Pomelo

In the staffroom at school I am like the kid whose parents always pack weird stuff in his lunchbox.

My colleagues are all on perpetual diets and don't stray far from salad and sandwiches. I always take leftovers and heat them up in the microwave, stinking out the whole staffroom in the process.

Sometimes they ask what I'm eating. Other times they just steal furtive jealous glances. I feel kind of bad to eat so much in front of them but it's not as if I'm eating fast food or anything unhealthy.

Today I educated them in the delights of the delicious pomelo. They hadn't seen one before and there was some confusion with a Spanish colleague because pomelo is apparently Spanish for grapefruit.

Pomelos (or Chinese grapefruit) have sweeter flesh than grapefruit but the skin around each segment is thick and bitter. I was elated last week when I noticed that my local Tesco had started selling them.


As with most exotic fruits, there is a way to get at pomelos which makes you feel quite clever when correctly executed. I'm very proud of the skills I picked up living next to a wet market in Yau Ma Tei.

I also consider myself a pro with longans and other lychee type fruits (that 'longan catapulted across the table' incident at Vietnamese the other week was a freak accident not representative of my abilities).


And when you've done eating you still have this cool headgear...