Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

I was walking past a Samoan grocery store in downtown Henderson the other day and I read the sign they put out on the side walk.  "Fresh breadfruit here," it said. 

"Ooh," I said. Well actually, I said it mentally, so I don't know if the quotation marks around the Ooh that starts this paragraph are strictly necessary. Still, my Ooh, regardless of the punctuation requirements for a thought, meant that I intended to stop immediately and see what fresh breadfruit looked like and how much they cost. And how big they were. Jackfruit belongs to the same genus and commonly weigh 30 pounds after all. Since I was carrying only my backpack today and I already needed to bring home milk and juice, my available space was limited. I hoped that breadfruit would be more portable than some jackfruit are.

As it turned out, the breadfruit is the shrimp of the Artocarpus genus and is only grapefruit-sized. Since that was the case, I came, I saw, I purchased. In fact, I brought home two of them to experiment with. 

And something clicked inside my head. "If breadfruit are available, I'll bet this would be a good time to pick up some other tropical fruits," I said. (It was mentally again.)

And so, Jeanne and I set off on a Saturday morning adventure to look for fruit. And did we ever get lucky. 

We stopped at a number of Asian markets and brought home the goodies you see before you. The breadfruit are above the plate. 

On the plate, starting at 12 o'clock are longans, otherwise known as dragons' eyes. From 1 to 5 come durian. The little green thngs at the bottom of the plate are kiwi berries. At 8 o'clock is a peeled mangosteen, with the whole fruit at 9. Finally, the yellow stuff at 10 and 11 is jackfruit. (I didn't have to buy a whole one.) 

These are peeled longans. Their texture is similar to a peeled grape. There is a hard black seed inside each one. 

Close up of a before and after mangosteen. 

Let's take a closer look at the breadfruit. These are green breadfruit. I guess ripe ones don't travel as well.

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Surprising insides, huh?

You trim the core. The edible portion is sponge-like near the center, becoming solid near the outside.

Here is a pan of pieces ready to boil.

Jeanne is making scalloped potatoes. You can see some of the breadfruit slices on the left side in this pan. 

This dish turned out very well. The breadfruit are a little denser than the potatoes are and the flavor is slightly different, but pleasant. 

I mashed the pan of boiled pieces in the photo above and added butter and milk, just like I would have had I been mashing potatoes. Then, I turned the result over to Jeanne for further processing. 

She makes wonderful potato pancakes. We all like them, but Arram loves them. He is always the one who finishes the last pancake on the platter, after politely inquiring of course, if anyone else want to share it. 

Jeanne made up a batch of p. pancakes, but with 100% breadfruit. She adds onions, and flour and an egg, so the source of starch in them was diguised a little. We were curious what the reactions around the table would be. The pancakes disappeared every bit as fast as ever. No comments at all about the substitution. I had to admit that I noticed no difference myself. 

The best source here for specialty fruits are the Asian markets. I know without a doubt, if any of you looked at such a market near you regularly, you'd be sure to find something interesting eventually. And hey, we all get cravings now and then. Like this guy does-

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1dc4bb27-ea0e-4b2f-93a1-c0a33218a879

When you get your craving for fruit, I think you should go for it! (And if you do, I'd love to hear about what you thought of it, good, bad or indifferent.)    -djf