In college, I tended to make late-night runs to Giant Eagle (the prevailing grocery store in Pittsburgh). Like, late night. I was nearly addicted to these accidentally vegan fake oreos called Chocos, and conveniently for my random urges, the Squirrel Hill Giant Eagle was open 24 hours. One time I saw my Modern Art professor there and it was weird. Much weirder, however, was the obscure piece of produce I discovered.
It was like a creepy, yellowy-orange, multi-fingered hand, and I only ever saw it on these middle-of-the-night Choco runs. Sometimes I would go to the same store the very next day and the bizarre fruit would be gone. It was quite the mystery. One day (or night, actually) I found a label for it that read “Buddha’s hand”. Weirder still.
Wikipedia tells me it’s also called a Fingered Citron, which is descriptive but I don’t think I’d eat anything with ‘fingered’ in the name. I’m not sure why it took me this long to look it up; perhaps I subconsciously wished to prolong the mystery. If I ever see it again, I might just have to try it.
