Fruits in Cameroon

We know that you may have seen enough food on our pages. But believe or not, we have not yet found any real special food we liked so much that we would want try to copy the recipe down right away. Oh, yes, there are a lot of very special foods alright, but they are complicated to make, need special ingredients and sometimes special tools to make them. More importantly, the species used do not fully agree with Janice's stomach.

 However, when we talk about fruits in Cameroon, they are like coming out of another world, just spectacular! Not only do they have variety, they have very long seasons overlap with each other, so that you could have many of them at the same time. More importantly, they are all picked "RIPE". I have eaten a lot of good pineapples when I was young in Taiwan, the pineapples in Cameroon are just as good, with many more breeds, thus different sizes and colors. You can take your picks on the ground "stands". They are from $.25~.50 a piece, generally depending on their sizes. There is no such things as a grocery store, but there are "corner" stores every where, that carry limited vegetables, fruits,  rice, dried corns, beans, smoked fishes, soft drinks and other kitchen supplies. As everything needs to bargain, shopping is the job assigned to Tom. Kids in the neighborhood usually call out "white man"  as Tom passes their places. Tom would go out every other day to pick up fresh fruits to be used for breakfast and deserts after dinner.

Recently, Tom joined together with another faculty in Chemistry to buy fruits together, whole sale.  We would get a bigger supply for the whole week.  Since they know better about fruits and the farmers, we get even fresher, sweeter and better fruits. There was fruit which Tom had never seen it before. It's picture is collected in the corresponding picture file, you will have a chance to guess what is it? By the way, this kind of  fruits ripe in green, and just get softer before you can eat them. This fruit is some what like the fruit we saw in southwest China---Yennan, but this is not as big. The inside is milky white with black seeds bigger than watermelon seeds. You eat the white parts around the seeds, they are rich and lightly sweet with slightly sour taste. The name given to me by the locals is a local name, I am sure. Maybe I will tell you later.