Star fruit, what?
Until two weeks ago, we didn’t know we had a star fruit tree. It’s not very tall, maybe 20 feet, rooted just above where we park the cars. We might have noticed what we thought were long yellow leaves, but being from the Midwest, yellow leaves are not uncommon. I guess we don’t have our island brain in high gear yet.
Then, the tree started shedding fruit all over the cars, and we took a closer look. “Hey, we have a star fruit tree!” Known as carambola in other parts of the world, it’s high in antioxidants, potassium and Vitamin C. Now, the only time I’ve eaten star fruit is on fruit pizza, so my recipe file is a little slim. Some judicious Pinterest searches led me to starfruit jam and smoothies. A little imagination added starfruit to the ingredients for fruit roll-ups, which are slooowly baking in the oven. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Here’s a shot of our tree. Pretty innocuous.
You can see why we overlooked it.
Here’s the fruit still growing. Not like a leaf at all.
And about 1/3 of our harvest so far. We’ve given a lot away. Tomorrow, I’ll make more jam, maybe keep some out for toast.
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