Persimmon Time!

A rainy cold front moved through yesterday and last night.  With the wind, rain, and cooler temperatures has come the urge to pick up some persimmons.  This afternoon was crisp and cool and sunny.  Patti and I headed over to Martin County and went up on our hill there to a couple of dependable persimmon trees.

We gathered a gallon or so of the squishy fruits and brought them home to run through the strainer.  One important note to prospective persimmon pluckers--be sure to pick up only the ones that have fallen to the ground.  They are ripe and ready to use.  The ones on the trees aren't ready!  Try one and you'll see what I mean! 

The trees on our place are fairly loaded with persimmons this year.  We'll be going back every day or so to pick up a mess of them.  Late afternoon is a good time to pick them up, as they have had all day to fall, and the night crew of deer, foxes, raccoons, possums, and other critters hasn't had their turn at them.  Overnight, most of the persimmons on the ground will disappear as the animals load up on them.  The nutritious fruits help the various wild animals lay on their important layer of fat for the winter.  Just about every wild animal and bird will eat persimmons.

The pulpy fruits were squishy ripe.

This tree is loaded with persimmons.  One major caveat,  don't eat the persimmons off the tree!

Here we're running the persimmons through the strainer.

 After picking through the fruits and removing the big pieces of debris, leaves, calyxes, etc., we ran them through the strainer.  It is a messy, but rewarding job.

Each bag has 2 cups of pulp, just right for a big pudding.

The finished product.  Persimmon pudding is simply incomparable!

For those of you who do not live in an area of the country where you can find persimmons, you are missing a treat.  There is simply no dessert that can quite compare to a persimmon pudding, especially when it's topped with a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream!  If, by some remote chance, one might become tired of persimmon pudding, then they can also be made into chewy persimmon cookies or loaves of persimmon bread!

Life is good!