We live in a farm house built in 1930. Even though we're in Los Angeles, our neighborhood is zoned for farm animals and agriculture. Whoever lived in the house before us loved fruit trees. We've got grapefruit, oranges, clementines, olives, figs, persimmons, plums, and feijoas.
The feijoas, also called pineapple guavas, are my second favorite fruit from our yard (the figs are my favorite). They have a perfumey scent, a tart, firm, gritty flesh, and a sweet custardy center. (I'm not sure what kind of cultivar it is.)
This year's harvest came later than usual, and it looks like it's not as bountiful as previous years', but I'm grateful to have any amount. I wait for fruit to drop off the tree, then remove the rind with a vegetable peeler and eat the rest like a pear or apple. I eat up to seven or eight a day. Wikipedia article about feijoa
Previously on Boing Boing:
• It's guava time at my house
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I'm incredibly jealous. Those look delicious.
Wow. I think the only reason to leave NYC is really to have actual fruit trees on your property.
I'm being sincere. Having grapefruit, oranges, clementines, olives, figs, persimmons, plums, and feijoas growing on your own land makes me completely wet.
Enjoy your fruit.
These are so delicious when they're perfectly ripe. I love pineapple guavas!
8 a day?? As the salty rhode islander waitress at my favorite greasy spoon used to say when I ordered grits, "Hmph, that'll keep you regulah."
Yum! Feijoas are the best.
They're a bit of a national icon in New Zealand. You can get feijoa everything (icecream, yoghurt, chocolate, wine, vodka (http://www.42below.com/feijoa-flavored-vodka.sm), cereal...I could go on, and on...)
One of the best experiences I've had was in Colombia at a feijoa festival in a small town where my second cousins/aunts/uncles/etc. live. Imagine that lovely green color covering everything in a little plaza. Feijoa ice cream is a dream!
ahhh lovely! i ate those all the time as a kid in NZ. you cut them in half crosswise, count the petals on the flower-pattern inside to see if you've got a foursy or a fivesy or a sevensy, and then scoop it out like a pudding cup.
I would move to LA solely to have an avocado in my yard. I'm so jealous.
What is the connection to the Brazilian dish feijoada? As far as I know, feijoas are not an ingredient.
(I suppose I could Google this, but I feel like some Boinger can tell me faster than I could find it myself.)
Agreed on the fruit trees...
What kind of persimmon? I really really love fuyu persimmons, I can eat 4-5 in a sitting.
We've just finished having a landscaper do our backyard--fuyu persimmon, pineapple guava, chinotto (a small bitter orange), tangerine, orange, and we kept a very productive navel from the "previous" yard.
Note that the flowers of guavas are also edible and delicious, according to our landscape designer/friend/neighbor/fellow Cal Poly alum.
Hachiya, I think: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/08/how-i-learned-to-lov.html
claud9999,
Persimmons are a notorious cause of bowel obstructions. Google it.
These things are awful. They taste like eating sandy kiwifruit custard with a eucalyptus lozenge in your mouth. While I am usually impressed by novel fruits, these things are abominations in the sight of God.
#13: You're slicing them the wrong way. If you slice them diagonally they have a smooth texture and taste like pork.
Oh, sorry, that's shmoos.
Tasty! Another reason to move to California... like I needed an additional one.
I like these things.
I don't like persimmons, they're slimeeeey!
The condo complex that is near my house has half a dozen large trees/bushes of these. We grab them on our walks and fill our jacket pockets. Because we don't trust ones already on the ground (there are lots of dogs that may have peed on any of them), we give the tree a bit of a shake and grab the ones that just fell.
And, yes, this year is not as productive as last year, but still plentiful!
But how do you keep the squirrels from eating them before they drop (or even ripen, for that matter)?
Or do you not have squirrels?
We have a feijoa tree here in our little corner of LA, but when our Valley neighborhood was farmland, it was a walnut plantation. We still have 110-year-old walnut trees up and down the street, so we have lots of squirrels.
(And if you *do* have squirrels, are they native California Gray Squirrels, or are they the Red Fox Squirrels that the Civil War veterans at the West LA Old Soldiers Home imported to hunt?)
I have a bunch but no clue what to do with them. My dogs love them, though!
I had a large tree of these at our old house. I thought they were absolutely horrid, but our Rottweiler copped all the fallen fruit like they were porkchops. Worked out well for both of us.
Ophite gave the most accurate description of a Feijoa's taste that I've ever read. Blech.
I hate pineapple guava. Not particularly because they don't taste good (I'm indifferent to their flavor) but because I have nightmares about them now. When I was growing up in San Diego we had a huge tree in our backyard and it dropped thousands of fruit a year (not an exaggeration) and if you didn't get them picked up off the ground within a day or two after they fell they began to rot and stink like nothing else can.
I was the one tasked with having to pick them up and I was always sick by the time I was done. Cleaning up after my dog was a far more pleasant and less smelly chore than dealing with spoiled pineapple guavas!
So much negativity. I bet they are tasty. You mentioned the variable crop from year to year. If you are planning on staying there at that house, you might consider raising bees. The pollination will ensure a hearty harvest each year all around your neighborhood, and you can share among neighbors.
& Plant some peaches. There is nothing in the world like a fresh, dripping peach off the tree.
Antinous, aware of the issue, which is mostly the American persimmon and unripe ones at that. (Mostly affects livestock which are more likely to eat unripe fruit in mass quantities, having more tolerant tastebuds.)
Mark, Hachiya eh? Yeah, try fuyu (the ones that look like squat apples) sometime. Pref. when they're a bit soft, but even when they're a bit more firm they're still quite tasty. No preparation required for fuyu and they don't go from rock-hard to mush in a day like the Hachiya.
Dang, I had no idea these weren't common outside of New Zealand. I used to steal them from my neighbour's tree on the way to school.
They are delicious. I've never found them outside of New Zealand. A company in NZ called "42 below" makes their own feijoa vodka , it's great.
Do you by chance live in Azusa? My grandparents owned a house there for 50 years and it was full of fruit trees.
The house I first lived in had a driveway that was encased by this plant. Watching as the weather started to cool, knowing that there would be one last week (or two) of great times on the hot asphalt driveway - zooming by the tree on the scooter and ripping and fruit off, eating half the skin (eurgh - never do that now) and sucking the middle out.
They seem quite hard to come by in produce stalls these days, but when I see them I always stop for a smell if not to buy a handful.
Best type of guavas out there - although I have little idea of to what family of fruit they belong or where they come from.
Are the seeds fertile?
Hand them out to readers! :P
You can put extras into a crumble or cobbler dessert with apples. Apple and feijoa crumble is the best. I am so jealous to see that photograph. (My daughter used to call them "wahdoes" for some reason)
We have feijoas in Australia too but I think we forgot about them in about 1930 and the only ones I ever see are in old backyards. As a kid they were stupendous to fight with - incredibly plentiful and the ones that had fallen were just the right kind of mushy and smelly.
Then I discovered that when they were just right they were just plain delicious - we had no idea what they were so it was "strawberry fruit salad fruit".
Guava is better (but they don't grow in Southern Oz) but the sublime forgotten backyard fruit (also with a sandy texture) is the Loquat.
Feijoas are tasty, tasty fruit. I'd never even heard of them (in Australia) til I visited a friend whose 4 feijoa trees were all coming ripe. What a discovery! I've never seen them in shops here but I'll be making sure to visit my friend at the same time again next year.
And meanwhile, 42 Below's feijoa vodka keeps me going between seasons.
I remember these from my childhood in Los Angeles, and I will attest, they are out of this world. We always called them guavas.
The other amazing fruit I remeber picking off the tree and eating was the kumquat. My neighbor had a tree and we would peel the paper thin skin. It was kind of a dare to see who would eat the actual citrus part. It was nearly as tart as a lemon, but also very sweet at the same time. And the skin was also sweet.
Of course, I think the houses where we grew up were built right on top of orange groves. I did force my parents to plant two fruit trees in the front yard when I was a young teenager and now they are extremely productive. An apple and an orange tree. Of course, they have a lawn, but that is another matter.
On my last trip to their house I saw a flock of wild parrots that descended on the apple tree. I guess they are a wild colony that descended from a pair of escaped pet store parotts. It was really something to see that in the front yard!
L.A. is such a weird cross between pockets of tropical paradise and urban wasteland. Maybe that is why I am so confused.
#29 POSTED BY AIRPILLO
Are the seeds fertile? Hand them out to readers! :P
I'm with airpillo on this one. I've been trying to replant fertile fruit trees in my own area of Southern California. Self terminating fruits scare the bejeezus out of me so I figure if I make my own neighborhood a little garden of Eden then that's a step in the right direction. I've hit some bumps though, Can BB post some more stories about resources for people who want to do this kind of thing? Kind of like Making except with fruit!
We had two or three of these trees growing up. My aunt and grandma would make the most delicious cinnamon-guava jelly! I'll see if I can find the recipe.
My friend and I would eat them to our fill by biting the in half, then eating out the sweet filling in the center.
Ahhh... thanks for the time-warp!
For those with a more savoury tooth than sweet, we make a luscious, almost instant nachos sauce by blending feijoas and tomatillos (fresh, not tinnned)(1:1 by weight) and then cooking it up with your favourite herbs and spices (chilli, ginger, allspice, tarragon, garlic follow your taste buds).
The wateryness of the tomatillo and the dense schlerid feijoa, when blended, give a perfect consistancy, while the feijoa's high floral notes and the tomatillo tang bring your favourite flavourings into a perfect union.
The suace goes well on anything. Cook it up in season and freeze/preserve it for the rest of the year.
Anon / 31: You can grow Guavas in Southern Australia! Well - I have, at the very least. They don't need much attention as long as you've got good soil, drainage and a bit of water.
The Cook and the Chef had a great cooking segment on feijoas that you can read about here, subscribe to the podcast to watch the episode, or go straight to the recipe for feijoa tart with pear schnapps here. BTW, Grey Goose La Poire makes an exceptional substitute for the pear schnapps, but you may need to add more sugar to taste.
Feijoa or pineapple guava are in the guava or Myrtaceae family, and I think they are delicious whether from New Zealand, California, or southern Brazil where they originate. No relation to Feijoada.
Another delicious use of tons of them is to make jam, chutney, fruit leather, and cordials (chop up feijoa and steep them in rum for 2 weeks, strain rum, and make delicious feijoa mojitos with them! Mmmm)
@9 Lauren
I attempted to make a feidjoada dish once, after having it in Rio de Janeiro. The way I made it was with bacon, ham, sausage, beef, onions, and lots of black beans - basically all meat, no fruit at all.
Anonymous @19:
When we used to have a couple of trees in the garden, we would gorge ourselves on fresh feijoa during the short season. Delicious at the correct ripeness but leave them too long and they develop unpleasant over-ripe aromas. You could always share the bounty with friends & cow-orkers. Feijoas also makes a nice cake. Just use a standard banana cake recipe & substitute feijoas for the bananas.
Ooh yes... I also love them, we've had a tree in the backyard since I was really little. I actually went and checked it earlier and it's flowering, so not long to go now!
I have one of these trees. Typically you only eat the fruit that falls - that's when it's ripe.
Give it a jolly good hair cut after it's finished fruiting and you should be rewarded with a heavy crop next season.
We have a massive hedge of these in our back yard (NZ), about 8 mature trees around 9-10ft high. The Feijoa trees are in full blossom here at the moment and are attracting all manner of insects and birds to feed on the nectar.
It's true that they need a good hair cut. They only produce fruit from the new growth.
A orchardist an hour or so north told us the best possible care was a good trim and a mulch of horse manure every season! Apparently horse manure smells far less than other kinds and the Feijoas perform better with it.