Fruit of the Month Club X

In Singapore, something like 99 percent of produce has to be imported by truck, ship, or plane. We get strawberries from Korea, blueberries from the US, grapes from South Africa, and various fruits from Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Okay, there may be the odd package of fruit labeled “locally grown,” but Singapore being a little short on farmland, we wonder: where is it really grown?

This month’s fruit of the month is therefore unusual; this time we’re absolutely certain it’s local produce. Why? Well, after a full year of battling the bugs and the elements on behalf of our mango tree, finally we have something to show for it: two mangoes of about the same size as the ones we’d usually buy at the wet market. True, we don’t know how they taste yet, and odds are high that they’ll ripen and drop while we’re out of the country. But we still think they look good enough to qualify as January’s fruit of the month.