Flightless Bird: Feijoas

Perfect! Alright. Numbers are moving. I assume it's recording. Is it?

finish Synced before, I just rewrote it. Oh wow, just now? Just now. Hot off the presses.

So it's not, it's still not great. Okay. But you let me know if it holds up. Great. And if it holds up, let's just put this in the episode.

Everything's good. But I wanted to address something. This doesn't bode well. No, this is not a problem. Okay.

today that I didn't know the answers. Like your parents, date of birth and stuff like that. I know their dates of birth. That's always a mystery to me. I always forget.

Yeah. To figure it out. But the exact cities they were born. Another important question was, have I ever been there before, which I have. And when I went, what were the addresses of the places I stayed and the cities, all the cities I visited, and the visa number from then.

It doesn't exist. Yes. But did you do it on the fly? Did you wing a few things or did you just get as close as possible? I just labeled the cities and I said, no visa number.

I don't think I could do it, which feels crazy.

And no, for the same reason that I talk about how difficult it would be for me to give up New Zealand citizenship and pledge to another country. There is this thing about wherever you're brought up, you end up feeling this deep loyalty to the place.

But more than loyalty, there is a gratitude for the place, I think, that is underneath all of it. And then it feels like cheating. It feels like you cheated on your monogamous partner.

Yeah, and it's the place that made you you, right? So you're like, this defines me, and now I'm just turning my back to this place. And so, yeah, after some of these conversations I've had, I just thought this could be an interesting question, as well as people immigrating to America and becoming citizens. And then I like the idea of the reverse thing. Another interesting thing about America is that once you become a citizen, so I'm on a visa, right?

Based on what you've earned in New Zealand? Yeah. Oh!

I could never return here. I could have a huge falling out with you guys, be like, I don't want to do this podcast anymore. Oh, I hope that doesn't happen. It's not going to happen. Go back to New Zealand.

Wow. If you became a citizen here, and then you moved back, and then we had a big falling out. You said, I don't want to do this podcast anymore. And then you moved back to New Zealand. Can you renounce the American citizenship?

Yes, I can. But when I do that, I would not be allowed to say, it's for tax reasons. That's like a no, no. So I'd have to be like, oh, no, it's nothing to do with tax. They make you say why?

Remember, we called my dad, but he didn't have much information.

No, he didn't have a lot. Couldn't remember much.

But also on this travel visa form, I had to fill out about them, their place of birth, and their nationality, and if they ever had a previous nationality. And for both of them, it's true. They're both American citizens, but were originally born in India.

When do you find out whether you're given a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

I don't, I'm not so sure.

You're just waiting.

I'm just waiting.

It's all out of your hands. It's whether they deem you worthy or not.

We'll probably be back by then, by the time this airs. And Dax is doing this too. He's doing this process too. And I kept thinking today when we were getting these questions, it's so much easier for him. He just says, no, no, yes.

There's no complications. Just America, America. America, America, yes, yes. Here I am. Yeah.

Thanks. Let's hope I get there.

Do you have any questions about New Zealand?

No, but I'm really excited to hear about your adventure.

I haven't even said what the topic is. Okay, let's just, I'll play you my little documentary. It's very specific, about a very specific thing.

Okay.

But sometimes I think we've got to be specific in this life, you know?

Agreed.

Sometimes you don't know what you're missing from home until you return. It. all kind of floods back at once. And in New Zealand, it's things like all the green you see out the plane window, the fresh air that hits you when you leave the airport, and the sight of certain trees and animals. But for me, the main thing, the main thing I'd forgotten I'd been missing this whole time, the taste and smell of my favorite fruit, the Fijoa.

Oh, hi, I'm Georgia.

Georgia is just one of five million New Zealanders who love the Fijoa. I understand you're a fan of the Fijoa.

Oh, I was about to swear. Can I swear?

You can swear.

I fucking love a Fijoa. I love a Fijoa so much. So much. It's just part of the culture. You walk down the street and there's a tree on the side of the road and you just huck some Fijoas in your bag.

What's that word that you just said? Huck?

Huck. Like throw? Huck? I don't know.

It's really good. I'm a New Zealander and I haven't heard that word before. It's really good.

Huck's, a good word. You can put it into your vocab.

What is it about the Fijoa? that's so good? Because I feel like Americans, they don't know what they're missing.

It's like a soury sweet in its own package. You don't even need to like, put it in anything. You can just huck it off a tree, open it, eat it. It's so good.

Simply put, Fijoas are the best fruit, referred to by some New Zealanders as green gold. They're green and about the size of the egg I once cracked on Rosabelle's head. Using words to describe the taste of a Fijoa is doing the fruit a disservice. To understand the ecstasy of a Fijoa, you've got to use your taste buds. Some say the flavour has hints of guava or strawberry or pineapple.

Honestly, if I can get a good access to Fijoas, I would do 20 a day in like a sitting. Because all you do is just cut them up. And then my secret hack is if you eat one half that is delicious, I'll put the other half aside. So I can make sure I finish on a good Fijoa. Because some of them will be duds.

20 a day?

I would say easily, yeah.

So in your lifetime, we're talking thousands of Fijoas.

Absolutely.

Like many New Zealanders, George's appreciation of the Fijoa started in her youth.

My neighbours, where I grew up, had a Fijoa tree and I used to go on night raids. So, like they told us that we could come and pick Fijoas off their tree, but I was always too embarrassed to do it during the day. So I would go in the dark of night. And then, as I got older, when I met my fiance, I would make him come with me to go on night raids to get Fijoas off the tree.

So romantic.

Yeah, start of a great relationship.

I mean, it was. Georgia, and her fiance now own a dog and are getting married later this year. Now, when in America, I find myself browsing the fruit aisles of countless American grocery stores, desperately seeking a glimpse of my favourite green fruit. But I always fail, sinking into a deep depression. But now I'm back in New Zealand, I can embrace the Fijoa.

This is a wild Fijoa and the vintage is 2022, and it's the best beer in New Zealand currently.

Just as an aside, the transcription software I used to make Flightless Bird can't understand the New Zealand accent. So when Sean said, this is a wild Fijoa, the transcript read, this is a wild vagina. Anyway, I'm at the bar talking to Sean from the Eight Wired Brewery. The name of the brewery is a very New Zealand thing. Number eight wire is a common type of wire farmers use for their fences here.

Won that big trophy down the end there, that big wooden block. It won that and that is the champion beer, which is the highest award for the beers at the Guild Awards.

Sean pours me a pint of Fijoa beer and I take a chug. And because it's a hot summer's day in New Zealand and because this beer tastes like Fijoas. Well, this drink is heaven.

You basically brew a pale ale beer. Then you stick it into barrels for a couple of years and then you mix a metric ton of Fijoas, gets mixed with that. And then you sit that for about another year and then it gets packaged up. When it's a fresh vintage, it smacks more of the Fijoas, and then the older it gets, the more of the barrel age funk comes out. So if you were to taste one of those 2014 vintages, it'll be really funky from the barrel.

I take my delicious beer outside, because I'm not just here to drink beer, I'm here to meet someone.

My name is Kate Evans. I'm a freelance journalist in New Zealand. I mainly write for New Zealand Geographic magazine, but I also write for some American publications like Scientific American and Biographic.

More importantly for this episode, Kate has also recently written a book about Fijoas. It's called Fijoas, a story of obsession and belonging. And from what I can tell, it's the first in-depth book focusing on the best fruit on the planet. I wanted to learn from Kate how this fruit became so synonymous with New Zealand, as synonymous as sheep and flightless kiwi birds and number eight wires. It's my suspicion that part of the appeal of the Fijoa is that there are so many Fijoa trees everywhere here, just growing in backyards and on sidewalks.

I grew up about 15 minutes from where we are now, in a very small town of about 500 people called Lee. My dad had a Fijoa hedge and one big, beautiful specimen, Fijoa. And my sisters and I would walk home from school every day. And in the autumn, which was Fijoa season, the beginning of the school year for us, the ground would be covered in Fijoas and heaven, so good. And we just get home, so we'll chuck off our school bags and sit under the tree with a spoon and knife, cut them open and then spoon them out and eat them.

Can you just describe this? Because if you haven't had this experience of this, just Fijoas en masse falling from the sky and you just devour them when you're a kid, what sets it apart from other fruit? Because there is something very fucking special about a Fijoa.

Right. Well, one thing is the crazy abundance. There's nothing for nine months of the year and then there's just shit tons of them for two or three months and you can never keep up. They're always just rotting in the grass. But the day that they first fall in, they're amazing.

You're transported back to being a kid in the light of the best time of the year.

Yeah. This kind of like beautiful, relaxing thing of being in the garden or in the sidewalks in the suburbs.

Kay's done some digging into the Fijoa situation in the US and tells me that you can sometimes find them there in farmers markets. But in America, they're called pineapple guava, which makes sense because they do sort of taste a bit like those fruits. Fijoas, sorry, pineapple guavas, were brought to California in 1901 by an Italian gardener who had gotten some seeds in from France. Immediately caught the eye of a man in Santa Barbara.

And this guy, Francesco Franceschi in Santa Barbara, was like, this is going to be the fruit of the century. And he was passionate about Fijoas and him and a couple of other guys who were kind of involved in bringing the avocado to California as well, which obviously was a lot more successful. They were really trying to promote the Fijoa.

For a while, things were looking good for the tiny green fruit. Back in 1914, an American newspaper proclaimed the Fijoa a wonder fruit that will soon be one of the most popular sugar fruits in the United States. Ads said it was the most popular new fruit since the avocado. And by 1915, seeds were selling for $6 a gram, which by today's standards is about $150.. Unfortunately, after a promising start, the Fijoa ultimately tanked in the US.

So you have to graft it or clone it in some way, and they're not that easy to do that.

Some Fijoa trees refuse to grow Fijoas at all. By the 1930s, the LA Times had taken to calling the Fijoa a desirable hedge plant. This description is sacrilege to a New. Zealander. Kay tells me that despite the ultimate failure of the Fijoa in America, she's located a few stray trees around San Francisco and Sacramento and other bits of California.

I met some crazy Fijoa fiends in Red Bluff, California, in the middle of nowhere. They would trawl the streets of Sacramento looking for street trees and them in people's gardens. And they'd knock on people's doors and be like, excuse me, can we clean up the mess for you? And then they'd come and get all the Fijoas.

New Zealand has also tried to get other Fijoa products into America, but unsuccessfully. It's like the fruit was cursed by the founding fathers. 42 Below is a big vodka brand here in New Zealand, and they launched a bunch of their vodka in America. Every flavour a success, except the Fijoa flavour. Apparently, when they ran their Fijoa vodka past the FDA, the FDA said no, because the Fijoa doesn't exist.

What size are they?

They're like an egg. They're egg-shaped. So are they egg-sized? Egg-sized. Egg-shaped.

David, this is a serious, okay.

Wow, I don't know what to say. I've got discipline problems. This is a serious issue. This is now the third.

time you've attempted.

to like gift things. Yeah, and there's a donut issue a while ago. Look, all I can say is I love Fijo. And sometimes if I'm at my house and I get a bit sad or something or a bit down, I just want to eat chocolate, and it was for your chocolate. So I don't have it all.

Well, then I'm not sure if it exists. I am like the FDA. I'm just not sure it exists. until I see it. I have that on good, that sounds like that's made up.

I have on good authority from someone that talked to the FDA that that's exactly the reason that this Fijo vodka didn't get in. Because literally 42 below every other flavor. they imported, Fijo, which is their most popular flavor in New Zealand, they couldn't get in. Wow. So you've never heard of this, the pineapple guava?

It kind of looks like a lime. Yeah, fair.

Okay.

Oh, it has a little hat. It's got a little hat.

It does have a little hat. Yeah, that's where it attaches on to the tree. Or it looks a little bit like an interesting shape.

cucumber.

This is why it never took off in America, because people walked by these fruit and they're like, that's a little tiny cucumber. I don't feel like a cucumber that's tiny. I'll just get an ordinary cucumber. Are you eating fruit? Because my favorite fruit is the passion fruit and the kiwi fruit.

It's definitely lacking from my diet. You're more of a veggie gal. Yeah, I would say more veggie gal. If I'm at the grocery store, one out of five times, I buy fruit. One out of five.

I'm a 10 out of 10.

Lemon and lime and stuff, for that's not, I don't count that, because I'm mainly like cooking with those things.

Because one thing I love about California is all these punnets of fruit. everywhere. There's strawberries and there's blackberries, and then there's apples and pears and all the, and watermelon. Chopping into a big watermelon. I know.

Okay. If they're in a salad cut up, I like that. But I never enjoy. just biting straight into an apple. Hurts my teeth.

Did you have a bad experience with an apple as a child? Like one that was a bit too flowery or something a bit too?

tart or something? No, it just doesn't feel fun to eat. It doesn't feel pleasurable for me to eat. If I'm buying fruit at the grocery store, it's either likely a banana or blueberries. Blueberries is my go too.

Those are great choices and combine those into a smoothie and you've got a delicious smoothie.

I know, but then you have to clean the blender and stuff. I think that fruit feel complicated. You always have to do something. You have to wash the berries. I need them to be as easy as an almond where you just eat it so fast, but you can't.

The fruit flies do come for the banana. Yes, so fast. Extremely quickly. Where are they? I'm in an apartment.

I do wonder about fruit flies. Like. are they born in the banana? Like why?

Yeah, and if there's not a banana around you don't see them. I never see a fruit fly just sitting on a wall or just relaxing. I don't know what the fuck. Where are they? Are they in the house, behind a book or something waiting until what's that banana?

No, I don't know where they. we need to look at where they come from. You know we do, because it's crazy. I have a bad feeling. they like emerge from the banana.

Yeah, I mean it makes sense, right? Because they do not exist otherwise. And the banana hits a certain level of ripeness. Usually overripe. The thing about the fruit fly.

chew them back. And then you get rabies. And then you get your rabies spots. I don't feel great.

Okay, so are you intrigued by the Fijo? so far? I am. It sounds good.

Okay, I really, like you said it in the doc nuances of strawberries, pineapples, kiwis, apples and mint. That's a lot of flavor. yet. It's also called the guava.

Yeah, the pineapple guava is the American name. Guava is a specific taste. Yeah, I wouldn't liken it to a guava. I mean for me, the kiwi fruit is just so part of being a New. Zealander.

Okay, okay. Oh, my god. Because earlier, when you said the kiwi fruit is your favorite, you meant a kiwi.

I meant a kiwi fruit. Okay. Not a Fijoa. No, we don't call them. So.

What are your top 10 favorite fruits?

I'd say they're tied with the passion fruit. And then I go in through all the berries. I love blueberries. I love boysenberries. I love blackberries.

Melons, not for me. Cantaloupe, no thanks. Honeydew, no thanks. What's honey? I haven't had honeydew.

Cantaloupe, not for me. Do you know about the cantaloupe? No, I'm nodding like I do, but I'm like, what is it?

I wonder if you'd like the cantaloupe. Sounds like antelope. Yeah, it sure does. It is with a C. Cantaloupe.

Oh, yeah, I've seen them. Yeah. I've never.

chopped into one. You've never had one. No. But see, see, they require chopping and like the mango, you have to, I love a mango, but you have to ding ding ding, India, they have lots of mangoes there, but you have to like cut it. It's hard to cut.

Yeah, some of the prep is hard. I mean pineapples are very intimidating to chop them up. Exactly. Yeah, the stuff like that.

And then the strawberries have little hats that you have to then throw away. Oh god, does that feijoa hat have to be thrown away?

Okay, so you can eat a feijoa in a variety of ways. You can chop it in half with a knife. Okay. And then you just get a spoon and you spoon out the contents. You can't eat the exterior?

So they're native to Uruguay and the three southernmost states of Brazil and a little tiny corner of Argentina.

I thought that maybe the feijoa was a New Zealand thing. But of course, as Kate explained, other places had the fruit before us.

I later discovered that Colombians are obsessed with it, even though it's not native to Colombia. Colombia is from the Andes. And people from Georgia, the country of Georgia, not the state of Georgia, and Azerbaijan, really love them.

I've been thinking more about why feijoas, this wonderful fruit, hadn't taken off in America. And I remembered something else. Kate had told me. We were talking about the distinctive smell of the fruit. It's a good smell and maybe a smell I'd smell somewhere else too.

So the main component of the feijoa spell is a compound called methylbenzoate, which is really mostly only found in such a concentration of feijoas. And apparently also when cocaine meets air in certain circumstances, like humid circumstances, it can combine to form methylbenzoate. So airport sniffer dogs have been trained to recognize that smell to detect the presence of cocaine. So maybe don't bring heaps of feijoas back in your luggage when you're getting back into LA airport.

Maybe that's the real reason. the feijoa vodka never got FDA approval. They thought it was just full of cocaine. I was going to bring some feijoas back for Monica and Rob, but this has me running scared. I'm getting a fresh visa and I don't really want to get into an argument with customs about why my bag stinks of coke.

I live in San Jose, California, which is in Silicon Valley. But before it was Silicon Valley, it was known as the Valley of Heart's Delight, the Santa Clara Valley, a major fruit growing region historically. Since the 19th century. So a lot of people have fruit trees. And my boyfriend and I moved into a house in San Jose about 15 years ago.

Rebecca had discovered the feijoa and she and her husband, they've never looked back.

We were like, can we eat these? Are they toxic? And started eating some of them and it was like, wow, these are really good.

I really recommend reading Rebecca's blog, feijoarecipes.

When the feijoa was first introduced in California in the early 1900s, it was promoted as the next avocado, according to one article I found, from 1915. And it was planted widely. And then people gave up because the fruit just didn't do as well. And I think the reason is the climate in California is not conducive to really great feijoas. in a lot of areas.

Look, I live in hope that one day the feijoa will take off in America. And that I won't have to come all the way back to New Zealand to eat it. Rebecca hopes for the sunnier future, too. Okay, you've got to pitch the feijoa to an American that's never had one before. They're like, I don't need a new fruit.

This is a really good, really special fruit. Like no other fruit you've tasted. Give it a try. You'll like it. I'd never met a person who didn't like it after they tried it.

She's pretty much right. Except she hasn't met my dad, Alistair Farrier. And as this episode wraps up, and in the pursuit of journalistic integrity, I have to add that not everyone here likes the feijoa. My dad, well, I think he hates them. Which he explains to me in his typically reserved New Zealand way.

That was incredible. Oh, I love when your parents join us for this show.

Yeah, they get so visibly uncomfortable if ever I bring a recording device out. I'm sure. And just, yeah, very, very reserved. You can force things out of them. And that was my dad just being, oh, he hates feijoas so much.

vibe. Dads are so dad-like. They have such a fingerprint. Yeah, how does it happen?

I don't know. Time, they age like a fine wine or something.

They age in the exact same way, apparently, every single one. Okay, but the way he spoke about it being fine, if you have to, is how I feel about apples.

Right, you're like, no, it's like. I don't hate them, but it's like, oh, there's nothing else. If my blood sugar is plummeting,

I will. I don't.

hate it. I just never want it. You're stuck on an island. It's all of a sudden, you're like, oh, so, I guess I'll have an apple today. There's nothing.

Yeah, that's how I feel. But while I was listening to that, it did remind me that, though I don't love fruit or I don't buy it, I love a fruit pie.

I'll pop it in a pie. That's American. Pop it in a pie. Yum, yum, yum.

Yeah, because when she said, made the distinction, it was Georgia the country, not Georgia the state, that was obvious to me because I would have known about it if it was Georgia the state. But Georgia, the state, is known for peaches, peach state, and I do love, and at first I was like, I don't like peaches, but I do like a pie. I love a peach pie. I've never had a peach pie. I can make you a peach pie.

I.

You think meat. And you would not, you'd think savory, always. Every time. Wow.

So that's a cultural thing that I want to get into, and I want to know why all these different states have these different pies that they're proud of. Okay, this is great. I had no idea that your thing was peach pies in Georgia.

Southern delicacy pie. Okay. I've never tried to make that one. I don't know. I could try, but I'm going to probably just contribute a peach galette.

and we can just sample them? There'd be hundreds of them. Feijo pie.

Do you think there's such a thing? Should I look it up? Just see if there's a Feijo pie. Okay.

It's hard to spell. F-E-I-J-O-A. For anyone that's singing along.

Feijo pie.

Mini Feijo apple pies.

It's all Feijo and apple.

Yeah, why is everyone popping your nightmare fruit into the apple? Monica's like,

Actually, I love an apple pie so much. Yes, I pop it in a pie.

Yeah, so I think what you need, you need the savory with the fruit and that makes you give it the okay. No, it's not savory, it's sweet. You know, our fruit pies are sweet. It's a dessert. Of course, even the pastry is a bit sweet, isn't it?

It's good.

This is fun. I enjoyed this. So yeah, I wanted to educate you about the Fijoa. Anyone out there listening in America, look for the pineapple guava. That's what I'm talking about.

It's like a character assessment. Like no, maybe. Cool millennial types?

Maybe. There's an alternate reality where everyone in LA, the hipsters, are all eating Fijoa instead of the avocado toast. They couldn't be further apart. But get one. The way it is like an avocado is you want to feel it and it wants to be soft, but not too soft, because there's nothing worse than an overripe Fijoa.

It does sound like it would really attract some fruit flies, but can it be under ripe? Can it be like the avocado, where it's like you can't even bite into it?

Yeah, I wouldn't. It's just very tart. So I wouldn't rush into it. You want one that's just at the perfect level of ripe. And that's why it never took off in America, because I think they just go off so quickly.

Okay, well, maybe I'll go to the Hollywood Farmer's Market. That's a very good farmer's market on Sundays. Yeah, okay. You should. That would be the place.

Yeah, I want to find one. You're going to consume it and you're going to tell me where it sits when you compare it to the apple. And I hope you like it more than a fucking apple. If I don't, I will not go. well, for you.

Okay, if we do a fruit pie episode, I have two friends, Lizzie and Joe, incredible friends. We as a team, as a trio, love pie. And they did pie for their dessert, for their like wedding cake.

Oh, wow. That's how much they love it. Yes. Okay, great. Well, let's talk to them.

They got little pies from all over the city and I went to help with the tasting.

So I got to try all the pies. To find out what they're going to have for the wedding. That's such a good gig. It was so fun. Well, maybe we round up them.