While I love each of these fruits individually, I'm surprised I still do eat them. As a child I had a love/hate relationship with all three.
Let me explain . . .
I lived in the same house my whole childhood. My Dad planted dichondra lawn in both the front and back yards. You know the stuff, it is so fragile, children can't play on it and direct sunlight burns it. My brothers and I were constantly being told, 'stay off the grass, you'll kill it.' Great, so we had the yard that no kids could play on. And we were teased for having flower shaped grass.
To keep the freakin dichondra shaded, we had 3 very strategically placed trees in the back yard, so the sun rays never reached and burned the lawn. Yep, you guessed it . . . a HUGE avocado tree, a peach tree and a lemon tree. If we were to have large trees in the yard, they might as well produce something to eat, was my Dad's rationalization.
The trees grew gigantic and produced so much fruit, that the daily chore of picking the bounty became 'the kids' job. After all, we liked to climb trees, didn't we? Heh. We were also designated as the 'pick-up-the-rotten-fruit-surrounded-by-fruit-flies-and-maggots-squashed-into-the-dichondra. Especially the peaches. Amazing how nasty they became after falling to the ground, sitting in hot weather. Step in one, and it felt like stepping in squeeshy dog poop. GACK! The lemon tree was my personal enemy because the thorns always stuck me with it's sharp 'knives' as I called them. The tree was not happy until I came out of the lemon picking session pricked and covered in blood drips.
It seemed the fruit bearing season lasted F O R E V E R. Our summers were consumed by picking, bagging, squeezing, juicing, cutting, pitting, skinning, peeling, and freezing.
On the upside, I do remember the perks that went along with the fruit monsters. Fresh baked peach cobbler, peach pie, peaches and vanilla ice cream, fresh squeezed lemonade, lemon meringue pie, lemon cake, and guacamole. However, by the end of the fruit season, I'd be so sick of eating endless versions of the same fruit over and over again. I think it was my Mom's mission in life to see how many different ways she could use the fruit at every meal. I swore as a kid that when I became an adult, I would never eat peach cobbler again.
One last big perk was the avocado tree. It produced way many more than our family could possibly eat or use. So, my brother and I would put on our entrepreneur hats and sell them. We filled brown lunch bags full of avocados, stacked the bulging bags in a wagon, and walked around the neighborhood, 50¢ a bag. We never had a problem selling out every day. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why someone would spend a whole 50¢ for a bag of ugly, wrinkly fruit. I HATED them with a passion. An hour of selling would finance our walk to the local Savon, to buy candy bars 3 for a 25¢ or a triple scoop of ice cream from the ice cream counter with change left over. Now that was worth it in my mind.
Oh how things change as we age. Now I LOVE that ugly, green fruit, it kills me to pay $2 a pop for an avocado.
Last week, I picked the fragrant, ripe, 20 or so lemons from the tree in my backyard. I traced my Mom's steps as I squeezed out every ounce of juice into ice cube trays and froze them to have instant, fresh lemon juice at my disposal year round. And my lemons are THE best!
The smell of the citrusy, sour juice made me want the jello lemon cake my Mom made. So of course, when all the juice was squeezed, I made the luscious, lemon cake. Just seeing my Moms handwriting on the old, faded recipe card flooded my mind with the memories of those damn trees and the lost summers picking fruit.
I think I'll go to the store to buy some peaches. I need to make some peach cobbler, just because.
