Soursop

[MLS]

Over the years I have had very bad luck trying to buy soursop on St. John. A couple of years I succeeded in buying a couple fruit from Natures after asking and stopping by everyday.

Does someone have a reliable source? Maybe a contact you could PM me?

Same thing with key limes!

[RickG]

Trinidad Charlie's and Josephine's/Coral Bay Garden Center farms are your best bets. I've seen sugar apples (small cousins of Soursop/Custard Apple) in the summer time. There are a couple of sugar apple trees at Vie's and she sells them when they are in season. The best bet is to buy some on St. Thomas on your way to STJ.

To be honest, I started bringing frozen mango, papaya and soursop puree in a cooler along with a few frozen provisions as checked luggage. I have a thirsty blender.

The Colombo Stand sells a mean Soursop smoothy. The optional shot of rum is highly recommended.

Always check your villa's landscaping for fruit trees, especially key lime. We stayed at Periwinkle one year and had all of the limes we could consider using.

Cheers, RickG

[waterguy]

Rick
Allesandra has lime, mango, grapefruit and papaya trees hope they are bearing when you are there

[RickG]

Thanks Tom, I'm a pig for it!!

Cheers, RickG

[AquaGirl]

We love soursop and didn't realize we could buy it fresh on STJ. Just had it in smoothies. When we stayed at Anse Chastanet on St Lucia, their beach restaurant had freshly made soursop ice cream and it was so good.

What and where is Trinidad Charlie's? Never heard of it.

[MLS]

Soursop searching started spectacularly this year. Each of the last few years we have had the taxi to Red Hook stop at a couple of side by side fruit stands on one of the north roads into Red Hook (Smith Bay Road was the only name I got out of the cabbie). This year three gorgeous, succulent fruit, one dead ripe, the others needed only a couple more days-bought them all-$5.

Kudos to RickG as both Coral Bay Garden Center and Trinidad Charlie's have soursop (the Spanish call them Guanabana(sp?)) trees, both neither had ripe fruit-it is early in the season. Josephine at CBGC needs to be shown that there is a market for soursop as she thinks that they are too hard to sell as they spoil so fast. She actually had some spoiled ones on the ground that had not been picked and just fell off the tree-boy, did that hurt to see. If you are there between now and the summer, ask if she has any ripe. It is a spectacular fruit. Nonetheless I was energized to find people growing not only soursop, but also sugar apple, custard apple, star apple, key limes, even naseberry which one local called dragon fruit.

Way to go, Forum.

Trinidad Charlie's (yes, the same as the excellent hot sauce)place is deep in a gut east of the miniature golf. Call for directions and an appointment. Only take a vehicle with good clearance like Jeeps or Suzukis. His ecotents are set in a magnificent garden like area more like rainforest Jamaica than STJ. Very impressive for anyone who wants to stay close to nature.

[RickG]

We'll be stopping Josephine's next week and I'll let you know what kind of blender bait I find. Mmmmm, soursop smoothie. If I can't find any fruit I'll just have to stop by the smoothie truck.

Cheers, RickG

[Ondine]

OK, I feel stupid, but where is the Coral Bay Garden Center? I thought I had learned that area pretty well, but can't picture where this would be....I'd love to go there. Please help with directions. Thanks!

[RonUSVI]

Rick, maybe if you're lucky, my tree might have some this week. Scratch that, just checked, none whatsoever. Maybe they are not in season. You can pick some bay leaves though, if you use them for anything!

[MLS]

CBGC is about a mile up the road that runs past the Love City Mini Mart just past the gas station ($3.90/gal).

RickG, you might want to call her this week to start her thinking about it. I did before I went, but I'm not sure if she thought that I was serious or not. Let's see if we can show her some demand for some really low maintenance growing. The real fruit of the soursop is amazingly better than the juice even if its texture has been discribed as wet cotton.

CBGC is also selling tomatoes and greens. I had an amazing dish at Fish Trap of Arctic char (isn't that ironic) served on a bed of Josephine's sprouts (sunflowers, et al) then covered with well wilted greens from Josephine-"tat soi" was one. Superb preparation!

[RickG]

At work late finishing client work and hungry!!! It's going to be a late night, I'd eat bay leaves at this point.

See you Friday Ronnie.

Cheers, RickG

[Ondine]

Thanks guys, CBGC sounds great, can't wait to try and get some exotic fruits there...too many jokes.

[waterguy]

I need a recipe for the smoothie

[RickG]

3 cups ice
1 cup of frozen Goya Soursop/Guanabana
Juice from 4 key limes or 2 limes
2 tablespoons simple syrup
1 cup Cruzan dark rum

Blend!

If you want a non-alcoholic version replace the rum with seltzer water. If you have fresh Soursop/custard apple/etc seed the pulp, run it in the blender, strain through a fine colandar to collect 1 cup.

Yum!

Cheers, RickG

[mrscaptainjay]

Thanks for the recipe. I just heard of the soursop yesterday when the owner of the house we're in emailed me and told me to check the tree in the back garden to see if they were ripe yet. I had no idea what she was talking about. It sounds yummy. Are there any special tricks for peeling and de-seeding? How do you tell if they are ready to pick? There are several in the tree so hopefully they'll be ready this weekend.