Angelcots: Food Of The Gods

A New Delicious Fruit

Text and Photograph by Cozette Cravens

The other day my husband, Tom, brought home a special gift for me. He said they are called ‘Angelcots’ and bought them at Trader Joe’s. He knows how I enjoy vegetables and fruits.

They are the most delicious, sweetest fruit I have tasted in a long time. They are a pale yellow with a silky smooth outer skin and almost a white tender flesh inside that has a very juicy sweet flavor.

Trader Joe’s always has unusual kinds of food and I love it. He said they were organically grown and have a very short season, like maybe two weeks.  We are used to the orange colored apricot and when they are picked from a near by tree, they can be so sweet; but the Angelcots are even sweeter and juicier.

I needed to learn more about this fruit more for my own curiosity. I found out in 1980, Ross Sanborn bought a two acre farm in Brentwood, Calif. to continue his research on growing different kinds of fruit. In 1976, a friend sent him white apricots seeds from Iran and some seeds from Morocco. He grafted and grafted the plants to make this hybrid fruit and the rest is history.

Up to his death at 84, he was still trying to make the ‘Angelcots a hardier fruit so it could with stand traveling across the country.

Only select stores carry ‘Angelcots’ and the season is so short, you need to enjoy them fast. I went to Traders Joe’s, a few days after receiving my gift, to get some more for a salad.  They had run out two days earlier and would not be getting anymore for the season.

I took a picture of my ‘Angelcots’ before I consumed them. Maybe the picture doesn’t do them justice.