Today was a scorcher in Chicago. 95F and 35C. And there was very little food in the house.
So in the early hours of the morning, before the sun came out in full force, I took my two youngest kids grocery shopping. The store carried a small selection of tropical fruit, so I suggested we try the lychees.
Imported from Thailand, they’d been freed from their branches, but still seemed as fresh as could be expected.
My five-year-old daughter took to them right away. After I showed her how to peel the skin, she quickly mastered the art of shelling a lychee: peel, bite, spit out the pit.
I’ve bought canned lychees before, but can’t remember the last time we had fresh ones at home. Eating lychees today brought me back to the first time I ate them fresh.
It was the summer of 1988 and my first trip to China. At 17 years old, I peeled them in a white plastic bag while I rode around Shanghai as a passenger in a pedicab, keeping cool from the juicy flesh of this sweet fruit. Few people in Shanghai drove cars back then, so the noise on the street sounded like a symphony of bicycle bells.
That bag of lychees certainly cost a fraction of the US$4.99/pound I paid today!
Have you tried longans before? They taste like lychees, but even better!
Oh, yes, I love them, too! We can get them in Chicago, too, especially at bubble tea shops. The only tropical fruits I’m not so keen on are durian (as mentioned earlier) and papaya.
Mmmmmmm. This brings me back to my grandparents’ apartment on Mott Street in New York’s Chinatown. I LOVE LYCHEES, and there is no comparison between fresh and canned. The canned ones should be outlawed!
Wow, Judy, that sounds so great! I’m sure you had them before the rest of the country (except the West Coast) got them. I’d love to hear more about your Chinatown memories!
Oh, looks very good. I never ate lychees, but definitely would love to try. Thanks for the nice share!
Thanks for your comment!! They’re delicious, so I hope you can find some fresh lychees!
I’ve seen them about locally, but always on a massive lump of tree – which, of course, is included in the weight and thus the cost of them…
Not being a big fan of fruit, they do nothing for me – the ones I have been forced to consume remind of bits of rubber with a lump in the middle.
Still, if you can get kids to eat them, more power to you!
Hmm, I never thought about paying extra for the stems, but now I don’t feel so bad about the high cost here in the US. At least they were already plucked from the branches. That’s too bad the ones you’ve had have been tasteless. I’ve usually lucked out with sweet ones. Papaya, on the other hand, has no taste IMO!