The cashew is a tree in the family Anacardiaceae. Here is some detailed information on the cashew tree. (Perhaps we should start a list of Aruba’s “superfoods!”) One thing’s for sure-if you get the chance to try them while vacationing on this not-so-barren island, please do! Isaac would certainly approve.Cashew Scientific Name: Cinnamomum Zeylanicum Cashew Trees, Facts and Info on the Cashew Tree Some of them even tout some rather impressive health benefits. In the spirit of Isaac’s mission, I profiled a handful of Aruba’s fruits (and one veggie), and to keep things interesting, I chose fruits that are less familiar to us North Americans. Isaac also wrote the book to “reawaken consciousness of a charming feature of Aruba which is fast disappearing”-namely, the picking, eating, and enjoyment of these “backyard” fruits. That misconception that Aruba is a sterile hunk of land? Isaac emphatically blows it out of the water, documenting about 50 different fruits that grow here. In time, Isaac became an expert on local fruits, writing Aruba’s first real catalog of fruits on the island, Galaxy of Fruits Aruba Grows. (Although Isaac no longer has as many fruit trees as he once had, his land still produces mangoes, rose apples, medlars, guavas, jujubes, purple mombins, sweet tamarind fruits, quenepas, and sugar apples.) When he moved to Aruba in his later years, he surrounded himself with a wide variety of fruit trees on his little plot of land in Balashi, enabling him to relive his cherished boyhood. Born in Guyana and raised in Trinidad, Isaac grew up among fruit trees in fact, fruits were part of his survival. He then helped me track down THE expert on the different fruits growing naturally in Aruba-96-year-old Isaac Chin. There, horticulturalist Tilo Damian took a trip down memory lane as he described to me the various edibles he would pilfer as a youngster from people’s yards on his walk home from school, including quenepa, guava, pomegranate, soursop, and purple mombin. And my little papillon serves as the “Johnny Almondseed” of the neighborhood, picking up an almond fruit that has fallen from our almond tree at the beginning of each walk, and then absentmindedly leaving it at a neighbor’s gate in order to yap at another dog three times his size.īut I’m just a mere immigrant…what do I really know? To get the real scoop, I started with a visit to Santa Rosa, home of Aruba’s Department of Agriculture, Husbandry, and Fisheries. I’ve been given gifts of bunches of quenepa fruit, whose thin, tight skins are so satisfying to pierce. (These are not your insipid, supermarket-variety mangoes-although somewhat fibrous, they are aromatic and flavorful.) I have also enjoyed snapping off a tamarind pod here and there from the tamarind tree growing wild in the park close to my house, delighting in its sweet-and-sour pulp. In the 13 years that I have lived in Aruba, I’ve enjoyed coconuts and local cherries from my own backyard, as well as plenty of mangoes that have fortuitously fallen into my yard from my neighbor’s tree. Locally grown fruits and vegetables? Unthinkable! This conception is perpetuated by sources like Wikipedia, which puts forth that “Unlike much of the Caribbean region, Aruba has a dry climate and an arid, cactus-strewn landscape.” But let’s just cut to the chase here-this conception is a misconception.
We also tend to think of Aruba as a barren desert island where nothing grows except for cacti, aloes, and acacias.
We know it as the perfect destination for gorgeous blond beaches that hug crystalline turquoise waters a mecca of great restaurants, shopping, and watersports and home to friendly, accommodating locals. By Debbie Kunder Getting Your Five a Day…in Aruba?Īruba…we all know it as that tiny Caribbean island, where the sun is always shining and refreshing breezes are always blowing.
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