Who knew how sexy cashew trees are? Last week I had cashew fruit and wondered if it was a marketing ploy or a real fruit.

Finally had time to investigate and turns out it’s pseudo-fruit… a swollen peduncle (a stalk bearing fruit) that grows behind the real fruit that yields the cashew nut (which is actually not a nut but a seed from within the true cashew fruit). The true cashew fruit isn’t edible; it contains a skin irritant similar to poison ivy. The pseudo-fruit is juicy and sweet but fragile and very perishable, so the fresh fruit isn’t exported outside South and Central America (where it’s known as marañón)).

You can try a cashew fruit smoothy at that trippy little Acai Vida juice bar (upstairs in the Harvard Market at E Pike and Harvard). It’s a good match with rich acai berry pulp.