Dates, Sweet Dates

I've always wondered where dates came from. I remember as a kid eating date bars at Christmas. And Abbie and I started using dates to sweeten our smoothies. Dates are a great sweet snack and I remember going to the little Middle Eastern restaurant/store in South Raleigh. I now know where dates come from. Big tall palm trees. Iraq used to be one of the world's largest producers of dates, but after the first Gulf War, and many UN sanctions, Iraq stopped exporting dates to major Western markets. It wasn't until last week that I realized that all these palm trees around in our area are dates, despite the fact that they're all called date palm groves. You'll see in the below pictures that the dates under the trees are like raisins...they start out hard and smooth, and as they mature, they shrivel up in the heat. These dates are about a month from being ready for picking. Most likely, they'll just fall off and decompose. But, now, you know where dates come from.

Glad I could help in your education today.