Persimmon on permission
‘They must be fruit as they’re next to the pomegranates,’ thought I. Then I read the sign: persimmons. Perplexed by persimmons, I asked a Persian friend here in Montecito, California if she knew about them. ‘My grandmother had trees full of them in the fall,’ she told me, waxing lyrical about their sweet, juicy meat covered by a waxy but edible skin. ‘I used to pick them up from the ground and eat them like apples. They always seemed to be smiling at me.’ Her grandmother made jam from them. She told me I’d bought the fuju variety (the hachiya being astringent and less available in Central California).
