What in the universe is a Pluot?

To be honest, I'd heard of the pluot before seeing it from my Cali gal Leigh (WHO NOW DESERVES ENDLESS THANKS FOR WATCHING V-To-Tha-Nus... Thanks Leigh!), whose relocation to Lexington at the very least served to broaden my Kentucky horizons. She's a true California gal... the kind that looks more like Memoirs of a Geisha than Clueless... and hence has a taste for the finer things. So when Leigh says seek out and find, it's usually worth your while to do as she says.

Which is why after school today, I cunningly asked Laila and Mack if they wanted to go on a bus adventure to the pet shop on La Brea Avenue. The real reason I wanted to sneak up to that stretch of LA was to go to Ralph (CA version of Kroger) to discover the pluot before I head back to the KY. In the midst of limes, pineapples, avocados, oranges, nectarines, mangos, peaches, coconuts, persimmons, pomegranates (which I also discovered last week and YUMMY!!), tangerines and star fruits, the plums and apricots sat innocently next to one another. I'd found them, so where was their offspring? Where was this marriage of tastes unlike anything I've tried before?

Duh, on a pedestal right next to them.

For $4.99 a pound, I bought enough pluots to get a good sampling in case some were riper or less ripe than others -- oh yeah, and to share them with other pluot virgins if they made it to the fruit bowl in time. I should note that there were about four varieties of plum next to two varieties of apricot, so finding the pluot was an accomplishment in itself. The pet shop ended up being a bust with only about three birds, so we had to go to the Beverly Center so I could redeem myself (that's where the adorable tiny puppies and bunnies are -- and the Apple store that puts a smile on Mack's face) and the pluots landed in my oversized bag for three hours until we made it home.

Turns out the pluot is about the juiciest fruit I've ever put in my mouth. It's like a plum with pizazz, more plum than apricot for sure. Instead of being a plum and an apricot that get together, it's more like a menage a trois starring two plums and an apricot. I remember when my mom brought home star fruit for the first time and how my thirst had never been so quenched. That was sort of how the pluot felt. Fruits having experimental sex really pays off.

One of the things I am going to miss the most in my interim back in KY before we move out here is the fruit. I can walk out the door, go across the street and have a nice Mexican woman with a fruit cart cut up a bag of cantaloupe, honeydew, mango, coconut, pineapple, you name it, just for me for three whole dollars. Every time Mack's mom comes home from the Iranian market, she brings back bags of fresh fruit, with none costing more than 99 cents per pound. I've eaten my weight in fruit since I've been out here and am going to have a void that bananas, apples and oranges won't come close to filling. And the weather, well, today was 85 degrees here... 28 in Lexington. Come on, seriously.

California is fruity.

California is a fruit show off. Lemon trees in parking lots, orange trees lining the highways, nectarine trees in neighbors' yards... and then the fruit selling guys, who cut up mangoes and pineapples and canteloupes and watermelon and coconut and cram it all into a giant bag for $5.

Those fruit guys should win Top Chef honors for what they do on sunny days.

Mack's dad is a bit of a fruit junkie, so their house is always stocked with fruit. There are, of course, bananas and oranges and apples, but thanks to the Iranian store Elat, there's also cherries and blackberries and sweet lemons. Elat sells fruit for half of what it is at the regular grocery store, so even if you have to park your cart and then scramble around the store collecting your goodies, it's worth it.
Just before we got to LA, they'd stocked up on fruit from Elat, including baskets of strawberries. Or some steroidal version of strawberries.

That is a strawberry next to a Gala apple... a strawberry so large that only it and about six of its giant friends fit in the normal-sized strawberry basket. Now that's almost as impressive as a pluot.

[An apple aside, since we're on the subject, my mom and dad discovered these apples called Honey Crisps that are the best apples on the planet. Sprinkle a touch of cinnamon on them and it's like dessert. Honey Crisps put other apples to shame.]