How ripe is ripe?
I have Chinese Lanternberries growing in my yard. All the information I have on them says that ripe, they are a tasty treat, and unripe, a deadly poison. Now just exactly how the hell do you determine what is ripe and what is not?
Anyway, I’m not gonna eat them, even though Peterson’s field guide to edibles says they’re awesome, they’re too close to nightshade for my comfort.
Ijits.
15 comments Og | Uncategorized
They are a close relative of the tomatillo, which is excellent in cooking. Tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, and potatoes are all related to nightshade.
I grow tomatillos in my vegetable garden, and use them a lot.
Never heard of em before.
Hope they’re tasty.
Great. How do I determine which one of these fuckers this IS?
Og, if they’re Chiang Kai-Shek lanternberries, they’re safe. If they’re godless heathen commernist lanternberries, they’ll kill you.
Actually, I never heard of the damned things before. If there’s a sudden lack of posting, we’ll know what happened.
Who gets the Suzuki, in such an event?
Oh, there’s a motorbike involved?
Yeah. They’re safe to eat.
Please send the bike in care of boneman, somewhere in Indiana.
The zuke gets buried with me. Sorry.
The interwubs indicates they’re more commonly known as the “Cape Goosberry”, and the poinsonousness of the unripe fruit is not described as deadly, evidently, unless you’re a cow and eat a lot of them.
Evidently unripe ones are green and the ripe are golden yellow.
I have now seen several varieties of this, and I’m not sure how you are supposed to go about identifying them.
Og, it looks like you have the common ground cherry, or physalis lanceolata. There are several variants of the species and all are edible this time of the year.
The picture is ne I took off the web. I will have to take a pic of the actual plant when I get back.
You have children, don’t you?
Now that is far more nuance than permissible by the FDA.
“The zuke gets buried with me. Sorry.”
That’s OK, Og. I’m a Honda man anyway.
If you have a spare mother-in-law, have her perform a useful task, otherwise test ’em on a rug ape first!
I’m big on wild mushroom identification. Wanna try these out for me?
When the “Cape” or outer covering is dry and straw coloured you can usually pick them and yes they are delicous but a tad seedy.
How do I know? Because my Dad and I used to grow them!