Episode 017: Saving the Seeds

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Transcript

PRE-ROLL: SELF EVIDENT LISTENER SURVEY

AD MUSIC Begins

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COLD OPEN

SOUND: Cecilia Kim rings up a customer at her produce stand cash register. 

CATHY VO: For the last 20 years, Cecilia Kim has been operating OEG Fruit & Vegetable, a produce and flower market in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

CATHY VO: It’s the kind of place with bins of fruit stacked along the sidewalk, with discounts for the ones that are slightly overripe.

Cecilia: Cherry, and the plum, peach...

Cathy: Very summery things.

Cecilia: Summer things, yeah. Then winter time, different.

Cecilia: Oranges… and clementine, tangerine...

CATHY VO: The community here is largely Caribbean American, although gentrification has set in. 

CATHY VO: Her shop is sandwiched between a Trinidadian roti shop, an Israeli restaurant, a Chinese takeout place, and a bodega.

Cecilia: Come, mama, come!

Customer: How much is this?

Cecilia: This is four ninety-nine a pound.

SOUND: Cecilia’s bar code scanner beeps, and she bags the produce

CATHY VO: Behind the register, nestled between international phone cards, is an autographed photo of Cecilia smiling next to the comedian Tracy Morgan, from when he was filming a movie on the block a few years ago.

CATHY VO: I remember that week. I’ve been a neighbor and customer of Cecilia’s for the last ten years.

CATHY VO: People around here call her Cece.

Cecilia: Thank you, mama!

SOUND: Cecilia prints and tears off the customer’s receipt.

Cecilia: Your receipt. Thank you!

CATHY VO: Cece is one of many Korean Americans who opened produce markets in New York City after they immigrated to the States.

CATHY VO: I asked her how she and her husband got into the business.

Cecilia: No choice. Hahah, no choice.

Cathy: Why is it no choice though?

Cecilia: Me immigration people.

Cecilia: Me one-oh-five generation.

Cecilia: And me... me no school over here.

Cecilia (to employee): Weh (Korean for “why”)? Que pasa (Spanish for “what’s happening”)?

Cecilia (back to Cathy): Only high school for the Korea.

Cecilia: And me first job is fruit vegetable store.

CATHY VO: A small market for fresh produce has much lower overhead costs compared to a supermarket, and there are many corners of New York City that have neither.

CATHY VO: So whenever a small produce market opened in a neighborhood that had very little access to fresh food, it became a hub for the community.

CATHY VO: At Cece’s shop, that means there’s ingredients like yams and cassava root, squashes, cho-cho, plantains, Scotch bonnet peppers, saltfish…

Cecilia: ...pickle, pig nose, ear, and everything... red kidney bean.

Cecilia: Together, make a soup. West Indian soup.

Cathy: Huh. Do you make it here? 

Cecilia: Me? I don't know. (Laughs sheepishly) 

Cathy: No, you don't make it.

Cecilia: Me, I don't know. Customer make it for food. Give it to me.

Cathy: I see.

Cecilia: I little bit try.

Cathy: Mmhm.

Cecilia: That's good!

MUSIC: Theme music rhythm begins

CATHY VO: And lots, and lots of fresh fruit. Which is always so much cheaper than at supermarkets.

Cecilia: My husband is going to market every day. See, fresh one, he buy.

Cecilia: Very fresh one, fresh one, customer coming back, coming back,

Cecilia: Keep coming here, same like you. (laughs)

Cathy: It’s true.

Cecilia: I like it!

MUSIC: Theme music begins in full

OPEN

CATHY VO: This is Self Evident. I’m your host, Cathy Erway.

CATHY VO: And today I’m exploring how Asian Americans across the country relate to fruit.

CATHY VO: Thanks to Cecilia’s shop, I have an amazing selection of fruit practically spilling onto the sidewalk at my feet.

CATHY VO: And growing up, I felt like fruit was always a part of my daily rituals, too.

MUSIC: Theme music ends

CATHY VO: My mom hails from Taiwan, a place bursting with juicy, sun-ripened tropical fruit on every city block.

CATHY VO: And she always packed fruit in me and my brothers’ lunch bags.

CATHY VO: At the local supermarkets in the suburban New Jersey town I was raised in, we’d get McIntosh apples, Bartlett pears, bananas, and nectarines...

CATHY VO: Then, if we took a drive out to the Asian supermarket, there would be dragonfruit! And guavas, and lychees and mangoes!

CATHY VO: And starfruit, which was THE coolest food ever when I was a kid, even more so than Pocky, because it made star-shaped segments and the most succulent, juicy crunch.

CATHY VO: But whether it was a bunch of grapes or something more exciting, there was always fruit around. 

CATHY VO: Even our Christmas stockings were always half-filled with clementines or something.

CATHY VO: And my mom had a thing for peeling apples and pears, carving them up just so into juicy, uniformly textured cubes. Not all the time, but maybe as a special treat.

MUSIC begins

CATHY VO: A couple years ago, an article by Yi Jun Loh in TASTE, caught my eye.

CATHY VO: It was titled, “A Bowl of Cut Fruit is How Asian Moms Say ‘I Love You.”

CATHY VO: That story really resonated.

CATHY VO: Then, a story called “How the simple art of cutting fruit can be an act of love” — by Daniela Galarza — came out in the Washington Post…

CATHY VO: ...soon followed by “If I’m cutting fresh fruit for dessert, I probably love you” — by Priya Krishna, in Bon Appetit.

CATHY VO: Eater dubbed the phenomenon “cut fruit summer.” And a lot of people got on Twitter to say this was something shared amongst children of immigrants. 

CATHY VO: It got me thinking about the importance of fruit in the lives of immigrants and Asian Americans.

MUSIC shifts

CATHY VO: Was there something drastically different about fruit appreciation for us?

CATHY VO: With most of my friends growing up, if I did see them eating fruit, it was seen as a chore.

CATHY VO: Fruit was something of a punishment before they could eat the real dessert afterward.

MUSIC ends

CATHY VO: Fruit was weaponized nutrition.

CATHY VO: And I always got the impression that fruit was associated with temptation and sin and lust, or something like that in Western folklore.

CATHY VO: Like that fateful apple that Eve eats?

CATHY HO: You know, stuff that was forbidden! (voice echos dramatically)

CATHY VO: And weren’t apples a poisonous temptation also in Snow White?

SOUND: A wicked witch cackles

CATHY VO: OK —

SOUND: The wicked witch butts back in to cackle even louder

CATHY VO: OKAY, Alright, so maybe that’s a very small sampling of literature.

CATHY VO: But as far as I could tell, in Chinese culture, fruits were everything that was good and chaste and healthful in the world — or the afterlife.

CATHY VO: You gave it to dead ancestors. Peaches especially symbolized good fortune and immortality.

SOUND: A heavenly choir sings

Segment 1: The Mango Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

CATHY VO: So I asked a bunch of friends and listeners whether fruit had any sort of significance to them. And almost every call had a lot to do a lot with family.

CATHY VO: Here’s Jenn de la Vega, a chef and recipe developer who grew up in a big, Filipino American family.

MUSIC: A slightly funky R&B track begins

Jenn De La Vega: My grandmother planted trees for every grandchild in our family.

Jenn De La Vega: And since I'm the first, my tree is the biggest and the oldest tree, it's a, you know, 37 years old.

Jenn De La Vega: Um, it was a big green Apple tree on the far South side of her yard in El Sobrante, California.

Jenn De La Vega: My tree was very abundant with green apples, but they were very small and sour, which sort of, uh, aligned with how I was as a kid. (laughs)

Cathy: Jenn, I can't see you as someone who was sour as a kid. (laughs)

Jenn De La Vega:  I was a very pouty child. I was a very picky, picky eater. 

Cathy: Okay... (chuckles)

Jenn De La Vega: As I got older, I started to get jealous of the other cousins who had apricot trees or peach trees or persimmons that were more palatable or what I thought at the time usable… (laughs)

Cathy: Mmhmm.

Jenn De La Vega: Um, and I didn't really learn until later, from my, both of my grandparents, uh, that you could enjoy these really sour things in different ways.

Jenn De La Vega: Like grandma would just sprinkle salt on the very, very sour Apple, and it would taste great.

Jenn De La Vega: Or we would use bagoóng alamáng, which is a fermented shrimp paste on it. 

Jenn De La Vega: And so, um, I thought, “Oh, well, mine is augmented by many things, and, uh, it's not so simple to enjoy.” I’m like, “Ooh, kind of like me!”

Cathy: Yeah. You're kind of complex! You're for sophisticated tastes.

Jenn De La Vega: My Aunt Ellen is mailing me boxes of calamansi from her backyard.

Jenn De La Vega: And I've been using every little bit of it, not just the juice, but saving the skins to make an, an, achar pickle saving the seeds so that I may potentially have a tree of my own one day, and...

Jenn De La Vega: I don't have a green thumb. Oh man. My grandpa would be so disappointed in me.

Jenn De La Vega: But I did give the seeds to her friend, my friend, Phoebe, who was able to sprout, like, one out of the seven that I gave her.

Jenn De La Vega: And she... She handed it to me at the farmer's market and this tiny plastic planter. And I was like, (gasps) “My child.”

Jenn De La Vega: You know, it's like, um, you know, baby Yoda, like, “Oh! The child.”

Jenn De La Vega: Because there was this, there's kind of this joke on, on Filipino Twitter that, you know, one day you will own your calamansi tree, and not have to go to someone else's house and steal all of theirs.

MUSIC ends

Jenn De La Vega: And I was… I was spraying it every day. I was sitting with it outside while reading a book, like, “Okay, you know, get your nutrients.”

Jenn De La Vega: And I left it outside overnight one night and.. a squirrel ate not — not just the plant, it ate the bottom half of the plastic that it was in.

Cathy: Oh no!

Jenn De La Vega: I know. These New York squirrels are no joke.

Cathy: (laughs) I guess!

Jenn De La Vega: Yeah. But you know, I was shaking my fist, and like on my knees, like, "MY LEGACYYYYYY!"

MUSIC: A ‘60s soul track begins

Dorothy: My mother, you know, who's Korean American, my father, who is African-American, both from rural kind of agrarian traditions, have been growing food since I was in my mother's womb.

CATHY VO: That’s Dorothy Pirtle, who gave us a call from South Central Los Angeles.

Dorothy: Where I live, I call it the flat lands, because I'm really close to a lot of other black enclaves.

Dorothy: And you have like all of these black folks living in this area of, kind of like, post-World-War-II track homes, where much of the land that we live on was highly likely farmland before houses were built on it.

Dorothy: And so when I walk through my neighborhood, I am ecstatic to see, for example, like passion, fruit, and sometimes papaya, pomegranate, and jasmine, and lemon...

Dorothy: It's not uncommon to see other things being grown, but persimmon being grown here is a rarity.

CATHY VO: So naturally, Dorothy’s parents grew their own persimmon tree. It’s over 35 feet tall, and they cultivated it especially for their tastes —

Dorothy: — a particular taste that reminded my mother of home.

Dorothy: She's from a small seaside village where every fall, the tradition has been to make these dried persimmons, and so...

Dorothy: ...it really came as a labor of love and remembrance, but also wanting to be in the present and in the future.

CATHY VO: Nidhi Prakash — who grew up in Mumbai and Sydney — also had a very special fruit tree in her family.

Nidhi: The first house that my parents were able to buy in Australia after we moved there was a pretty big deal, because they'd worked hard for a lot of years to kind of build back up to the point of being able to buy something.

Nidhi: And the thing that seemed to us like a real sign that we belonged in this house was that when we went to see it, we realized that it was an Alphonso mango tree in the front yard.

MUSIC shifts to a dancier, more electronic hip-hop beat

Nidhi: Which don't grow in Australia.

Nidhi: Then we realized that the people who owned the house before us were Sri Lankan, and they had somehow smuggled this Alphonso mango tree into the country and planted it in the front yard.

Nidhi: So since that time, my dad was extremely possessive of the mango tree. He was always suspicious because it was in our open front yard that someone was stealing the mangoes.

Nidhi: And was also very protective of it from the birds.

Nidhi: So I just, I very clearly remember a couple of seasons where when the mangoes would start to come in, he would go out and individually wrap each mango in newspaper to protect it from the birds. (laughs)

Stanford: My dad is from Taiwan. My mom's from the Philippines, but both of them are ho̍h-ló-lâng, speakers of hokkien.

CATHY VO: This is Stanford Chiou. Like a lot of other folks I'm hearing from, he has a real affinity for mangoes.

MUSIC breaks down to a floating keyboard phrase

Stanford: For me it really is those yellow mangoes.

Stanford: Cause that was something I remembered from my infancy in the Philippines, something that we did not have here in the U.S.

MUSIC becomes more of a light-hearted, trap-influenced hip-hop beat

Stanford: These days, I'm actually in the habit of, like, getting the entire box for the bulk discount.

Stanford: Sometimes I'll eat them plain,  sometimes with a yogurt. Sometimes I will, uh, I'll do a caprese, Where I will substitute the mangos for the tomato.

Stanford: You can also sub in a Taiwanese basil for the sweet basil.

Stanford: Yeah!

Raman: The way my mom would eat the seed, like she would cut up the outside of the mango for all of us, but she would eat the seed and scrape it off. 

CATHY VO: That’s Raman Sehgal, co-host of the podcast “Modern Minorities.” Also a lifelong mango fan.

MUSIC ends

Raman: And my wife does that now. And I'm like, “Honey, you don't need to eat with the seed.” And she's like, “No, no, no. I'll do it.”

Raman: And I was like, “Oh, my mom used to love doing that.”

Raman: And my wife was like, “Are you sure she actually loved doing that? Or she just wanted to make sure you guys didn't have to make a mess while eating the seed.”

Cathy: It's so funny. You, you just reminded me. My mom would tell me when she was little, “This is the best part of the mango.”

Cathy: The part that you can't cut off, the part that you have to like gnash your teeth into and get all the fiber stuck between your teeth.

Raman: I can't do it. I can't do it.

Cathy: It's the most delicious part of the fruit.

MUSIC swells then breaks down to a light beat and keyboard phrase

Merk: Fruit was always everywhere.

CATHY VO: Here’s Merk Nguyen, co-host of the podcast “Adult ISH.”

Merk: Whenever we were doing, um...

Merk: …Memorial! When we were having a memorial service for one of my ancestors, you know, the fruit is always part of the offering.

Merk: So it was always present there.

Merk: But my mom also made sure that we ate stuff that was on the food pyramid, and she would always have fruit for us.

MUSIC returns in full

Merk: Whether it was peeled grapes because we didn't like the skin cause we were picky and privileged little shits, whether it was strawberries covered in sugar, because, again, we just didn’t like the tartness...

Ahmed: ...but I would always remember my mom would always try.

CATHY VO: And here’s Ahmed Ali Akbar, host of the podcast “See Something, Say Something.”

Ahmed: She would be like, all right, we're going to eat an Apple and eating an Apple. Wasn't just like, "Here's an Apple for you, here's an Apple for you."

Ahmed: It was like, she would sit at the head of the table. She would slice it into six, even slices.

Ahmed: And then she would put out a chaat masala.

Ahmed: So when you're eating fruit, you know sure. Like you might pick up an Apple and eat it, but there was definitely a ritual to the post dinner, fruit eating, which, uh, you know, I think is very common in other Asian cultures I've seen as well that like, you might not always eat dessert. You might be eating fruit.

MUSIC swells then breaks into a light beat and funk-ish guitar riff

Ahmed: My wife just walked in, uh...  uh, you could ask her what her fruit — she hates fruit by the way.

Salimah: I'm particular, okay? And, I have my niche likes and, um…

Salimah: I feel definitely ostracized from my family because of my beliefs (bursts into laughter), and my attitudes towards fruit...

CATHY VO: Writer Niha Reddy helped me figure out why fruit was such an emotional thing for all of us.

Niha Reddy: As generations turn over, rituals, change or things are just forgotten that your parents did that you don't do, and therefore your children don't do.

Niha Reddy: There's pain and not being able to grasp language the way your parents can.

Niha Reddy: There's, you know, pain and missing, you know, occasions abroad with family. There's far grander circumstances and modes of loss…

Niha Reddy: ...But fruit is food. and what more loving and easy thing to share than that?

MUSIC swells, then fades under Cathy and Raman

CATHY VO: Here’s Raman, one more time.

Raman: It sounds weird, but you forget to eat fruit. 

Raman: And I think it's, the twenties in the thirties were the years I kind of all but forgot to eat fruit unless I was forced to eat it. But I think as a child with a parent or being a parent, I recognize the importance of it. 

Cathy: Interesting. So you have to be instructed to do this.

Raman: It has to be part of the process. It has to be part of the process, for sure.

Raman: The only other fruit I have this weird memory with is durian, which is the worst thing ever.

Raman: I don't know, have you had it?

Cathy: Yeah

Raman: I mean, it tastes fine, but it smells like Hell!

MUSIC begins

Segment 2: Like Father, Like Daughter, Like Durian

CATHY VO: Ah, durian. The king of fruits, as it’s known in Southeast Asia.

CATHY VO: The size of a basketball, only oblong and covered in spikes, this fruit stands alone for another big reason: its smell.

CATHY VO: Yes, it smells bad. But it tastes sorta like ice cream.

CATHY VO: And durian is the perfect example of how we sometimes have to be taught about food — from family and popular culture — and the different ways we teach people about what makes something good or bad.

CATHY VO: When we announced we were working on a fruit episode, my friend Jenn Wong wrote me right away to tell me about durian — and how it had never occurred to her that it had such a bad reputation until she watched an episode of Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Food where he couldn’t eat the durian.

CATHY VO: He spit it out. 

CATHY VO: Seriously, the guy eats monkey butts and I don’t know what else and holds it down. So this was striking.

CATHY VO: Anyway, Jenn’s dad is from Singapore, and in her family, a love of durian goes back generations. For them, durian really is king.

MUSIC fades under Jenn

Jenn Wong: We were having a white elephant on my dad's side of the family.

Jenn Wong: And my cousin helped my grandma buy a whole durian and just like wrap it up in a way.

Jenn Wong: And it was like one of the last white elephant packages that was open.

Jenn Wong: And once it was opened, like everyone in the family was, like, trying to steal this durian. (laughs)

Cathy: (laughs)

Jenn Wong: And my grandma was just sitting there in her chair, cracking up, watching us, as you could see, everyone was so durian obsessed.

CATHY VO: Jenn grew up in the States, and even though her mom doesn’t like durian, her dad taught her to be something of a durian connoisseur.

Jenn Wong: He would like stick a knife into the durian to like, try to kind of cut some holes along one of the seams

SOUND: Weng cuts along the surface of the durian

...and then stick a wooden rice paddle or something to wedge open this durian.

SOUND: Weng works on the fruit and explains to Jenn how he’s wedging

Jenn Wong: And then the smell would start to, like, emanate through the house. 

Jenn Wong: And my dad likes to talk about how my brother and I would be like, "Oh, it's smelly…”

Weng Wong: The first thing they did was they ran away (laughs). Because of the smell.

Jenn Wong: And he would just talk to us and try to encourage us, like —

Weng Wong: — forget about the smell, just taste it. And then, you know, if you don't like it, that's fine, but taste it at least taste it.

Weng Wong: Maybe about maybe four or five times later, all of a sudden, the taste just get hooked up on them, yeah —

Jenn Wong: — from like, not wanting to eat it at all to double fisting, like sections of the durian fruit.

Cathy: (Chuckles) Well, that was quick. (laughs)

MUSIC begins

Jenn Wong: (laughs

CATHY VO: Decades later, in the middle of the pandemic, Jenn wanted to return the favor, and get her dad a really thoughtful gift.

CATHY VO: She found a company called “Year of the Durian,” which ships durian from different parts of Malaysia.

Jenn Wong: There was Red Prawn, Black Thorn, and Green Skin, which are three different varietals that were coming from Penangin Malaysia.

Jenn Wong: These were actually varietals that none of us had ever had.

CATHY VO: The fruit was cut fresh and sent in vacuum sealed packs.

Jenn Wong: Durian to your door. (giggles)

CATHY VO: And the whole thing came with postcards, with tasting notes and details about the farmers who had bred each type of durian.

Weng Wong: So I opened it up and, and it really smells good. And, and then when you put it in your mouth, it's so creamy and so delicious.

MUSIC breaks down a background beat as Weng eats

SOUND: Weng chews on a piece of durian and says “It’s good!” while chuckling

Jenn Wong: He was so happy. He just, that savoring face where he was. Just like, Hmm, this is so good. And he... he just couldn't couldn't stop smiling.

Jenn Wong: It was like, like being back in Singapore or Malaysia. And it's funny, my mouse is like watering, thinking about it right now. (laughs)

CATHY VO: Jenn says that learning to appreciate durian — not just to like it, but to really understand and get to know its nuances and all the dozens of varietals — kind of reflects her relationship with her culture.

CATHY VO: Now, even though she’s well aware that durian can be polarizing, loving it has become a point of pride to her. Because even durian has multitudes.

MUSIC ends

Midroll Spot — Our Body Politic

AD MUSIC begins

CATHY VO: Are you ready to co-create the world we want to live in?

CATHY VO: Then I recommend “Our Body Politic” — a political podcast that’s by and for women of color, with everyone welcome to join.

CATHY VO: Each week, host Farai Chideya  — a veteran Black woman journalist who’s reported all over the U.S.  — gets real with women you need to hear from.

CATHY VO: Like Senator Tammy Duckworth, Representative Rashida Tlaib, journalist Amna Nawaz, author N.K Jemisin, and more.

CATHY VO: So if you want your politics news to lift you up from day to day, then subscribe to Our Body Politic, wherever you listen to podcasts.

AD MUSIC ends

Segment 3: The Seeds of Our Tastes

CATHY VO: Listening to Jenn Wong tell me about all the different varieties of durian that you can’t get in the U.S. reminded me of how our industrial agriculture system has flattened what we think of as fruits and vegetables.

CATHY VO: You know, with the exception of maybe apples, everything is just one type: a pineapple is a pineapple. Or a mango is a mango.

CATHY VO: Except it’s not—and that’s something that I’ve learned a lot about after talking to so many who are obsessed with the golden-skinned, creamy-textured Alphonso mango variety.

MUSIC begins

CATHY VO: Before certain fruit varieties were chosen for mass production, usually for their ability to withstand long travel or shelf life, there were so many more varieties. Now we see those alternative fruits marketed as “heirloom”... if they're even still around.

CATHY VO: In the case of the banana, for instance, 99% of the world’s export of bananas now are a variety called Cavendish, after an earlier mono-cultured variety, the Gros Michel, was wiped out by disease.

CATHY VO: Now, plant scientists are racing to find an alternative to the Cavendish, which is vulnerable to the same fate by disease. But that’s another whole podcast.

CATHY VO: A couple years ago, while writing a story for Eater about Asian American farmers, I spoke with Kristyn Leach, who runs Namu Farms.

CATHY VO: She told me a little about her trials and errors with growing a certain variety of Korean melon, Sagwa Chamoe.

Kristyn: I grow predominantly Korean and East Asian herbs and vegetables and seeds to sell to other farmers to grow those vegetables.

Kristyn: I was born in Korea and then I was adopted to an Irish Catholic family in New York when I was an infant.

Kristyn: And so it was, you know, 20 something years before I ever really sort of mustered up the courage to explore my heritage and my identity.

Kristyn: And I felt like I started to do that just in this private way of, of learning to grow these different crops or exploring the food culture of Korea. 

CATHY VO: I was amazed by Kristyn’s dedication to teaching others and literally planting the seeds for future generations.

CATHY VO: So I got her on the phone, along with Priya Krishna.

Priya: I'm a food writer and the author of the cookbook, “Indianish.”

CATHY VO: Priya also wrote one of those beautiful essays about cutting fruit, in Bon Appetit.

CATHY VO: In it, she mentioned that her dad, an Indian immigrant, went to various Korean, Vietnamese, and Indian grocery stores in their hometown of Dallas, to bring home the most interesting fruits he could find.

MUSIC ends

Priya: It's hard for me to say why exactly it was important to him, but I think for my parents, just the ultimate, like, luxurious after dinner treat was like, a assortment of fruits.

Priya: And when it was mango season, it was mangoes.

Priya: When it was summer, we would have watermelon and stone fruit.

Priya: And I think that my parents were like, “We don't want to just eat the same, like waxy, apples and bananas that are available at grocery stores all year round. We want to really follow the seasons.”

Priya: They were sort of being seasonally driven before that was a thing,

Kristyn: Did you like that as a kid?

Kristyn: Did you, like, envy like cakes and cookies?

Priya: Oh, yeah. I wanted the cakes and cookies. Like, I was like, “Yeah, this fruit is fine,” but I would go to my friend's houses and their parents would have, like, whole pies for dessert.

Priya: Or even like, they would serve fruit, but they would put, like, a big dollop of like Reddi Whip, or like Cool Whip, on top of it, you know?

Priya: That looked great to me. Like Kling peaches. I was so intrigued by Kling peaches, the, like, ones that came in that like vacuum sealed tin. 

Priya: And then like, as I grew up, honestly now cutting fruit for myself is such a luxury.

Priya: And I'm like, man, I was such a little shit who did not appreciate all that, like, luxurious cut fruit I had.

Cathy: Kristyn, what about you?

Kristyn: I grew up with fruit, but I grew up with those, um… the waxy apples that Priya mentioned, um, her parents vigilantly avoiding.

Kristyn: We had a lot of fruit, but it was just kind of discerning between the lesser of evils where it was like, “Oh, McIntosh, apples are here. That's really special because it's not as disgusting as a red delicious Apple,” or something like that.

Kristyn: And yeah, at my grandma's we would get some of the... those tinned peaches or pears and that heavy syrup. And we thought that was like, just incredible.

Kristyn: We didn't realize that's not at all what the fruit really tasted like, but we just thought like, this is the peak of, of what fruit should be.

Cathy: But now, years later, you’re growing and introducing people to chamoe melons, from Korea. How’s that coming along?

Kristyn: Oh, it's great. I mean, the Chamoe is one of my favorite fruits, and I think when I first started farming, like just certain crops felt really distinctly Korean, like they were just a really particular cultivation that had been grown in Korea and really developed in relationship with Korean people.

Kristyn: Or with something that was really, like, cherished by Koreans in the diaspora.

Kristyn: And I think the more I looked into the history, it was just so fascinating because I think one of the things is it was introduced in the fifties to the U.S. by an American seed company.

Kristyn: And I think it's always perplexed people, like even growers today, like, don't quite know how to pick it, and it's not as sweet as a lot of other, uh, muskmelons.

Kristyn: And even when it's picked at its peak ripeness, it's, it's crunchy and it's supposed to be.

Kristyn: And // on a seed saving side, I think that's what's really amazing, and why we need people to, like, really care about the food culture it comes from because to another grower that yeah. Maybe has a palette that's more used to hyper sweet melons or hyper sweet fruit.

Kristyn: You may not see the merit of why this is so valuable, but in Korea it's eaten fresh, but it's largely used in pickling and preserving because of how harsh the winter is. And so that low sugar content really allows it to ferment beautifully and things like that.

Kristyn: And so that's why, like all of these heritage melons that to a lot of Western consumers are, are not really sweet.

Kristyn: But to Koreans, like that's the perfect dessert. Like that's what people love is not too sweet.

Kristyn: And so growing these kind of older varieties feels like a peek into a story of  tradition and what is valued and things that maybe get disrupted in other parts of how we continue narratives, but the fruit can hold onto it because you taste it and you can think of food culture that goes back several generations basically.

Cathy: There's different expectations around fruit that I'm just like, starting to realize, like…

Cathy: Like, I love Asian pears, I guess that's an umbrella term. And they can be less sweet.

Cathy: And I remember, growing up, some kids were like, “Eeew, but it doesn't taste an apple or a pear,” and I'm like, “Oohhhhhhh, but the texture is sooo amazing.”

Priya: I love Asian pears. I love that texture. Oh, it's so, it's so good. It's so much better than a pear pear, where I feel like it would just be, like, gloppy and mushy, but like an Asian pear has like some bite has some graininess. Oh.

Cathy: So good.

BEAT

Cathy: Kristyn, you mentioned pickling the Korean melon. And I want to get back to that for a second, because I feel like there's a lot of different ways to pickle and preserve fruits that are enjoyed in all cultures...

Cathy: But I just remember prunes and prune juice being like the butt of so many jokes in popular culture in America.

Cathy: And, and at the same time, like, there's a lot of like pickled plums in Chinese culture as well as Japanese culture, there's this drink called Swan may tongue that is really, really enjoyed in Taiwan. It's a little bit funky, I guess, it's a little bit salty or smoky, but these are the, I mean, it's basically prune juice, hahaha, but better.

Priya: I love prunes, and we had prunes around all the time in our house.

Priya: Mostly because we were a house that really prized, like smooth digestion. And so we had a lot of items in our house that would aid in like good gut health and, smooth digestion. And so like the eating prunes was like a real treat.

Priya: I was trained. It's like, “If you eat a prune, like you'll have a great poop! And your day will be great!:

Cathy: Nothing to be ashamed of there.

Priya: I remember we had lemon achar, we had a mango pickle, and oftentimes these were, achars that, you know, a great aunt would come into town and spend all day making achar and distributing it in different jars, and then she would give it to different members of the family, we'd label it, and then we'd let it pickle throughout the summer.

BEAT

Kristyn: You know, where I live is a really big Italian prune plum producing area.

Kristyn: And so, yeah, that's what we're largely surrounded by is prunes, which if you eat the fresh fruit is like, so insanely sweet.

Kristyn: But we also, we used to have a ton of the, prunus. Moomey  you know, the ume Japanese apricots. 

Kristyn: And I think it's interesting now because of just, you know, the history of having less Japanese American farmers having retained their land, uh, after being incarcerated.

Kristyn: And so now a lot of this property, like those trees are this weird remnant of this other chapter.

Kristyn: But I was walking through the ume — there's two rows that are left — and kind of picked up some branches to try to root them. 

Kristyn: And my landlord had seen me grab them and was like, "Oh, what do you want? That's just like this kind of weirdly bitter peach."

Kristyn: And I think people now don't even really understand what the fruit is supposed to be or what it is really used for.

Kristyn: And so they just see it as, "Something's wrong. It's really bitter."

Kristyn: When we just sort of end up defaulting to the sense of sweetness being the peak of flavor, we miss out on a lot of really other interesting things that plants have been really bred and domesticated for.

Kristyn: If you think ume is just disgusting and you've never had it prepared in a way, you're just thinking, "Oh, this raw fruit is really nasty"...

Kristyn: Someday that plant may be obsolete just because of the power in that curation, basically.

Cathy: Yeah, it's so amazing to think of all the different things to look out for when you're growing a vegetable for optimum ripeness that don't have to do with sweetness.

Kristyn: Yeah, it's just a strange sort of skewed value.

Priya: I had never thought about that, but you're totally right.

Priya: And when I think about, like, my favorite fruit, which is the mango, like, you know, you can get Alphonso mangoes, which are considered kind of like the king of mangoes, shipped to you.

Priya: But I've noticed that like a lot of Alphonso mangoes, I have, they are sweet and nothing else.

Priya: And I find myself more drawn to varieties like Ataulfo and Kent, where as much as you're getting sweetness, you're getting tartness too.

Cathy: That's important.

Priya: I think that's, like, what makes a mango taste like a mango, really, is like that acid, that sour flavor. 

Priya: And it would be such a shame if that tartness were sort of bred out of mangoes, it would sort of take away from what I think makes mangos so, so delicious.

Cathy: Oh, that would be really sad.

Kristyn: You know, thinking about what Priya's saying about mangoes it's... 

Kristyn: If one variety becomes the favorite, especially for export to different places, and then suddenly like large swaths of these older mango groves, get cut down in favor of that because of the economic opportunity presented and yeah, suddenly you can't just necessarily turn back the clock and regained that biodiversity once it's gone.

Priya: And this whole idea of, like, seeking out really, like, diverse varietals of fruit…

Priya: ... I was really lucky enough to travel around the world because my mom worked in the airline industry when I was younger.

Priya: As vegetarians we often couldn’t eat a lot of, like, the food that we went around the world, so like fruit and produce was like the way we experienced other cultures.

Priya: And I would love to kind of instill this notion that my mom always instilled in us, which was sort of like seeing a country through its produce and fruit stands.

Cathy: Oh, I love that!

Kristyn: Yeah. I think all of these different cultures, proliferating and developing really distinct food cultures is what's given us this sort of expansive biodiversity, as like, plants became really different in relationship with people in place.

Kristyn: And if now we have things that ultimately are servicing kind of a more one dominant worldview, then I think we start winnowing out a lot of other valuable information, like whether that's like the stories of the people and like what we see loss of language and all of these other things...

Kristyn: ...and I think that I like to see people from different cultures, like, growing and having access to these plants, because I think that's the most appropriate stewardship.

Close

CATHY VO: I had never before connected the idea of loving fruits with stewardship of the land. But Kristyn made a great point.

CATHY VO: Maybe just by appreciating fruits for their innate crispness or stench, sweetness or sourness, fermentability or digestive benefits, we’re actually helping these traits survive.

CATHY VO: So that future generations can enjoy them as much as we did. 

CATHY VO: Immigrants from the Asian diasporas and beyond are constantly bringing their love for certain fruits — and maybe a love for fruit, period — to the US.

CATHY VO: And just as with food culture in general, it’s changing the whole fruit game here.

CATHY VO: Whether we’re shipping fruit around the country or smuggling it onto planes, teaching our kids the finer points of durian, searching our cities for varieties of mangoes, or growing the trees ourselves, our various fruit proclivities have taken root here.

CATHY VO: Just by feeding fruit to our kids and raising avid fruit eaters helps to preserve them.

CATHY VO: And while moms and dads might be certain that their kids are getting the most out of this transaction, it’s also the fruit that wins in the end. 

SOUND: Cathy cuts slices of melon on a cutting board

CATHY VO: So the next time you’re cutting up a mildly sweet melon, or trying to grow your own calamansi, you’re not just satisfying a craving, but helping save a species — and biodiversity itself.

CATHY VO: One bite at a time.

SOUND: Cathy takes a big bite into a juicy slice of melon

CATHY VO: Now... isn’t that sweet?

MUSIC begins

Credits

CATHY VO: This episode was written by me. And produced by James Boo, Harsha Nahata, and Julia Shu.

CATHY VO: We were edited by James Boo and Julia Shu, and mixed by Timothy Lou Ly. Our theme music is by Dorian Love.

CATHY VO: Thanks to Priya, Kristyn, Jenn, and all the other folks who shared their fruit stories with us for this episode!

CATHY VO: We actually collected so many of these memories from our listeners and friends that we’ll be posting them on Instagram, at-self-evident-show, using the hashtag, my-immigrant-fruit-story.

CATHY VO: So check it out, and add your story, too.

CATHY VO: Self Evident is a Studiotobe production, made with support from our listeners.

CATHY VO: I’m Cathy Erway. And this is our last episode for a little while.

CATHY VO: So if you want to let us know what you thought about this latest season, email community-at-self-evident-show-dot-com.

CATHY VO: In the meantime, keep on sharing Asian America’s stories.

MUSIC ends

CATHY VO: And don’t forget to eat all the fruit off that mango pit!