Dragon Fruit

On the advice of my friend Catherine, Stan and I spent the afternoon at HMART, the Korean grocery store at 1302 Blalock Road.   We bought three big grocery bags of marvelous foods for a mere $56.28.  Call it a cheap thrill.  I say "Asian wonderment".

Wondrous it was.  Picture rows of exotic fruit and vegetable, sixty-plus kinds of tofu, four-pound bags of dried anchovies, dried octopus, dried fish, dried mushroom, dried noodles, transparent cans of lychee soda, six flavors of moshi ice-cream, barley tea, jasmine rice, brown rice, white rice, black rice, wild rice, sprouted rice, strawberry-coated cookie sticks, rice cookers, plum wine, and on and on...

We stocked up on such sensible items as seaweed salad, peeled garlic, baby bok-choy and Chinese broccoli tips but we also carefully picked a handful of mysterious selections: a box of Durian ice pops, a trio of Indian bitter melons and the Dragon Fruit.

Only God knows what Durian is.  From the partial picture on the box, I am guessing it's a green or yellow fruit.  And after some internet research, the bitter melons are best eaten fried with a side of yogurt.   So far so good.

But the Dragon Fruit is another story.   Pink and green and large as a mango, the thing looks as if it had just been dropped off a spaceship for the sole purpose of hatching a disturbed alien life-form smack in the midst of our unsuspecting kitchen.  Sure Google says the Dragon Fruit  taste like a Kiwi but who's to say what will really happen when I slice the little sucker up for tonight's dessert?  Will I unleash a baby flame-thrower?  Or will I delight in fruit flesh, feel fine for a weeks only to give birth - not in an nice way - to a four-headed octopus at next Monday morning's office pow-wow?  Or will my taste buds reject the incongruous intruder no questions asked? 

Or worse, will I become so enthused with the new taste that I will start squandering my disposable income on Guava, Lychees and Dragon Fruit  and will have to spend next Christmas at an Exotic Fruit Anonymous rehab center?

Like some self-help guru and my great-grandmother must have said: only one way to find out.  Dragon fruit, it's the knife for you my lovely.