Dearest reader-

You may be thinking to yourself-

What the hell is that?

It is not the inner workings of a songbird or cotton rat.

It is not evidence of life beyond our blue planet.

It is a fruit – the mamey sapote.

Or, as Jamie dubbed it, “fetus fruit.”

They typically come into season sometime in March in Southern Florida, and are very valuable, in large part because of the time commitment for each crop. From flower to fruit, a mamey sapote requires between 13 and 24 months. For every two harvests a starfruit grower gathers, the sapote farmer may get only one.

The skin of the fruit is positively homely, a rough sandpaper brown. The flesh, on the other hand, is a revelation – creamy and sweet, with a texture something like an avocado, with the most incredible gradations of orange, red, and salmon pink.

The slices reminded me of raw tuna sashimi.

We processed a whole box on Saturday for dehydrating. Margie’s friend Sal brought them over. They, too, were a casualty of the frost, dropped from the trees before fully mature.

“Don’t sell these fresh,” he warned. “They’re not right.”

He had a point – they weren’t perfect. But they were still incredibly delicious.

Remember the nighttime visitor? He froze. I found him out by homer’s hutch, on the limestone gravel. In the palm of my hand, he was light as a feather, stiff as a board, toe pads like brittle paper over his heart.  I showed him around to the rest of the crew, but they didn’t seem to find his corpse so moving.  I put him under the pidgeon peas, and in the morning he was gone.

RIP little man.