It's durian season!

It had been nearly a year since I was last able to buy a whole durian. Sure, you can always get those little plastic boxes with the saran-wrapped durian. But it's just not the same. In Seattle, you can get a whole durian just about any time of year from any number of different Asian markets.

Up here in the mountains of Asheville, we are not so lucky. There is one Korean market in town that carries whole durians. They get them by driving down to Atlanta (about 4 hours away) every Sunday and bringing half a dozen back with them. If the durians don't look good that Sunday, they don't get any. During the winter months, they don't bother bringing any back. In spring, they get them if they look good. Once May arrives, they apparently get them every week.

But even so, if you don't act quick, you still miss out. We've gone down there every week for the past 4 weeks to pick up a durian but with no luck. "Oh, we had some, but some guy came in and bought the last 2 about an hour ago." "Sorry, a women bought the entire case as soon as we brought them in." Why they don't buy a full dozen I will never know.

But this week, we called down there just as the store opened on Sunday to ask if there were any whole durians. Hooray! There were! 10 minutes later we arrived at the store and bought the most delicious durian this side of the Pacific Ocean.