The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with recipes)

I expected fruit. Difficult fruit. What I got was a lot of memoir in random chapters, with occasional fruit. Xylitol is not a fruit, but apparently it is crystalline so after page after page of crap about crystals and their "health effects" -- literal crap, there's the story of someone who sought to purify their system by ingesting a stone, letting it pass through their digestive system and then retrieving it, sterilizing it, and repeating the process until they felt purified -- there's a page of information about xylitol. This is when we learn that it is crystalline, so oops, sorry for the spoiler above.

I really did not want to read chapter after chapter about the author's health issues, the many non-prescription pills she pops daily, show more her MOTHER's health issues, the health issues of the residents of the long-term care facility where she worked in the office when she was a teenager. Somehow the old folks were supposed to relate to kiwi fruit. But she never explained how. Kiwi was alphabetically followed by Lump, a long-ago college friend's massive abdominal tumour. No recipe for that, thankfully.

What IS this book?

Wheat is not a fruit. We hear a lot about a really dysfunctional relationship between a celiac and a baker. Zucchini is a fruit, technically, but not difficult. There's a recipe for stuffed zucchini blossoms, which does make zucchini difficult. Arguably. The chapter on cherries, which are a fruit, discusses their difficult aspects and promises a recipe for maraschino cherries, which requires an entire bottle of maraschino liqueur (isn't that starting with the end product? weird) and proves to be "canned" by an absolutely unsafe method. I don't like maraschino cherries anyway.

The chapter on the Norton grape, native to North America and undeniably difficult, is a gem and exactly what I hoped for from the book. History about the fruit and its culture. Technical information about its difference from European grapes. A visit with a vintner who uses Norton grapes to make amazing native wines. It's a chapter to keep.

I've never before been tempted to eviscerate a book, throwing away page by useless page and leaving the good part. It would be like carving up a particularly difficult fruit. But it might not leave me much. show less

Compelling essays, sometimes humorous, always helpful about the difficulty of preparing and growing fruit intertwined with rich tales of family and the author's own health challenges and how fruit might help, including a handful of delectable recipes.

Compelling essays, sometimes humorous, always helpful about the difficulty of preparing and growing fruit intertwined with rich tales of family and the author's own health challenges and how fruit might help, including a handful of delectable recipes.

I want to be Kate Lebo’s friend. This is a unique book of memories, knowledge about fruit and recipes. Sometimes it was a little slow to read but I wanted to know more about the fruit, her family and her journey to write this book. She seems to be a special person and this is reflected in this book.

Very interesting, poignant