up in my in box – but I am not seeing it here – so weird -
annie has left a new comment on your post “Funny Fruits”:
Thanks for the info, Angie! This doesn’t look exactly like it. They were smaller – about the size of very large grapes. The skin was hard and popped off, and the inside was tangy and sweet. The fruit was wrapped around a pit, and the fruit itself was kinda slimy in texture. I’ll have to check out Alece’s suggestion of litchi. Thanks!
Susie – I am also going send you a message on xanga in case you are not subscribed to comments here.
How to I sync the two blogs? There might be an easier way to do this, but I create my blog content in a Word document then do the old fashioned cut and paste into the Xanga page and into the Blogger page. What takes the extra time is uploading the photos. But that is no big deal.
I dream about the day when I have such a large readership base that I can go to a format without a server (like http://www.brianzahnd.com and http://www.perizahnd.com have) and the people will still visit.
Recently Xanga has really improved their service to paying members. But I still like Blogger’s format.
girls – for the record, litchi sounds like a sneeze too.
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I love your blog and have checked out your other blog about blogging missionaries. So fun!
I have been in Venezuela for 20 years and we are re locating to Paraguay this summer.
ha ha – you’re right, angie!
annie — is litchi what you were thinking of????
Jungle Mom – Nice to meet you! Glad you like my blog. I will add you to the list of blogging missionaries; I have been needing to update it. You are Jackie’s mom, right? “Faithful in the Few” is one of my regular reads. Such a sweet person. Though she does challenge me with her super organizational skills.
A relocation after 20 years! Amazing! So will you be close to Jackie and her beautiful family? We will be practically neighbors! I have always wanted to know Paraguay…
(I am going to post this on your site too, in case you are not subscribed to comments)