Cashiers can never figure out my favorite winter fruit.
“Are these tomatillos or are they simply ugly tomatoes?” the cashier asked me today when she saw them.
“No, these are persimmons,” I explained, feeling wounded on account of the lovely fruit.
P.S. The persimmons are lying on a beautiful box a friend gave me for New Year’s.
I love persimmons! They’re the perfect winter treat!
Silly cashier.
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Delicious! But very expensive.
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Love the background! 😉
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One of my many great gifts!
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I love them too. I prefer though the original version.
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What’s the original version?
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These are persimmons, not tomatoes, as noted above. They are delicious if (and ONLY if) they are fully ripe. If they don,t taste good, put them outside in freezing weather for a few hours. When I was a child, lots of persimmon trees were on my friends’ property, though we never had one. Traditional wisdom was that they were no good until after the first frost.
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Not only did I have to google parsimmon, I am now determined to buy some on the next trip to the grocery store!
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Ugly tomatoes, cute flapper jazz-age art-deco chick.
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Persimmons
BY LI-YOUNG LEE
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choosepersimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.
The rest is here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171753
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Beautiful! You know a poem for every occasion. 🙂
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I had some at Christmas which was almost tasteless. They were grown in the garden of the people I was staying with and were great favourites with them.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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