Persimmon: Poison or Precious Fruit?

Recently a well meaning neighbor brought me some persimmons from his mom's tree after he heard about my pie business. I'll skip the diatribe of why it's presumptious to just bring 3 pieces of fruit to someone who makes pies for a living. It puts the baker in the uncomfortable position of either refusing the gift they picked off of their own mother's tree and brought all the way from Sacramento or, on top of all the other pies you have to make that day, that now you need to experiment with a new recipe and make a singular, unsellable pie that the neighbor will ultimately get to eat all by himself. 3 pieces of fruit! I mean they are basically saying, hey there, please make me a pie!

Anyway, I digress. So I had these persimmons staring at me in the kitchen all week so I figured on Wednesday night I would make the guy a persimmon blueberry galette and have it be done with. I had never had a persimmon before and neither had my husband Britt so I cut two pieces off and handed one to him to try. We both popped a piece into our mouth and in the same breath spit it out into the sink.

Instantly a bitter, poisonous taste filled my mouth and at the same time sucked every drop of moisture out of it. My tongue became a rough piece of numb sand paper.

"Oh my god" Britt said, "I think my throat is closing up. Is it poisonous? Were you supposed to bake it first?"

I could only shake my head at him because my tongue was swelling alarmingly in my mouth. I went to check online if I had just poisoned us by not baking the fruit first. It turns out that the persimmon can be eaten raw or baked but it has to be super soft and ripe to be edible. But I do not believe this. I think the persimmon is an HGF. That stands for a Hunter Gatherer Fruit. Back before farming and industry existed primitive humans just wandered around, half starving, putting anything growing out of the earth into their mouths, hoping their appendix would take care of any problems.

In their desperation to not starve to death they took these pretty but poisonous fruits, covered them in sugar and cooked them until they were edible and provided calories to their bodies. The first primitive human to eat these fruits shuddered and tried to stop their gag reflex as they choked these items down. But as time went on, generation after generation became not just accustomed to these strange flavors but they grew to love them as they associated them with Gramma and long summer days.

What are are these HGF's? They are the persimmon, rhubarb and the rare fruit from Thailand that smells like burning rubber and rotting filth, the Durian. Durian Rhubarb Persimmon Pie coming soon!!!!!!!!!!! Not.