You can’t have a Star Wars-themed party without a Death Star, clearly. Just google “Star Wars recipes” and go to images and you’ll be amazed at what people can do with a pen knife. My dad took the challenge, sculpting two of these babies for the party. Cut some vertical lines and some horizontal lines and then some lines that run between a few of the horizontal or vertical lines. Basically, you try to make it look intentional.
Then serve it with exotic fruit from Baobab I. The Baobab I part is just an excuse to eat papaya, in my books. Every couple of universes should have a tropical country or planet or two. And the armpits of winter are when you want to be dreaming of sun-drenched fruit, like the lychees, jackfruit, pineapple and honeydew melon below.
Because although none of this is local here, it’s actually the right time of year to eat it – South American summer. And as for the canned jackfruit and lychees (two fruit we rarely see fresh here), all year round is “seasonal.”
The honeydew was actually flavourful, and we even found some impressive papayas in the back store room at the giant grocery store near our house in Newfoundland over Christmas. As for the pineapple, we bought two and I spent Christmas Day slicing them up and sucking the sweet flesh from the peels (the trick to ripeness is to buy them about a week in advance and let them ripen until you can pull a leaf out of the top pretty easily. The honeydew is ripe when the skin gives just a little when you squeeze it.) Have you ever tasted jackfruit? It’s like mango and persimmons had a baby. If you don’t know what a persimmon is, buy one of those, too. You’ll still see the vanilla Fuyus and soft Hachiyas in markets this time of year. They’re eons better than mealy apples (yes that was a Star Wars joke).
And if you don’t buy them now, you’ll have to wait a “whole ‘nother year.” (That one’s for you, mom.)
Thanks for the quote!