Green Jewel Slice

It’s a kiwi.

Kiwifruit (or just “kiwi” as I’ve always heard) is the edible berry of a woody vine native to China. It was known in China as "míhóutáo" (猕猴桃) [1] and was exported and grown in New Zealand as the “Chinese Gooseberry” where they became very popular.

However, in the early 1960s, when Freida Caplan (who would go on to become known as the “kiwifruit queen” and head up a wholesale empire built on connections she made with small-scale farmers) decided to begin importing them to the US, she ran into a problem: at the time there were strong concerns about soil contamination in anything labeled as “berries.” [2] One of the growers, Norman Sondang of Ziel & Co suggested the name, “kiwi fruit,” and Freida took it and ran.[3]

Freida’s hard work led to the spread of delicious green fruits throughout the US in the 1970s and 1980s but, by the time I was a kid in Appalachia in the 90s, I’d never had one. I doubt I’d ever even seen one.

My first memory of kiwis is this: My mamma and I were living in North Carolina. She was on the waitstaff at a country club and came home one night—after working a party that featured a decadent spread of un-finished food—and revealed to me her treasure: a kiwi.

Geode-like, its strange, course-haired skin opened to reveal a green jewel, itself dotted with black crystals. I remember the spiky sensation of the seeds. The sweet, tart, almost-strawberry flavor.

This memory is magical.

I was having a normal night, probably watching Roseanne or Frasier while neglecting my homework. And then my mother comes in, brave and beautiful and bearing such magnificent bounty: a dragon’s egg.

We felt the hairy skin, crunched the seeds, slurped the juice. Some of its magic—surely—would spread to us.

Now, in my 40s and living in a time and place where kiwis are commonplace and even cheap in the right season, I am still enchanted by them. I buy them by the clamshell box and set the hard fruits on the counter to ripen. Once they’re slightly soft, I keep them in an egg hopper in my refrigerator. When I open the door I laugh to myself. Thinking I should be so lucky to have such treasures: Beautiful brown hen’s eggs next to magical, hairy dragon ones.