I had dinner at my friend Scottie's tonight with her boyfriend Lee and our mutual friend Michael. I brought the wine a fairly light Chinon, commonly known as Cabernet Franc to compliment the grilled beef and chicken. Dinner was very good and dessert was destined to be a treat. I had no clue what was for dessert, but Scottie seemed beside herself when she brought it out. Inside the bowl were clearly 2 cookies (I think she said sesame cookies) and they were really nice and pleasantly light. Deeper inside the bowl were these white gummy looking oddities. The picture shows you what I saw resting in a clear liquid. Ummmm... I'm not always the most polite person in the world but I was game to see what this was all about; hoping against hope that it might be some form of gelatin. Because I was not interested in tasting what my friend Micheal referred to their appearance as Rocky Mountain Oysters.
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Well it is a fruit grown in the state of Florida called a Lychee. So I weaseled my mind to imagine that I was going to eat grape-pears, because that is what I so very badly wanted them to be. Oh dear me, the texture was somewhat chewy and grape-like, but oooh so NOT grape like. The taste was the utter opposite of what my tongue anticipated in advance to be pear. Please understand that I like fruit, I really do. This lychee was fruit-ish, the same way a gummy bear is fruit-ish. But I think that gummy bears and sesame cookies would have sufficed.
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I have not a clue what these little suckers tasted like. They, all 5 of them, were not totally unpleasant to consume. I tasted the light sugar flavor. I tasted something else. And then I tasted something else altogther. Now, the first "something else" I do not have an accurate palatable description for you. Not pear, that's for sure. It was just a fruity "other flavor." The kicker, and deciding factor in my appreciation for Lychee was the second "something else" which was altogether icky. It was an after-taste, kinda like when you burp bologna, but not. It hit the back of my tongue, but not quite *back* enough. It sort of tasted like a subtle hint of sharp hickory smoke. Yes, that was an experience not to be repeated. But Scottie and Micheal apparently like them. Lee just giggled.
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... and the cucumber mint vodka concoction... oh hell I should just stop. We should have ended with the meat. Thank you Scottie for inviting me for dinner.
