This past weekend, my lovely husband went to work with a volunteer group that goes to people's houses to pick the fruit they can't consume (or give away). He has worked with them for a few years, but this month they were working at a house in our city. And at this time of year, that means Persimmons.This tree was HUGE (as he describes it) and they worked for 5 hours with 4 guys to pick all of the fruit. 1.5 pickup truck beds full of persimmons later, Eric came home with a load of boxes to go to our county food bank (the other guys took a load to their local food bank). Eric wanted to sort the persimmons as the overripe ones wouldn't transport well, so that left us with the cull to deal with.
Eric says he loves persimmons, but he tends to prefer Fuyu's (crisp round ones) over the type he had picked, Hachiya (squishy, astringent, drop shaped ones). He had read that dried persimmons aren't astringent and are just yummy sweet. We've tried dried ones before from a friend and they were great! So Eric set to it...except we don't have a food dehydrator.
So our office has turned into a giant dehydrator room (and in my opinion it stinks! really!). He has a fan and stacked wire racks with slices and trays of persimmon mush spread out over half of our desk which lines 3 of the walls (the rest of the desk if covered in his design work - so I'm avoiding that space right now).
Last night, Eric apparently decided to also try out the juicer we got as a wedding gift and although it worked at first, it later started spewing mush everywhere and leaking. Then I suggested he use the blender or the food processor as the juicer isn't meant to deal with that amount of mushy fruit (I did this without stepping in to the kitchen because I have issues seeing it a mess when I haven't been the mess maker). Around 11pm things got really quiet in the kitchen and I stepped in to see if I could help ....
I need not go into the details of the next 2.5 hours, but I have reclaimed the kitchen and the cookie baking prep will begin tonight!
Anyone have any ideas of what to do with a couple gallons of persimmon pulp?
Photo by elroy
11 comments:
I tried a persimmon for the first time recently, not sure which kind it was, it was already cut up. But it made my face pucker.
I'm not a huge fan of persimmon, my mom always tries to make me eat it and something about the texture puts me off a bit. Maybe because it reminds me of a tomato, but it's a fruit... but then again, is a tomato a fruit too? Send me back to botany class!!!
um - persimmon bread?
I'm concerned about your persimmon pulp. As far as I know, and I've been a persimmon fan for over half a century now, in order to get that astringent taste out of persimmons you have to let them ripen to the point where they look rotten. They have to be soft, soft, soft. Then they taste of heaven. I think that in order to make dried persimmons, you have to let them ripen first -- I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Let a couple of persimmons ripen on your window sill and try them when they are ready.
I was going to tell you that my mom eats them after any reasonable person would have thought they were spoiled, and thrown them away. But she already told you. ;)
This is such a good idea! I always see people's fruit trees dragging the ground with fruit that they obviously aren't going to use - we might have to start doing this.
Persimmon pulp? Hmmmmm. Persimmon jam of some sort?
Cookie baking will commence in our kitchen tomorrow - watch out!
Have a great night.
I am not a fan of the persimmon, so reading about gallons of pulp makes me kind of sick.
I'm no good, the only thing I could think of would be a smoothie.
Sounds yucky to me!
The first house we lived in had 3 or 4 of these trees in the back and I remember the mess on the ground and all the wasps and yellow jackets until finally we cut them down. I've never eaten a Persimmon
Mama Bear
It was not until only a few years ago that I discovered what a persimmon was! LOL! I was teaching in Japan and we lived in the countryside so we never locked our apartment doors. One of my teacher friends was freaking out because someone had been coming into his apartment and stealing things. My friend had a bowl of persimmons on his kitchen table and every time he'd come home from work, there would be persimmons missing! LOL! The only thing the thief stole were persimmons (maybe one or two a day). It was a great mystery, but my friend discovered that it was a little boy who lived in his building and he would come in and help himself to some persimmons! LOL!
Anyway, I'm not sure what one would do with a few gallons of persimmon pulp! I'll ask my hubby though. He may know.
Cherry I think that is so cool what organization was it that Eric picked fruits with I would love to do something like that o ps this is Shannon Laluna's daughter:)
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