New Fruit: Episode III
The kiwi. Sure you’ve had it in fruit salad, but you know you never want to buy them in the store because let’s face it - it’s grabbing fuzzy balls. I bought a sack of six; why not take the plunge, right? None of us would even know about these things If it wasn’t for Snapple and other pioneers in the 90’s exposing us to unheard of flavors like Mango Madness and *gasp* there’s tea that’s green?! And so the world was introduced to Kiwi, which inexplicably needed desperately to be paired with strawberry at all times or it would die. Here’s a little known fact: The kiwi fruit is actually an egg from the bird with the same name containing an undeveloped fetus, just like eggs we get from chickens.
No. But seriously, you do have to peel off the brown scrotum-like skin to get to the sweet green goodness inside. Not sure if that white part is supposed to be trimmed out, but when I’m dealing with such a small fruit, I’m getting my money’s worth. Good news though: this shit is delicious.
Final verdict - it’s a bit tedious to cut up, but you get better at it quickly and the fruit is worth the effort. I’ve already bought them again.
Fruit 2
New Fruit - Part Deux
Next up in the fruit experiment - a Dulcinea cantaloupe from Guatemala.
They’re from Guatemala so you know it’s gotta be good. I don’t know what that means. But those Guats sure did clean the ol’ frat house good enough, so let’s just assume they know something about produce shall we? These ain’t your mom’s cantaloupes! Seriously, these are a little smaller. Cool thing is they are shaped like basketballs, with more defined ridges than your average ‘loupe. Fun Fact: named after legendary adventurer Don Quixote’s fair damsel, who as we all recall from our reading, had enormous breasts.
Final Verdict:
All in all, it pretty much tastes the same as the ones from…uh…wherever the regular ones come from. Since it was a little harder to cut because of the exaggerated edges, I’ll just stick to the original.
P.S. I may have made that up about the breasts. Oh and sorry, people from Guatemala.
New Experiment…
I’m going to buy a new kind of fruit I’ve never had before each time I go food shopping. I feel like I always breeze through the produce section only making my regular stops - sure maybe I’ll try a new kind of apple now and then, but that’s pretty much the extent of my fruit exploration. I grew up on apples, bananas, and grapes, with watermelon being the ultimate summer experience. When I was little, I never quite enjoyed the texture of oranges, so I used to just suck the juice out of each wedge, leaving a pile of dehydrated orange mush. I never really understood pears.
So it’s time to broaden my fruit horizons. First up - mango.
“How do you pick out a mango?” I ask my friend whose culinary reach is much further than mine. “They should be soft, but not too soft.” Which is the same answer given when asking about basically any fruit that’s not an apple. So I buy my mango but I fear it’s definitely not “soft enough” yet, so I wait. And I wait. Then wait some more. The glorious day finally arrives when the mango was just right for cutting. I’ve been told by people that there is a big pit in the center and man were they not lying. This pit is huge and it’s not even nicely shaped. It looks like one of those spiky underwater mines. I was only able to cut off small, thin slices of this thing. Oh, and here’s another fun part - you don’t eat the skin, but you really can’t peel it off either. So you get to suck the fruit part off like your slurping down oysters. I’ll admit the fruit was tasty, but eating the mango was like deflowering a virgin - it takes a long time to get to the juicy part and when it’s over, you’re looking at quite a mess. Final verdict:
Way too much work for the good part. I won’t be buying it again unless it’s pre-cut pieces.
