Exotic Fruits

You may remember in an earlier blog, I mentioned that star fruits are under utilized in Miami, yet that fruit is rather expensive to buy, and sometimes hard to find. Here is how they are sold in a Publix grocery store. Two US dollars a star fruit is rather excessive, I think. In the same basket are a few smaller fruits, also quite expensive. They are the Sharon fruit.

The Sharon fruit is a cousin of the persimmon or kaki (Diospyros kaki,) an edible fruit in the genus Diospyros of the ebony wood family (Ebenaceae,) named originally after Sharon plain in Israel. It is an Israeli-bred cultivar of the D. kaki fruit. The sharon fruit has no core. It is seedless, particularly sweet, and can be eaten whole. Eating the sharon fruit regularly is believed to reduce the risk of developing atherosclerosis causing heart attacks. At $1.29 for a tiny fruit like this, I'd take the heart attacks.