I'd like to think I'm adventurous with my food but I only tried my first avocado Brazilian-style dessert last week, and only had my first acerola juice today!
We actually have an acerola tree in our garden and it came into bloom about a month ago. Our empregada made me taste it and they were a little sour. The past week they have just been ripening and falling to the ground and being wasted (being covered in dog poo... not so delicious). So I picked a few yesterday to make into a juice and then a friend came over today and did the job properly by plucking the whole tree. They are really ripe and fragile and look like a cherry but you can crush them easily if handled too roughly.
They have seeds and little twigs but my empregada told me it didn't matter. So I just washed them and threw them in the blender with some orange juice and leftover pineapple. Ugh, all I got was some seed residue! bleugh. It made Sonia, our empregada, laugh as I had done it all wrong. She added a whole lot more water and blended it for minutes rather than seconds, and then strained the juice to collect all the seeds and twigs that I was trying to drink. It is SO delicious - I think I'm going to have to alternate my juice order with acerola+laranja and my usual favourite, abacaxi-hortela (which I can never pronounce!).
Acerola is a berry that is most commonly found in this part of the world. It has 7 times more Vit C than an orange and is really good for children and babies. Unfortunately Sophie's response was 'yuck, I don't like this' but she says this about everything that comes across her little path in life at the moment. Luckily for Baby Olivia - it's going to be one of the first few flavours of her life!
Sources
1. http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/acerola.html
2. http://www.ceplac.gov.br/radar/acerola.htm
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acerola
