Dates, dates, the magical fruit!

So the coolest thing happened to me today! I went down to eat a late lunch (I wasn’t hungry when Ian and Emiljian were eating) and while I was down there, Ian and I noticed a tray full of this tomato-like fruit. We could tell the fruits were frozen by the small white specks surrounding the bottom surfaces. But all the fruits had these small black lines on them, giving them the appearance that they were rotting. 

As Ian and I stared at them debating on if they were actually frozen tomatos, our host dad came into the kitchen and said “Hurm, those are hurms.” Ian and I looked at each other. Hurm? What the heck could hurms be? We figured it was just a fruit common to the Bulkans that was probably not in the US. Our host dad saw that we were still confused so he cut one of the fruits into pieces so we could try it. Ian was a little skeptical so I took the first bite. It was SUPER cold. Yep, I can confirm that it was frozen! haha. I took another bite. It was very, very sweet but super good! “Yum,” I said to Ian, “It’s really good, very sweet!” Ian took a bit. “It’s weird,” he told me, “It looks like it’s rotten.” “No, it’s not rotten,” I told him, “Take another bite, it’s good!” He took another bite but he didn’t look as thrilled as I was about how good the fruit was. 

While this was going on, we could tell that our host dad and mom were trying to find the English words to describe the fruit in more details in hopes that we might know what the English name for the fruit was. He told me about how the trees of this fruit grow in the fall and that in November they pick the fruits and put them in the freezer to store them over the winter. Then he asked us to go get our English/Albanian dictionary so we could look up the word (we’ve relied on this dictionary many times since we’ve moved in but have tried to make it our last option so we could learn the language better). 

Ian came back with the dictionary and handed it our host dad. He flipped through the pages, trying to find the name of the fruit. When he found it, he shouted “Dates!” Date?! Dates?!!! Really?! My eyes got huge! I looked at Ian in amazement “Dates? These are dates?!!,” I said. I was so excited! I eat dates all the time back home! They are like the main source of sweetness for many health-minded gurus like myself. But I had never seen them in their fruit state before, only after they had been dried out like raisins. 

I took another bite of the fruit with a huge smile on my face, and yes, I could totally taste the date-i-ness taste! “That’s why it’s so sweet!” I told Ian. My host father was so happy that I was so happy about eating this. I tried to explain to him that in the US, we mainly eat them dried, but it was kind of hard to describe since he told me that they don’t have raisins in Albanian. He was so happy that I liked them that he said that I could have one every day if I liked! I’m not sure if he was joking but I’d totally be up for that if it’s true!

It was such a great moment, I had to share it will all of you!

Oh I love dates! :)