The Plentiful Persimmon

I became such a big fan of persimmons. They kind of crept up on me. In my family, persimmons used to be just a post–Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner treat mixed in the fruit basket along with pears, pomegranates, big navel oranges and grapes. My siblings were (and still are) fussy eaters, and they did not like the soft texture, but my mom and I loved the sweet taste and beautiful pumpkin-orange color. We used to cut the persimmons into soft chunks if they were firm enough or scrape the more ripened fruit into a custard dish to be eaten with a spoon. When I was at an Army post in Missouri I saw smaller native American persimmons growing wild “in the field,” and locals showed me how to pick and eat them after the first snowfall when they were sometimes semi-frozen. These so-called Ozark plums were to me like nature’s popsicles, and as I munched them they reminded me