Sparkling Fruit Salad

Mid-September and the persimmon tree by the workshop dropped its first fruit of the year. Two persimmons on the ground when I came out Tuesday morning. They were soft, fully ripe, and the squirrels hadn't found them yet, which is a small miracle. I picked them up and ate one standing under the tree, the way the first persimmon should always be eaten — over the dirt where it fell, sticky on the chin, the sweetness almost pornographic after a year of waiting. The native persimmon is not the Asian persimmon. It's smaller, intensely sweet when ripe, harshly astringent if you eat it before the first frost or before it falls. I have eaten an unripe persimmon. I will not do it again.

The other one I took to the kitchen and put in a bowl on the counter. Hannah came home and saw it and said: it's started. I said: yes ma'am. By the end of the week we had a quart bowl on the counter and another two quarts in the freezer waiting for me to make persimmon pudding, which is what Cherokee grandmothers made from a yard tree in fall and which is what I make every year because the recipe came down through Hannah's mother and I am the one in the house who has the patience for it.

The cohort. We're in the middle of the fall semester now and the eight new students are settling in. One of them — a man in his late thirties, came back to school after losing a job — is the one I'm watching. He has the steady hands and the work ethic, but he's carrying a kind of shame I recognize, the shame of starting over later than you'd planned. I gave him a longer-than-usual one-on-one Wednesday after class. We talked about technique and we talked about not-technique. He said his wife had been pushing him to take this class for two years before he agreed. I said: tell her thank you from me. He said he would. He came back Friday with an offering of fresh-baked banana bread from his wife. I ate two slices. His welds got better that week. There's a connection between those two things that I won't try to explain.

Caleb pulled fence Saturday. We finished the south line. The whole perimeter of the front forty is now sound — eighty-some new posts, three-strand barbed wire tightened, gates re-hung where they'd sagged. It's the kind of work I wouldn't have gotten to alone for years. With Caleb, in eight weeks of Saturdays, it's done. I told him so over lunch. He said: I needed it. He didn't elaborate. I didn't ask. We ate fried bologna sandwiches on bean bread because that's what I had and the bologna was good and the bean bread made it better.

After a week of watching persimmons fill the bowl on the counter and a Saturday afternoon pulling fence with Caleb until the light went flat, I kept thinking about fruit — the way that first persimmon tasted standing in the dirt, the sweetness that felt like a reward for waiting. This sparkling fruit salad isn’t the pudding I’ll make later in the season, but it’s the right recipe for right now, when the fruit is coming in fast and the days are full and what you want at the end of them is something cool and clean and a little celebratory without making a production of it.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
2 cups seedless green grapes
2 cups seedless red grapes
1 cup fresh blueberries
1 cup fresh raspberries
2 ripe peaches or nectarines, pitted and sliced
1 cup chilled ginger ale or sparkling white grape juice
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
Fresh mint leaves for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Prep the fruit. Wash and dry all fruit thoroughly. Hull and halve the strawberries, slice the peaches or nectarines, and leave grapes and berries whole. Combine all fruit in a large serving bowl.
Make the dressing. In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, lemon juice, and lemon zest until the honey is fully dissolved.
Dress and chill. Drizzle the honey-lemon mixture over the fruit and toss gently to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 10 minutes to let the flavors settle.
Add the sparkle. Just before serving, pour the chilled ginger ale or sparkling grape juice over the fruit. Stir once or twice, gently, so the bubbles stay. Garnish with fresh mint if you have it.
Serve immediately. Spoon into bowls and serve right away — the carbonation is best in the first few minutes.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sparkling Fruit Salad — The First Fruit of the Season, Shared Without Much Said