Every week there’s a new report on the latest shiniest research on living longer. The Mediterrean Diet. Acai berries. Pilates. But those who have studied populations boasting a high percentage of centenarians claim that is isn’t the latest hard-to-pronounce dietary supplement that ensures longevity, although eating well is part of the answer. Factors that long-lived populations had in common were a strong sense of community, moderate exercise, a life goal or purpose, and a plant-based diet
So what better use of my time while in Australia and New Zealand than to develop a purpose, in the company of friends? The icing on the cake, or in this case, the topping on the ice cream, is that the goal involved eating as much of a certain plant-based food as possible.
It started in Australia, where Bill and I came upon a store that sold home-made ice cream and sorbets. When we saw that passion fruit was one of the choices, we were transported back to the summer and autumn we spent in Auckland 15 years ago when we switched houses with friends who needed our home as an outpost while on sabbatical from the University of Auckland. When we arrived at their house a few kms from downtown Auckland, passion fruit vines twined up to their backyard deck, and we watched the fruits grow from a flower that looked as if it had been drawn by a graphic designer to a fruit shaped like a jumbo egg the color of an aubergine. We waited till it began to shrivel a bit, as instructed, then sliced them open and scooped the pulp and seeds over everything we could think of – morning muesli, ice cream, and of course birthday pavlovas. Mostly unavailable in Portland (and when available, largely unaffordable), passion fruit became the madeleines of our sojourn in NZ. A whiff of passion fruit scent could transport us back to that year when we had two summers, when, because of the house switch, we had a fuzzy dog to walk and a live-in friend in the flat next door.
So we ordered the passion fruit ice cream in Port Fairy on the Great Ocean Road and decided, in the words of that famous New Yorker cartoon, that it was good, but not immortal. But with that first tart lick and that first whiff of the sorbet’s transportative scent, I decided I was on a mission. In the next two and a half months I would compare and contrast passion fruit gelato and sorbet in every town we stopped in that had home-made frozen delicacies on offer. It’s a tough job, forgoing the inventive chocolate gelato flavors on offer in favor of a fruit-based nosh, but membership in the Longevity Club might depend on fulfilling this goal.
When I got to New Zealand, I asked for help from my community of friends to continue the research project. Ailie pitched in by leading me to a small storefront in her Auckland neighborhood which served moan-inducing cones and by meeting me at a gelato café in Nelson (where we were so impressed by the other flavors that, after tasting the passion fruit and pronouncing it better than most, we proceeded to buy 18 scoops of various flavors to take back to our hosts and share after dinner). I tried another specimen to rate at a gelateria in Mt Eden, a fifteen minute walk from the house where we originally feasted from the long-gone passion fruit vines, and another while waiting for the ferry to Devonport to attend a folk music concert held in a WW II bunker built into the side of a defunct volcano, but that’s a whole other story. And after completing my week’s teaching at the Remarkable Symposium (named after the hyperbolically-named mountains rising beside Lake Wakitipu, which made me wonder about the extreme modesty required to name a town Boring, Oregon) in Queenstown, I compared notes with fellow tutor Lisa Walton (Http://www.dyedheaven.com). 
By this time, the clock was ticking and it was time to revisit what I suspected was the clear winner. Although the golden weather had reached its end by the time I had concluded my teaching on the North Island and headed back to Auckland, I didn’t let the need to don my polar fleece stand in the way of getting back to Ailie’s neighborhood in St. Heliers to test my initial reaction to the Village Co-op’s passion fruit sorbet. The return visit took on a festive air courtesy of the young women behind the counter, who had donned bridal veils in honor of the Royal Wedding scheduled for that evening.And so it came to pass in a land far, far away that a left-wing Oregonian who doesn’t quite get humankind’s need for ritual sat eating passion fruit sorbet and watching The Royal Wedding with two Kiwis who couldn’t wait to see what the royal bride would be wearing. With each velvety spoonful of gelato we gawked at another example of Dr Seussian headwear spotted among the wedding guests. Was the wedding even broadcast in the US? In New Zealand, parties were being planned all over the nation, and friends were gathering, some wearing outfits befitting wedding attendees, some in jeans and tiaras. On the bus earlier that day, I had overheard a woman speaking at full volume, as people unfortunately do in public when using a cell phone, discussing with some urgency what Kate’s new title would be.
Wedding, schmedding. Over the burbling about the dress, the hats, the invitees, I declared the Village Co-Op the clear winner in this quest for the best passion fruit gelato or sorbet. But I intend to return in a year or two to determine if they’re able to hold the title. There, I have a new goal. Just added a couple of years to my life.