A Jackfruit Tree of My Very Own

This is a jackfruit tree. Prepare yourself for tremendous excitement.

I can't really articulate how excited I am that we have such a tree in our courtyard. Jackfruit are only available canned, as chips or frozen in the U.S., and I've long been curious about the taste of jackfruit without it being steeped in preservative sugar syrup or the yummy but ultimately unsatisfying experience of a jackfruit chip.

I'm only a little obsessed with jackfruit. But I come from a family where we take our tropical fruit seriously. We'd think nothing of driving 3 hours to Canada to buy bags of longans, rambutans, mangosteens and custard apples to eat in Queen Elizabeth park. Whenever relatives were visiting, we'd take them to Canada. There's only so many times before flying salmon loses a certain excitement.

Only a few more weeks...oh, the anticipation.

My introduction to this sesame wafer-bean paste concoction was not thrilling. I came into the office one day to see an unopened white bag, and my coworker invited me to help myself. Upon untying the bag, I saw a stack of sesame crackers, the kind that I knew tasted mostly like nothing. Not wanting to be rude, I took one and retied the bag, and went back to reading with the sensation of dissolving styrofoam on my tongue. Luckily my coworker came back and then laughed at me politely trying to eat cardboard, and showed me the little tub of beanpaste under the crackers and then made me a little cracker sandwich. It was a far more satisfactory experience.

This is the rice cake I was raving about a few posts back. Not that specific one, of course, but this has rapidly become a fixture on the shopping list. Coconut/bean center with sticky young rice paste on the outside. Mmmm.