Shake those 'simmons down
Photo by Liz Birnbaum, The Curated Feast for Santa Cruz Community Farmers Markets
That line from the classic southern folk song tells us when the persimmons are ready to come off the tree, but not when they are ready for eating. This post explores that gap between ripe and unripened fruit.
The first time I tasted a persimmon I was canoeing through the cypress swamps of southern Illinois and catfish were jumping into our boats. One of the guides asked who wanted to be the first to taste a persimmon and I naïvely volunteered. He tossed me a small green fruit. As I bit into that mouth-puckering + astringent little globe, I realized I’d been had, and promptly spit it out.
That trickery is always a part of what I see in persimmons, today. They have to be ripened just so, either being acceptable while firm, almost turning to a jam in the skin, or massaged and hung on strings as #hoshigaki. But what the persimmon offers as a reward for enduring its complexity is a taste that can equal the sweetness of freshly harvested honey.
The genetic name of a persimmon is #Diospyros, which means “Zeus’ wheat” if translated literally, but it more generally connotes a divine fruit. This seems appropriate, since life is full of desires that take time to come to fruition. To ripen. All things have a season, and you cannot make something happen sooner than it is going to. So the persimmon is a reminder for patience.
I’m bringing more persimmon timing into my life, rather than taking bites of mouth-puckering astringency when things are not yet ripe.