62-day Fruit and Vegetable Challenge Preview: Fruit - Pluot*

My wife and I decided to check out the supermarket in Niles, MI the other day to see what we might find for the fruit and vegetable challenge. One thing that caught our eye were some pluots. They had the skin coloration of a Washington apple with greens and reds mixed in and they had the texture of a plum. She mentioned that her mom likes these and has been wanting to purchase a tree so she can grow them. I'd never heard of them and they looked like they'd be fun to eat.

As we drove home to Berrien Springs, she demanded that I hand her a pluot. I argued, "But if we eat them now I can't use them for my fruit and vegetable challenge at the start of the month." She responded that they were already quite soft. Logic and curiosity got the best of me and soon we were biting in to our juicy pluots.

The inside also had the texture of a plum and the coloration was deep purplish red. It mostly had the feel and taste of eating a plum and what stood out was the intense sweetness on the outside and the sourness close to the pit. Soon I was finding myself out of dry places to hold onto the pluot so I shoved what was left of it into my mouth and chewed around the pit. The sourness was strong but in a way that reminded me of the sour straw candies we used to eat as teenagers which are now making a comeback. I whittled down the fruit until there was nothing left then rolled down the window and spit the seed out once we were past the Sheriff's office on Old 31. I'm pretty sure it's legal to spit biodegradable pits out the car window but I wasn't eager to have that conversation with the local law enforcement. Once we got home I went to research the fruit to find out what it was.

A pluot is a trademarked hybrid between a plum and an apricot. They have a few different varieties and the ones we had this week are the Dapple Dandy variety, which come early in the season and are harvested in June. Other varieties will be harvested through September so we might get to try some more later this summer.

*Pluots are the registered trademark of Zaiger Genetics of Modesto, CA. I have no financial relationship with any company that sells these other than being a consumer who found the fruit interesting enough to buy, but since I'm talking about their trademarked fruit I'll acknowledge that I'm using a trademarked name.