Do you know this fruit? First Taste 40 Years Ago in Spain!

This weekend when we were in Point Reye's Station we went into a little organic grocery store and I saw this fruit. Now I need to take you back forty years ago to when I was spending ten days in Spain. I had the luxury of staying at a friend's sisters Villa in Torremolinos. My friend was someone I knew in high school, we had met on a bus in Berkeley one day both going home to Vallejo. She a college student, me a file clerk at an insurance company. I had just quit my job and was getting ready to travel. She told me about her wanting to go to Spain and said her mother wouldn't let her travel alone. I was headed to Mexico at the time and said if she could wait until I returned I would go with her to Spain. I was obviously into making hasty decisions in those days of very grandiose proportions. I had saved $1600 at my file clerks job over the past year and a half and was ready to see the world!

I did spend time in Mexico and I did return and Kathy and I took a drive-away car to Washington DC, then a ship to Gibraltar where her sister met us and we drove to Torremolinos to the villa over looking the Mediterranean sea. Here is Kathy and some guys we met on board. This was in 1961. I was just turning 20.

(Saying goodbye to the wonderful ship that brought us to Spain)

Which brings me to breakfast there. Each day we were served this beautiful fruit...the inside soft custard like pulp with big black shiny seeds. It was a dessert from heaven. I could not get enough of it and I will admit I ate it until I actually became ill. But I never found it again but have looked for it off and on for years.

Kathy and her sister Betty and Betty's two children in the garden

that we looked at each morning while eating breakfast outside on a terrace.

Me in Spain wearing a sweater I bought in a market in Mexico the month before.

And this weekend I saw this fruit, I asked the woman behind the counter what it looked like inside and she described the soft custard like pulp and big black seeds I knew I had finally found my heavenly treat. I bought three of them at $6+ a pound! Pricey yes, but ohmygod worth it.

They are not yet quite ripe enough to eat so I was told to put them in a brown paper bag and wait for them to turn dark and soft and then cut into them. I cheated last night and got a sour taste. Now I will wait for the rest to ripen...it's hard to wait after waiting forty years to taste something you remember as being the best tasting thing you'd ever eaten before! But I will.

The woman in the store told me this grows in Mexico as well and she told me the name but I forgot it in my excitement. Perhaps you can tell me.