Yes, there was a bit of a chill in the air this morning, and sure, there were lots of winter squashes and pumpkins to be had. But there were also heirloom tomatoes, and plenty of fruit to be had. These yellow raspberries look like pale imitations of the red ones, they are incredibly sweet and only a little but tart. Get them while you can.

Ever since I moved to Brooklyn, the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket has been my go-to Farmer’s Market. A Greenmarket recently opened in Windsor Terrace, at a location a mere two minute walk from my apartment. Since I wasn’t able to go to the Grand Army Plaza market yesterday, I thought I’d check out the new one. The Windsor Terrace market is not as big as the Grand Army Plaza one, but there was a lot of great produce to be seen. Fresh eucalyptus, heirloom tomatoes, and these wonderfully ripe blackberries. My work schedule will be changing soon, so it looks like the Windsor Terrace market may become my new weekly stop; it isn’t open year-round, but it is open through mid-November.

Biting into a gooseberry is almost like biting into a tomato — there are tiny edible seeds suspended in a sweet, acidic gel. Why, then, do I like gooseberries but not tomatoes? Perhaps because the gooseberry is related, botanically speaking, to the tomatillo and not the tomato. In any case I don’t think I’ve ever seen them at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket before today. To my delight they affixed a small piece of netting to the top of the container so I could take it to go without gooseberries rolling all over the place.

When I visited Vietnam back in 2004, we were warned not to drink the tap water. This warning extended to beverages with ice in them, as well as to fruits that may have been washed in the water. We were there for a few days before we realized that plenty of fruits we found there had outer husks or peels, and that those fruits would be safe to eat. This is when I first discovered things like longans and dragon fruit. Since then I’ve pounced on opportunities to eat usual tropical fruits when I find them here in NYC but there’s nothing quite like eating them at the source, where they’re as fresh and delicious as you can get. When my sister and I were in Singapore and Malaysia in June, we made sure to eat as much fruit as we could find. (You may recall my eating fresh durian.) In the basement of Singapore’s Chinatown Complex we found the fruit section, and picked up some fresh lychees (a first for my sister) as well as bell apples, a first for both of us. The lychees were wonderfully sweet and juicy, though the bell apples were hardly sweet at all.

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Trying Fresh Durian in Kuala Lumpur from Eat to Blog on Vimeo.

I recently visited Singapore and Malaysia, and here’s a short video shot by my sister while we were in Kuala Lumpur. Jalan Alor is a busy street, lined with restaurants and fruit vendors, where we sampled many fruits of Southeast Asia. Here’s my reaction to eating fresh durian for the first time. If you’ve never heard of durian, the outside resembles a spiky football. Inside are creamy lobes of fruit flesh surrounding large pits. Oh, and it smells like rotting garbage and is an acquired taste. It’s considered a delicacy, but because of the stench it’s been banned in many places, including our hotel.

Not seen above: I actually went back for a second piece. Once you get past the initial flavor, it starts to take on notes of caramel, which is great. But it’s still a struggle to eat it, and two pieces was all I really wanted to eat.

I was at my favorite Korean grocery the other day when I spotted a tray of something that looked like tiny apples, with mottled red and white skin. They were, of course, fresh passion fruit, something I’ve never seen before. I do enjoy passion fruit juice so I picked one up to take home. Using a serrated knife I cut through the tough outer skin to reveal the bright yellow seed pods, which when scooped out left behind anemone-like stubs on the inner part of the husk. The seed pods are the edible part; slightly sweet and brightly tart, with a slightly slimy texture, the fruit was very good. Unlike some of the other exotic fruit I’ve tried, the passion fruit I picked up was grown here in the U.S. — I didn’t know that we grew anything like this here.

It always feels special to me when grapes make their appearance at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket. It means that although there is still plenty of summer produce to be had, autumn is just around the corner. These seedless himrod grapes are sweet and juicy, though their flesh is less firm than my ideal grape. I was happy to see the Market so busy this morning; post-Irene many local farmers suffered damage to their crops or to their farms. Help them out by stopping by your local Greenmarket!