Congo Fruit at the Brooklyn Market

Sometimes, Sarah and I like to talk about how expensive it is to live in Kinshasa.  How a box of cereal and a pint of strawberries both cost around $27 each.  It is sort of shocking. 

So, I went to a fancy neighborhood market in Brooklyn and reminded myself of the flip side.  Such as:

See that tiny sack of sad, hard mangosteens?  We have a whole crisper full on any given day.  For pennies.  Elias loves them because the fruit is pretty much like eyeballs. 

And starfruit? We can pick them off of trees in our backyard.  (Remember when I found Mama Vida up a starfruit tree?) Those little spiky balls in the picture above - those are rambutans, and we have them as well.  For free!

The passion fruit!  So much passion fruit.  I confess that we had so many of these little suckers that I had to throw some out just before we left because they were moldy.  Forget "two for $5".

So as I indulge this summer in strawberries, blueberries, and nectarines as if they are precious exotic fruit, I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that my current "exotic" is much less expensive than everyone else's.