It’s a Miracle (Fruit)!

“It’s your lucky day, sir!” said the tour guide at the Tropical Fruit Farm in Penang, Malaysia. The organic farm grows over 250 varieties of fruit. And during a tour the guide spent most of the time berating us for having come during the wrong season. Not much in season now, he said. Come back in July. But we did see some sour cherry-like fruit without pits (the guide’s favourite fruit, he said), some immature avocados, limes, pineapple, guava…and a lot of empty trees.

“Do you have miracle fruit?” I’d asked. The farm actually has two kinds, but we couldn’t see the first kind because you have to reach under a fence to get to them, and there are often snakes…

But then there was a second bush in a snake-free place. “Good luck finding any berries, though,” the guide said. “You mean like this one?” I asked a second later.

We found four, in fact, and having just tasted the sweet-and-sour (mostly sour) not-cherries, we popped the miracle fruit in our mouths, moving the pulp around before wallowing and spitting out the pit. Then we re-tried the cherries.

There are no words for how amazing they tasted. Like summer. Like heaven. Like the best flavour you’ve ever tasted, whether or not you like cherries. If this were less of a family-friendly blog, I’d use stronger language. They were the sweetest fruit I’d ever tasted. Then we tried half a lime. Better than overly sweetened lemonade. Better than sorbet. We rushed back for more cherries.

The fruit creates a sort of coating in the mouth that affects the perception of whatever you eat next. The miracle fruit itself isn’t particularly sweet, actually. But we rushed through the rest of the empty tree tour to get to the fruit buffet at the end before it closed and they threw away the remaining fruit.

With the coating still in place (it’s supposed to last one or two hours, but the more you eat and drink, the more the coating is removed from your mouth and things start to taste normal again), we drank the sweetest papaya-honeydew-lime juice (no sugar added), white dragonfruit (mildly sweet with the miracle fruit. Bland when it wore off 20 minutes later), the sweetest pineapple I’ve ever eaten (not sure if it was the fruit or not), cibu (salacca in Thai. Burnt toffee fruit), watermelon, jackfruit, star fruit, guava, rose apple, longan, papaya, and mango (just the long, sweet yellow Malaysian kind, not the Indian, Mexican, or Peruvian kinds. There are a lot of types of mangoes in the world and the farm grows about six, I think).

Now I’m saving my one remaining miracle fruit for the perfect time. I’m not sure how long it will last in the Malaysian/Thai heat (I’m back in Thailand today), so I can’t wait too long.

I think I’ll buy some lemons, because when life gives you lemons…

P.S. They title of this post is two-fold: It’s also a miracle that WordPress is working at all. My image uploader hasn’t been working for a month, which makes all my beautiful photography one big waste. If anyone knows how to fix this problem, please let me know!!