Mei Wa kumquat, I thought I took a picture before eating them.
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Still eating cherry tomatoes!
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I had big beef tomatoes (canned earlier this summer) in some keto chili… for dinner yesterday.
Today had some nice shellbark hickory nuts… and a nice garden salad with carrots.
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Dried persimmons…and holy cow am I in love with these things!
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My dried Hachiya this year are tougher than the previous year. It was like chewing on meat jerky.
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If the toughness is from over-drying, I’ve found with other fruit that if I mingle some slightly overdried with some slightly under-dried in the same bag, they equalize.
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I made two batches of Hachiyas two weeks apart inside the house. My house is dry. I also used a fan to discourage fruit flies. That could make them even drier quickly. I massaged them daily. Both batches appeared to be ready about the same time.
They are very chewy. I am gnawing on one as we speak. It is tasty but I feel for my poor teeth !!
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Looks worth the risk to me.
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I’m curious how you dried them? Did you use the traditional hoshigaki method of hanging them from a string? They almost look like they still have the peelings? I guess you saw my technique where I’ve been letting mine go ahead and get soft, then squeeze them out of the skin into a pile and let them dry like that. I find them to be much softer and especially MUCH MUCH sweeter. But I fully concede it has drawbacks and may not be for you- its a bit messy and also a little more wasteful since part of the soft fruit stays with the skin. But for me the taste and texture is so much better its worth it…to me. If nothing else you might try doing just one or two this way.
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Kevin
Yes there were done a traditional way.
These were store bought Hachiyas. If I let them go soft ripe, I would prefer to eat them fresh at that stage.
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That’s been my experience with most dried fruit. The softer/riper it is to start with, the more caramelly delicious the texture and sweetness of the dried fruit.
I’ve never tasted hoshigaki and would like to. The only whole dried persimmons I’ve seen for sale have been from China, including the ones from the Korean grocery chain.
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I’ve been harvesting arugula every day this week, they grow like weed here. Today I had my dill pickles that I made in the summer with grilled ham cheese sandwich, it was a great compliment.
Never tried hickory nuts. They look like walnut. Do they taste anything like them?
@Robert — my wife’s review of hickory nuts (new to her too) was that they taste more like pecans than walnuts.
I can agree with that review.
Where she says walnuts… she is talking about store bought English walnuts.
We eat 4 kinds of nuts on a regular basis (5 now including hickory) and those are macadamia, pecan, English walnuts and almonds.
We both consider pecans to be more flavorful than English walnuts… and Hickory we both agree are very similar… being more flavorful than English walnuts… but not exactly pecan flavor… but similar.
I hear that hickory are really good baked in pies cookies brownies… and hope to try at least one of those by Christmas.
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Hard cider… though i suppose that isnt eating 
Persimmon pudding made from unknown fuyu type. Cinnamon, vanilla extract, milk, and persimmon. Surprisingly it takes quite a bit of milk because it gets super thick after it chills. Taste like pumpkin pie without the crust.
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Aren’t they bitter?
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I found this description of shagbark hickory nut flavor online…
shagbark hickory, Carya ovate, is one of the few indigenous nuts that the American Indians ate raw. … The raw fresh nut of the shagbark, however, is already buttery and sweet, all the way through the end. They taste somewhere between a pecan and walnut , which are in the same family.
Shell and mocker and red hickory taste very similar to shag. Good nut flavor buttery sweet.
Now back in early Oct I found some bitternut hickory down in a river bed area along the Natchez Trace… I did not know they were bitternut… until I tried one. Wow…extreme bitterness… I would call it astringency… made my entire mouth feel aweful, pucker… like a no where near ripe american persimmon does.
I will not be trying those again.
That is a pic of some bitternut hickory nuts… if you find those… leave em. Notice they have a thin husk and nut shell… easy to crack and the nut meat looks very similar to pecan… but wow… taste at your own risk.
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