Asian Pears

There's a little fruit stand outside our local Trader Joes. A tiny, colorful sign points to the red tent shading the many boxes of fruit, but dozens just pass by. They're too busy to even look.

My roommate and I were attracted by the low prices and the enticing smell of citrus. Walking over, I thought I'd died and gone to fruit heaven; you could smell the incredible ripeness of the fruit. Pineapples, guavas, raspberries, huge oranges, tomatoes the size of your fist, clusters of bananas...it was Eden.

And then I found the asian pears.

Golden brown, perfectly round, and so ripe you could smell their sweetness, they just sat there screaming my name. I'm on a ridiculously tight budget, but I bought ten. :)

Upon my first bite, I was instantly transported to late summer afternoons in the backyard. Sacramento is an oven in the summer; heat would waves ripple up from the concrete as we kids tromped around in our swimsuits. I remember waiting all summer for the asian pears to ripen...we'd feel them, smell them, watch them, waiting for them to turn golden and sweet. There was something so special about finally picking one. The cicadas were excruciatingly loud, the heat sticky, and we'd lay in the grass under the trees and let the pear juice trickle down our hands.

Good days.