Yay…It is a craboo season!  Gnome and I relish this time when we can sit together and polish off a huge bowl of this delightful fruit together…day after day until the season finishes.

We have some of these craboo trees (Byrosonima crassifolia) growing voluntarily on our land.  The fruits are not mature yet, still at a small green stage.  We have to keep a keen eye on them because the blackbirds (Carib Grackles) are scoffing off all our fruit (both unripe and ripe) as if there is no tomorrow.  The cheeky buggers!!

Anyway, the taste of craboo fruit is like no other.  They are red or yellow in colour, round and soft.  The flesh is white and has a distinct unctuous cheese-like fragrance with a background of mild sweetness.  They are truly umami and it is a wonderful taste experience.

To get the most of the craboo fruit, they require fermentation in  plastic bags for a few days (1 to 3 days depending on the degree of fragrant cheesy flavour you would prefer).

A few years ago, we were given a handy tip by a Belizean who recommended that we placed our craboo fruit inside the car to allow maximal ripening of the fruit.  So, you can recognise a true craboo connoisseur if they have bags of craboo sweating away in their car and they are totally non-plussed by the cheesy odour emitting from inside the vehicle.

So far, we have not found any fellow ex-pats who share our love for this unusual tasting fruit.  The locals all seem to have the same feverish enthusiasm as us…I have seen Mayans buy ten bags at a time at the market.  I have seen the way their eyes ogle at the fruit as they labouriously go through the bags of fruit, looking for the ripest ones.  The job of finding the best tasting bags of fruit, becomes an obsessive task.  I know this because I stand side by side with all these Mayans man-handling the bags of fruit as we vocalise our anticipation with “ooohs” and “aaahhs” and smile knowingly at each other.  I feel that I have been initiated into an esoteric, sacred custom of Belize! Gnome says that liking craboo should mean that you have graduated successfully into a fellow local Belizean.  It is a well-known fact that it is extremely difficult to get Belizean residency in this country…and there is apparently no logical system to follow in order to gain this status.  Gnome has suggested that a bowl of craboo should be placed in front of applicants; if they are seen to be eating craboo fruit with great gusto like a local person, then they should be granted the Belizean status!  Knowing all the expats down here in Toledo, I would say that, given this test, they would all be leaving en masse!