Noni

Every now and again, a co-worker of mine or of HB's will give us an interesting piece of fruit, something we have inevitably been unfamiliar with up to that point. The marmy apple one of the gardeners at work gave me is probably the most appetizing of the new fruits we've tried, although the genips this past summer were pretty good, too.

A few days ago, HB received this:

Called a noni, this russet-potato-sized fruit is, as HB's coworkers promptly informed him, not good for anything. Apparently, the flesh is far too bitter to be worth trying to eat. One person told him he could put the fruit in a jar and let it ferment. After fermenting for several weeks, the juices would apparently make an excellent health-tonic, due to the large quantities of micronutrients found in the noni.

Having done battle with so much mold and other spores since living here, I was reluctant to let the noni ferment in the house, so HB and I left it sitting on the counter for a few days until we could come up with a better use for it. Unfortunately, I did not read that wikipedia link earlier, and woke up this morning with a full understanding of why the noni is sometimes called the "vomit fruit".

Into the trash and out of the house it went. Hopefully the next intriguing fruit will be less odoriferous.