Fall Week 4 - Fruit Share Newsletter

The recent bursts of sunshine are bringing out the sweetness of our fruits on the farm!

You'll find two different kinds of bananas in your share today - a smooth, sweet eating variety (bacubas, photo on the left), and an angular cooking variety (saba, photo on the right). They will ripen in roughly 7-10 days, or try using the cooking bananas while still green, as a starch like potatoes. The simplest preparation is to boil them, with the skins removed either before or after cooking (click the link for this website for instructions).

The mangoes today are picked ready but are still green - use them in a savory slaw or wait 5-10 days for these tasty fruits to ripen. 

Carambola, also called star fruit for its shape when sliced, is from the Averrhoa carambola tree. Native to Indonesia, the Phillipines, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India, starfruit is now grown in many tropical and subtropical countires throughout the world. The starfruits are great for fresh eating (like an apple), but can also be juiced or sliced into salads.

Wait until the avocadoes just begin to soften (about 3-5 days) before cutting open.

Genips, similar in taste and related to lychee, are the fruits of Melicoccus bijugatus. They are known by various names throughout the Caribbean - guinep, ginnip, and kenep in Dominica, Guyana, Haiti, Belize, the Bahamas and the U.S. Virgin Islands; guaya, gnep, guinep, and skinnip in Jamaica and St. Kitts; talpa jocote, canepa and quenepa in Puerto Rico; and Spanish Lime, limocillo, genepa and xenepa in the Dominican Republic. 

To eat these, just crack open the protective outer shell, then suck the tasy pulp off of the large central seed. The seeds are often discarded, but they can actually be roasted or boiled then eaten like chestnuts. Check out this old newspaper article from the USVI on the nutritional content of genip seeds and some ideas on preparation

Enjoy the harvest,

Claudia & the crew at Ridge to Reef Farm

This Week's Harvest

Cooking bananas

Bacuba bananas

Mangoes

Avocadoes

Genips

Carambola