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"When Sharron Barker was growing up in Missouri, there were plenty of persimmon trees around. But she never ate any, or cooked with them.

'I didn't know anybody who ever ate them,' says the Charlestown, Ind.

cook and cooking teacher.

"She moved to rural Indiana 18 years ago and was promptly visited by neighbor boys who drove to her farmhouse on a tractor with a flatbed and took her on her first persimmon-gathering venture. The neighbors shared their recipe for persimmon cookies with caramel icing, and Barker's own children - the youngest now a senior at Providence High School - grew up knowing all about persimmons.

"These days persimmon lingo and lore flow off Barker's tongue - and persimmon dishes flow from her kitchen - as if she were born and raised in Mitchell, Ind., the town many consider the persimmon capital of the world."

"One doesn't pick persimmons, Barker explains. One 'picks them up.' "(Persimmons hanging on the tree are reputed to be too astringent to eat, at least until after the frost. Unripe, they make your mouth pucker or, as William Strachey wrote in 1610, 'When they are not fully ripe, they are harsh and choakie, and furre in a man's mouth like allam.')

"But when they are ripe, native persimmons are sweet and flavorful, with a richness unlike many other fruits we're accustomed to. That is why many people - particularly in Southern Indiana - love to gather them."

"In the wild the fruit grows no bigger than a walnut (and usually much smaller) and is filled with tiny seeds. The tree, which is related to the tropical ebony tree and provides wood for golf clubs, grows as far north as Connecticut, across to southern Ohio and to eastern Kansas, south to Florida and Texas.

"American Indians in these areas used the fruit and introduced white settlers to it. Why persimmons seem to have taken such root in Southern Indiana is less easy to explain.

"Maybe it's because of Mitchell." "Mitchell, a town of 5,000 people, just held its 48th annual persimmon festival, a weeklong event featuring persimmon queens of various ages, a persimmon-pudding contest and a variety of booths that sell persimmon ice cream, pudding and 'anything persimmon that you can think of,' according to Debbie Webster of the Greater Mitchell Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the event.

"The festival is a homecoming, she says, for people who've moved away and want to visit Mitchell. But there are other visitors too. On the final day about 50,000 people show up for the festival's Saturday parade and other activities."

From Food Editor Sarah Fritschner's 10/12/94"Fall Gold: Persimmons Ripen into Sweet Treats This Time of Year, and Gathering Them is Easy (and Free)" article in "The (Louisville, KY) Courier-Journal." Pp.

C1, C6. Posted by Cathy Harned. Submitted By CATHY HARNED On 10-24-94

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