Persimmons

This is the time of the year when God gives us a gift in North Carolina, and this year it was bountiful. That gift is a wild fruit known as the persimmon (Diospyros virginiana). You pick them up when they ripen and fall off the tree (never before), and they taste like, well, a persimmon. There is no other taste like a persimmon on earth that I know of. And, after you separate the pulp from the skin and seeds, you make a persimmon pudding, a North Carolina delicacy like no other. And the best recipe I ever tasted was from my step-grandmother Lucy. Yes, Lucy's persimmon pudding. Will make a man's knees go weak.


Above is Lucy's recipe in her own handwriting. She died in 2003 at age 103.

(images copyright 2008 by Dan Routh)