Strange Fruit: Why Does Everyone Know Where San Pedro’s Breadfruit Trees Are But Me?

I definitely love bread and I certainly love fruit.  But when I read the description of the Caribbean favorite, the breadfruit:  “its name is derived from the texture of the cooked fruit, which has a potato like flavor, similar to freshly baked bread (Wikipedia)” and a friend described them as “spongy”, I don’t know…I felt a little bit…icky.

Breadfruit for sale – 2 for $5bzd in Central Park, San Pedro

As the “fruit season” in Belize winds down…we will soon bid farewell to abundant mangos…

craboo…

tambran and cherimoya and rarer ones like the custard apples and sour sop (check below for posts on many of these)…breadfruit seem to be available in many spots.

Is this the food that all of those paleo and Atkins carb haters have been dreaming of?  Is this going to replace all white rice, potatoes and bakery bread with fruit?  Again, am I on my way to fame and fortune?  I’ll never know.  For once, I really can’t bring myself to try one of these things.

Here is the guy in the park, who insisted that he could sell ice to eskimos, try to sell me a breadfruit.  It was lots of flirty fluttering eyelashes.  That’s why I caught him with his eyes closed.

Apparently they are delicious sliced and fried…it can be boiled or grilled.  Please let me know if you have tried it.

But since I have not, I set out to at least find a breadfruit tree.  And found that asking San Pedranos that have lived here always knew exactly where the town trees were.   I asked 5 people and got the same answer from all.  Did you check by Billy Leslie’s house?  Have you seen the one in the middle of town behind Celi’s Deli…we always used to pick breadfruit from that one.  Well…duh.

These trees are GORGEOUS and huge…apparently a full grown tree (up to 80 feet high) produces hundreds of these cannonball sized fruit.  (Not to be confused with the cannonball fruit I found in Guanaja, Hondruas.)  Have I also solved the issue of world hunger?  I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.

Here are the leaves on Billy’s tree.  Huge green and glossy.

And the huge tree in the center of town.  How did I miss this?

All I know that my personal garden of Eden has one of these for looks and a giant mango tree for eating.  Breadfruit?  I just can’t do it.