Gnips and Red Plums

Although the summer means heat and hurricanes down here, it also brings us my two favorite tropical fruits, gnips (pronounced ga-nip) and red plums.  Gnips are small golf ball size fruits that grow on trees.  They have a tough outer shell that you split and pull off.  The fruit itself is around a hard pit and you literally chew it off the pit in your mouth until you have gotten it all (at least that is how I eat them). Other more refined individuals probably bite off small bits thus leaving way too much still on the pit when they finish.  Red plumbs also have a skin and pit but you eat the skin of them along with the fruit around the pit.  Willie's fruit stand near our house has started carrying early season pickings of both fruit and this week we got our first batch of both.  Arianna has already tried red plums and likes them as much as her father, gnips are for later this week.