Day 342

Guenepa: Today's new food is - you guessed it - another find from last weekend's trip to the Buford Highway Farmers Market. Somehow, I'm still able to find new things in the produce section, despite having already eaten my way through most of it. When I saw these, I had no idea what to think - they looked like little green berries, but they had an extremely tough skin that I assumed might yield to something tasty on the inside.

Even though I bought them a week ago, that tough outer skin hadn't spoiled at all when I finally tried them this afternoon. I wasn't able to break the skin with my fingernails, so I used my chef's knife to make a small incision. It peeled away easily to reveal a tiny orange pod covered with pulp, so I took it out of the shell, popped it in my mouth, then began to chew.

Ok, not good. There was yet another tough shell to get through, so I spit it out and gave it a look. The inside of that shell was filled with a crunchy, segmented pit that didn't taste like much. Where was the edible part? I got online and did some some searching, and apparently I was supposed to just chew the orange pulp off the inner pod. I grabbed another one and repeated the process, but this time I just tried to savor the pulp. Once I did that, it was actually kind of tasty. Even thought the amount of pulp was miniscule, it tasted like a cross between mango and lime. Not bad.

Guenepa (also known as quenepa and mamoncillo) are a popular snack in several Latin countries, including Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. I can't say I'd buy these again - they just didn't give me enough to actually eat.