American as fried apple pie!

I don't know if you heard the big news over the Fourth of July celebrations, but for a limited time McDonald's (yeah, the place with the twerp CEO) brought back its apple pies.

"But," you who haven't heard ask, "they always have apple pies."

"Yes," I respond, "but not deep-fried apple pies, the way God and Man intended."

Monolith Pie

You obviously have not heard that, for a limited time around America's 250th celebration of Independence Day, McDonald's would be bringing back it's fried version of its pies, rather than the baked type they have been selling for years. I personally suspect that this was at the urging of its most famous french fry cook, one Donald Trump, who as we know loves McDonald's food even more than does its rather peculiar CEO -- who seems to have never eaten it. I think Trump put the word in -- to make this holiday REALLY special we need McDonald's pies deep fried in grease, which is how we won the Cold War. (It just stands to reason.)

Well, last week we had house-selling stuff going on one night that precluded cooking, so dinner came from the Golden Arches -- and so did dessert. 

So, how did it match up to the pies of my youth? Was it crispy? Was it tasty? Was the filling as hot as magma, roughly 2600 degrees Fahrenheit, as people recall? 

Yes, unlike the modern McPie, this had a nice crispy exterior with a sugary top. It was pretty tasty, although as the celebrated Mrs. K notes, the pies were never all that awesome; if they were, the famous failures of the McDonald's ice cream machines wouldn't be such a big deal. As for the heat of the filling, it was no big deal -- I think if you eat the pie as soon as they hand it out it's much hotter than if you save it for dessert, as we did. 

But make sure you eat it ASAP: the label warns you that the clock is ticking!

You don't want your pay frito to turn soggy and oily. 

On the whole the pie was a nice but not needed treat and a pleasant schlep down memory lane. Now, if they start frying the potatoes in lard again, that will be much bigger news that will require a new investigation to be opened. Stay tuned! 

When life gives you lemons…

…smash them lemons, I say! And make iced tea!

My iced tea skills have improved over the years. I abandoned sun tea for fear of bacterial contamination, and traded orange pekoe for black. But fresh lemons instead of bottled lemon juice really seemed to put me in the big leagues.

The question today is: Which lemon abusing tool gets the most from your lemons? The extractor or the reamer? 

Yellow to make you think
lemony thoughts

You’d think the extractor would be better just because of the more technical sounding name:.exTRACTorrrr. But is it? Let’s put them to the test!

I shall juice two lemons with each—1 small, 1 large, as seen at the top of the page—into the measuring cup. That should even out any tiny deviations among the test subjects. Then we shall see which tool yields the most lemon juice.

First, the extractor, which uses a lever action to squash the lemon pulp flat. It is fast-acting and seems to leave nothing behind.   

The pulp remains in the peel and any seeds are generally left in there as well. 

After the large and the small lemons, we have just 

Slightly under a third of a cup. 

Now the reamer. 

This definitely takes more effort, requiring a twist action to get the most out of the fruit. The colander-like basket catches seeds and any large pieces of pulp. But the lemon half does not seem to be as crushed by the reamer as by the extractor. 

To my surprise, however, the reamer is the victor with slightly more than a third of cup of lemon juice produced! 

This may seem unlikely, but the difference can be explained by one small problem with the extractor that I did not take into account -- it has a bad habit of shooting juice out the side when you initially press the lemon. The only way to catch the loose juice is to hold the extractor's head in a bucket, and I'm not making tea or lemonade on an industrial scale. 

On the other hand, the extractor is faster, so if you were to want a lot of juice, that would be the better way to go. Maybe you want to become the next Nedick's or Orange Julius. Just make sure to get a food-grade bucket -- those Home Depot buckets just won't do the trick. 

You can pick your friends…

… but can you picnic?

Maybe where you live, you can barely enjoy the five remaining weeks of summer because of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth among the youths who have already started school. It doesn't start here until the day after Labor Day, but the school supplies have been featured prominently at stores since July 5, so the misery is growing here as well. 

Nevertheless, let us not forget that we're only halfway through August and, despite the Halloween candy in the stores, there's still a lot of summer left. In the socialization department, there's still Labor Day weekend, which means another shot at having a decent backyard party. Maybe it won't rain this time. Maybe Uncle Al won't throw a fist at Uncle Lou this time. Maybe that kid with the purple hair with the snot ring will stay home instead of moping in the corner and grumbling about Trump. Who knows? It could be the party of the year. 

And I am here to offer you a terrific idea for your gathering. 

Barbecues usually have great food, but unlike indoor holiday dining, there's no centerpiece item to make the guests ooh and ah, like a beautiful ham or prime rib or Norman Rockwell-esque turkey, or, for that purple-hair kid, lump of tofu. Well, there wasn't -- until now! Simply follow this recipe for a real show-stopping fruit salad.

Take two (2) blueberries. Cut a slit in two (2) strawberries and insert a blueberry into each. Take two (2) ripe peaches and cut into them halfway; work the pits out. Insert strawberries. Take two (2) mangoes and do the same thing to them, inserting the peaches when the pits are out. Take two (2) honeydew melons; cut in half and scoop out the seeds. Put a mango in each and reassemble melons. Take one (1) very large watermelon. Cut in half lengthwise and scoop out enough to fit the honeydews inside. Put watermelon back together and serve on enormous platter. 

Ladies and gentlemen, you have just presented the Wahonmangpeastrawblu. Slice firmly but carefully and serve in buckets.

I'd much prefer this to a Turducken. Does anyone really like those? They have "turd" right in the name.

So make sure to sling up a Wahonmangpeastrawblu at your Labor Day party! It will get the guests talking, that's for sure. ("What the hell is wrong with Jeff?") You may even help them feel glad that summer is coming to an end. And isn't that what it's all about? Helping?

Meloncholy baby.

I look forward to the produce section in summer. I really do. Excellent berries, sweet corn, peaches, plums, and nectarines. What a delight! 

And every year I fall for the watermelon. 

I love watermelon, I really do. But it is the TARDIS of fruit, I swear. You come home with a baby five-pound watermelon and by the time you finish cutting it up you have eighteen pounds, not counting the rind. I don't understand how it works, but I know that if watermelon had more solid nutrition in it, no one would ever starve. 

No one's starving at my house, which is why, no matter how small a watermelon I buy, I always wind up throwing some out. Because despite claims that others enjoy the fruit, only I wind up eating it. One normal man can only eat so many pounds of watermelon a day. It’s great but not super versatile. And no one liked the grilled watermelon when I tried it.

I was better positioned to consume the whole fruit before it rotted when we had Tralfaz and Nipper, our previous dogs. Tralfaz liked a nice bowl of cold watermelon on a hot day, but Nipper absolutely adored it. Nipper, mind you, would pick individual blueberries off a treat and spit them out, but he was a devotee to Citrullus lanatus and would tear through a bowl like Sherman through Georgia. Izzy, however, Nipper's actual nephew, spurns fruits and vegetables as much as any dog ever, except for chewing grass like a freaking sheep. Dogs are unpredictable. 

Really, if I'm to be so foolish as to buy an entire watermelon again, I ought to enlist the help of "Buffalo" Jim Reeves of Western New York, a professional competitive eater who holds the watermelon-eating record: 13.22 pounds in 15 minutes at an event in 2005. Now, that was some years ago, but I'll bet he still has enough left of his A-game to help me dispose of a petite melon, however large it is inside. 

Mark your calendar for National Watermelon Day on August 3. Who knows what magical thing may happen? Maybe Izzy will eat a minuscule chunk of watermelon. Or maybe I'll wise up and stick to blueberries. At least you can make other things from blueberries. 

Crate day in the mornin'!

Another trash day, another morning inspecting the neighbors' garbage. And what an interesting find we have here! 

Forty crates of wine grapes, emptied and waiting for the trash collectors. A veritable 6x8 wall of wine. It was a magnificent and imposing structure, like the ancient menhirs, Mesoamerican pyramids, or the monolith from 2001. What kind of wino lives here?

Actually, probably not a wino. For an active alcoholic, making your own wine is one of the worst ways to feed the disease. Takes too long. This is the kind of project the wine enthusiast engages in, and I have no problem with that (except it would have been nicer for the garbagemen for them to not put ALL FORTY crates out at once). 

This family is from Eastern Europe. I have a friend who grew up in Communist Yugoslavia, and his family made vast quantities of wine, as well as grappa and olive oil. In a Communist country you did as much off-the-books work as you could. Everyone did. The black market was probably twice as big as the legit market. He's been a proud American for a long time, but for years he still made his own wine because it was a family tradition. 

I personally also made alcohol -- I used to make beer at home, home being my apartment. I did get some really good results, and I enjoyed the process. I made mead, too. Like any great hobby, you can start with a small stake and escalate it to massive proportions -- the way with fishing, you can start with a rod and work your way up to a boat. But I gave it up after a few years. Too much work for too little booze. 

But back to these forty crates. Each was sold as containing 42 pounds of grapes. How much wine could you actually make from that? Well, I looked around at some winemaking sites, and found out that you could get as much as three gallons of wine from each crate. So this wall o' boxes would translate to as much as 120 gallons of wine. Federal law allows more than that per year for households with more than one adult, so they're not considered bootleggers. However, maybe for the alcoholic this could work out after all. 

I wish them well in their winey efforts. I used to do odd jobs for a family that made their own wine, and it was pretty weak, watery stuff. I hope this family gets it right. 

And I hope I don't awaken to an explosion one night, with bits of fermented grape raining over a four-block radius. That would be hard to hose off the roof.

Apples of crabbiness.

It's crabapple time again in the ol' orchard! Come on down and bring your crabbiest friends!

Okay, that's like the one crabapple tree I know of in town. It's on the yard of a house that's more than sixty years old, and since it looks like the only such tree on the property, I would guess it was planted on purpose as an ornamental tree. The crabapple, despite its cross name, is a pretty tree when flowering.

In my childhood, my grandmother's little house had some crabapples around the neighborhood, and we were told that they were not edible. That's not strictly true, but the crabapple is known to be very tart, more suitable for jellies and cider. 

We kids of course found the crabapple most suitable for throwing at each other, because boys are dumb about things like that. You could usually ping one off a kid without causing too much damage, and I speak as the pingee as well as the pinger. Still, I'm glad we had no proto-Randy Johnsons in our family. 

The Latin name for the plant and its various species is much more pleasant than CRABapple. Malus floribunda, for example, is one of the most desirable crabapples for its flowers. But how did an appealing tree with a somewhat useful fruit get such a grumpy name? 

It seems to have been the name for a wild tree going back to the middle ages -- the crab part, anyway, coming from Nordic languages, the apple added later for wild trees that bore these fruit. Although some say it's the "wild fruit" part that was the crab. It's a little obscure. It doesn't seem to be related to the crustacean, who got his name from the Germanic for claw, descended from the word for scratch. Or is it? Because according to Ancestry, the name Crabbe (as in Larry "Buster") came from the "German Dutch and Flemish: metonymic occupational name for a fisherman from Middle Low German krabbe Middle Dutch crabbe '(sea) crab'." So if the name Crabbe (or Crabb) comes from the crab, from the same languages at the same time, how can there be no connection between the crab tree and the crab crustacean? 

And I must say, I've known more crabs (the people) than Crabbes (the people) or crabs (the animal) or even crabs (the fishermen). Undoubtedly the crab one knows at the office gets his or her appellation from the armored sea animal, not known for its cuddly nature. 

That's what I mostly knew of as crabs when I was kid. Lucy Van Pelt from Peanuts was known for her crabby nature. Crabby was a common word then; less so now, a few decades on. I don't know why. It's still useful. I think we all sense the difference between someone who is crabby and someone who is just grumpy; the former is more likely to be looking for a fight, the latter wants only to be left alone. 

I'm not sure why the word in this sense has fallen into disfavor, unless it's because of its association with the famous crab lice. That might make someone crabby. So might getting pelted (or Van Pelted) with crabapples. It might make one as crabby as a crustacean. And speaking of crustaceans, the Asian crabtrees are among the prettiest floral varieties. But not if crushed. Being a crushed Asian would make them crabby. So it's all connected, somehow. Or is it?

Don't shop, adopt (fruit edition).

If you didn't feel guilty enough every time you throw away plastic instead of recycling, well, now you can start feeling guiltier, because by throwing out expired food you are DESTROYING THE PLANET.

But don't worry, because now that fruit, that poor, tenderly harvested, irreplaceable fruit is being rescued!

Danon's Two Good yogurt, named so because it has just two grams of sugar per serving, is here to SAVE THE PLANET by rescuing fruit! And if that sounds silly to you, then you are an Earth-destroying bastard and you don't care. But Danone, Danon's home company, DOES CARE:

Danone North America's Two Good® Yogurt is tackling food waste with the introduction of its Good Save™ product line, wrapping a year of commitment to positive impact for people and the planet for the brand. In partnership with Full Harvest®, Two Good 'Good Save' uses Verified Rescued Produce™ to create lower sugar yogurt products with the goal of reducing food waste at the farm level. The product line is setting the standard for the emerging rescued foods market and is the first dairy product to utilize 100% Verified Rescued Produce™. The initial offering features Meyer Lemons that are 100% verified rescued, with plans to launch additional flavors in 2021 and beyond.

You catch that? They loved the idea of rescuing fruit so much that they trademarked the term Verified Rescued Produce™. Note: The trademark does not mean a government entity looked it over and said, "Yes, by golly, that meets our exacting standards" and stamped it. It just means that they got the USPTO to issue a trademark.

So what is the deal with the great fruit rescue, this Dunkirk evac of fruit, and does this involve PETF (People for the Ethical Treatment of Fruit)?

Full Harvest is a do-gooder outfit that leads off saying that a full one-quarter of all produce in America is wasted. I always find these kinds of assertions questionable. You know the figures are always fudged to make the point stronger. Plus, considering how much we grow in this country, and how much agriculture traditionally goes to waste, I think consuming three-quarters is pretty good. 

If we weren't whacking people over the head to Eat! Fresh! Fruits! and Vegetables! all the time, I think we'd be canning and freezing more, and even less would be wasted. Because fresh stuff rots. Canned vegetables stay good for a very long time. 

I think it's safe to say also that children and teenagers probably count for most of the domestic waste. Someone who lives alone and buys apples will probably try to eat them, however much the siren call of the potato chips tries to lure them away. Parents trying and failing to get healthy food into children is the main cause of refrigerators turning into the hospice of produce, where the bounty of the earth goes to die. 

But Full Harvest is not able to round up the stuff that's perishing in the crisper drawer. So what IS Verified Rescued Produce™?

Verified Rescued Produce® is defined by Full Harvest as produce or its by-product that was grown for human consumption but is determined that it will go to waste at the time of evaluation.

While all Full Harvest produce either falls into surplus or imperfect and is being sold in service of reducing food waste, only some of it can be Verified Rescued™ - meaning that it can be verified that it would have gone to waste at the time of evaluation. Any category of Full Harvest produce above can qualify as Verified Rescued™ if it meets our strict verification requirements at the time of evaluation during our auditing process. When verified by a Full Harvest audit, the produce is officially considered “rescued”, meaning that it reduces food waste, and therefore qualifies for environmental benefits (Water savings and CO2 emissions avoidance).  

So... I'm eating garbage? What was so weird about the Meyer lemons that Two Good rescued that they were considered unmarketable? Now I'm a little scared.

Some people think we need to make supermarkets give away any food that's going to waste, but there are downsides to that that the commies never consider. For one thing, a big food giveaway every day would mean fewer customers and more freeloaders, so fewer people paying the freight. But say we took that step by force of law. Then the commies ask: "Why not give it all away from the get-go?" Because you can never do enough for those people, and they never think through the logical consequences of their demands. The Verified Experience of Communism™ proves again and again that giving stuff away leads to scarcity for everyone, but despite the vast human experience in this experiment, they cannot or will not understand why. 

In a way, rescuing fruit in a way nothing new. The huge Tropicana plant in Bradenton, Florida, not only uses four billion oranges annually to make juice, they also turn the peels into useful products like perfume ingredients and cattle feed. Capitalism is supposedly wasteful, but in fact it is way better at recycling than communism, because capitalists want to make a buck off everything they can. 

But back to the Two Good product. Is Two Good any good?

Yeah, it's a quality yogurt, as Danon stuff tends to be. But I have to say the lemon flavor is not very strong. Maybe they need to rescue MORE fruit. Maybe too many Meyer lemons are still losing their lives for nothing. DO BETTER, DANONE! 

Anyway, I hate being lectured with my food. I'm going back to the store brand. 

Bananas!

One of the supermarkets nearby charges a little more for everything, but you pay for the convenience. It's an easy-in, easy-out kind of shop, ideal for someone just looking to get the fixings for dinner and not much else. Consequently its self-checkout is very popular. I've been listening to electronic voice of the self-checkout computer for years. 

The other day I swung in to get some items that were not available for whatever reason in the bigger store, and while there I got... BANANAS. Why do I cap? Because when you have to weigh produce, the self-checkout computer voice -- I call her Cloris -- has to walk you through the process. And I could hear her in my mind as I made my way to the self-checkout.

You press the button on the screen for produce and the fun begins. "Select the item from the list." Press the button for bananas. 

"Place your . . . BANANAS . . . on the scanner."

Bananas placed. Price calculated. 

"Remove your . . . BANANAS . . . to the checkout area."

I'm not sure of the wording, but that pause before and after loudly announcing the fruit or vegetable of choice sticks with me. Cloris makes those pauses pregnant, and you can almost hear the judgment in her voice. I swear, I'm not going to do anything strange with the BANANAS, Cloris! I just want them for my cornflakes. 

Perhaps she doesn't believe me. Bananas are cheap. They don't have a bar code for her to scan, unlike pints of blueberries and some other things you can get from the produce section. Maybe she thinks I'm weighing dragonfruit or some expensive crap like that on the scale and saying it's bananas. She knows my little scam. 

"Remove your . . . SO-CALLED BANANAS . . . to the checkout area."

I wouldn't do that to you, Cloris! Trust is the cornerstone of our relationship! 

Maybe I should just wait on line for the cashier. this whole thing could be driving me nuts. 

"Place your . . . NUTS . . . on the scanner."

Do not tempt fate, Cloris! 

Stages of Watermelon.

1. See watermelon in the supermarket; feel glad that summer's coming back but think it's maybe a little too early.

2. Break down and buy watermelon (such a good price!) and haul it home. 

3. Watermelon is too large to fit in the fridge whole, since you just stocked it with food from the supermarket, so it begins to migrate around the kitchen as it constantly gets in the way.

Migrating Watermelon

4. Finally have the time and the drive to cut watermelon into edible portions, becoming keenly aware with the first cut of the knife that now the CLOCK IS TICKING.

5. After fighting for what seems like hours, chunks and wedges and slices of watermelon are now stored in the fridge, and a few pieces in yourself, and it was tasty and refreshing, and you're content.

6. New day! Enjoy some... watermelon! Can't put it on corn flakes like bananas.... Maybe have toast instead, with a side of your new favorite fruit.

7. Dinnertime! Maybe grill some watermelon as a side dish? Easy! But that balsamic reduction that was recommended to go with it? Maybe not so easy.... How about some for dessert?

8. New day! Enjoy some more... watermelon! 

9. Third day. Everyone said they were happy you bought a watermelon, but no one is pulling his weight on eating the thing. Hey, do you all want this to go bad? There's still a lot left! Mmm, tasty too!

10. Okay, that's about enough watermelon until next year. Should have bought a pre-cut wedge, but come on -- it was the same price as a whole one. 

11. Watermelon starts to get a slick feel and a vinegary scent. This isn't right, is it? You consider: Man, we just took out the trash this morning and we'll be stuck with it until Thursday now....

12. Dispose of remaining watermelon, vowing never to buy a whole one again, because others in THIS FAMILY will not put their appetites where their mouths are. 

Repeat in July, August, maybe September. 

Too soon?

Okay, I know this is essentially the same gag as yesterday's, but I had a lot of deadlines.

Also, the World Economic Forum is meeting this week, and I'd suggest that they think about these two gags when they start in about us peasants having to eat bugs. At least Marie Antoinette's legendary (i.e., not true) remark about letting the peasants eat cake supposed to have been born of ignorance. These sons of bitches mean it. Plus, cake is better than bugs.

State fruits.

Why do states need a state fruit?

I don't know, but most U.S. states have one. A state fruit is kind of a silly symbol, often meant to promote local agriculture or tourism. Like many silly things, this seems to have started life here in New York, where in 1976 the apple was proclaimed our state fruit. 

We do grow a lot of apples in this state. The town of Warwick has an apple festival every year, as do other places like Cairo (pronounced KAY-roh) and that hub of appledom, Queens. And of course New York City is known as the Big Apple, although the origin of that nickname is a little odd. (More than you would ever want to know about that can be found courtesy of the New York Public Library.) 

Once New York got its state fruit, others piled on -- Louisiana in 1980 (the Louisiana strawberry), South Carolina in 1984 (the peach), and so on. Now most, but not all, states have a state fruit, to go along with the state flag, state song, state motto, state bird, state flower, state dance, state fossil, and on and on. 

Here's a handy chart if you're curious about what your favorite state's fruit might be. Up to date as of September 2022: 

There are some obvious choices here -- Georgia peaches, Vermont apples, Massachusetts cranberries, Florida oranges. New Hampshire has a big pumpkin gala every October. And Minnesota's pride in the Honeycrisp is legendary. 

But there are also surprises on the list. Two states picking the pawpaw, with Virginia considering joining the crew, is odd. New Jersey is proud of its tomatoes, but went with the blueberry. North Dakota's chokecherry and Kansas's sandhill plum have to be cooked before eating (but supposedly make delicious preserves and such). 

California, famous for its oranges, decided to be different, or at least its governor did; Gavin Newsom named the avocado the state fruit all by himself, like the nerd at school who dares you to call his choice a vegetable. (Most of the other state fruits were chosen through state legislatures, but that's not how California works -- or does it?)

The rest of these states need to get into the act. Such as: 

Idaho -- They need to develop the Honeycrisp Potato.

Connecticut -- Money -- Yes, money is not a fruit, but in some places in Connecticut it seems to grow on trees. Darien, Essex, Old Greenwich -- ah, to be there at money-harvest time! 

New Mexico -- Cactus. Whatever type they like. Some are edible. Those are sorta fruits, but I don't know. I've never been there. Just choose something, New Mexico. 

Colorado -- Marijuana buds.

Hawaii -- The pineapple was not a native Hawaiian plant, so choose something else. The coconut is a fruit, of the drupe variety. It kept the castaways on Gilligan's Isle alive, right? 

That's all I got. What do YOU think would make a good state fruit?

Way-out food.

I know you've been wondering: What's Fred been eating? And I'm happy to say I've been subsisting on a totally far-out diet, man! 

Summer's here, and you know what that means:

Of course I'm referring to yogurt, or in this case the latest Yoplait varieties. I've tried their cross-promotions with Starburst, Skittles, Gushers, and Girl Scout Cookies, so Kool-Aid is hardly a stretch. And look, the logo is even busting through a wall like the Kool-Aid Man!

As is typical for Kool-Aid, the color is not something seen in nature. 

And the stuff tastes like Kool-Aid, too. What you think of that depends on how much you like Kool-Aid, or fear the Kool-Aid Man coming through your house. 

On a healthier note, here's another new varietal of apple that I like. Presenting the Cosmic Crisp!  

Like the SugarBee, which I reviewed in May, the Cosmic Crisp was cultivated from the Honeycrisp in Washington State. It's a cross between a Honeycrisp and an Empire, actually. It's a good, sweet eating apple, but is also recommended for cooking. The site says it's "ideal for snacking, cooking, baking, and entertaining." I mean, it's not that entertaining just sitting there, but your mileage may vary.

Very delicious, but whenever I eat one I hear Fred Schneider and the B-52's singing: 

Eat that thing all night long, eat it man you can't go wrong

Don't let it rest on the president's desk, rock the house

Cosmic, cosmic
Eat that thing, eat that thing, oh yeah

Which is a little disturbing. 

If you wanted to make a whole cosmic breakfast for yourself, eat the apple, forget the yogurt, and have a bowl of this: 

That might be a little too cosmic, though, without the aid of hallucinogens. 

Memories of fruit.

It's the season for the most amazing produce, and I grabbed a bunch of it at the store last week. Fruitwise, I hit that department but good. Watermelon, berries, mangoes, and other stuff went into the cart without a second thought, joining the celery, corn, bell pepper, and onion already present. 

It made me a little reflective yesterday, actually. I was cutting this and peeling that and chopping the other thing, and it brought back memories of produce past. Without further ado, here's some Froot of My Yoot.

Plums -- My dad was crazy for plums. When they were in season, my mom could not buy too many. He'd fool with the thing for a bit, nibbling and breaking the skin, then twirl it around and get the good stuff, then suck that pit dry. Nary a drop got on his shirt. Somehow he did it without dislodging his dental bridge. He was a maestro with the stone fruit. 

Blueberries -- I have always loved blueberries, but the best I have ever had or probably ever will have were wild blueberries in Scandinavia. I'm not bragging; our trip there when I was a child was 90% family business, not because mater and pater thought it would be broadening. But it was amazing, and the woods seemed to be full of wild blueberries, a powerful sweet flavor. We were sent to gather some with our distant cousins and had quite a treat. If I ever go back, I am going in the summertime and leaving everyone and running into the woods with a basket until I find some. 

Mangoes -- We were not mango people. They weren't as widely available in my childhood as they are now, but I do recall Mom buying one to try it. I was put off by the flavor, as it was not one of the Four Fruit Flavor Groups with which I was familiar, those being Omnipresent (apples, bananas, grapes), Summer (plums, peaches, nectarines), Floridian (oranges, grapefruit), and Candy (Jolly Rancher, Kool-Aid, Jell-O). Mom liked the mango flavor, but didn't like cutting it because the mango made a hell of a mess, and the only things she'd tolerate that made a hell of a mess were her kids, and those just barely. Later I came to love mangoes. I've probably peeled and cut more than a hundred of them since, and every one has been a barely avoided ER run for stitches. I'm sure there are people who make a living peeling and cutting mangoes, and I'd like to see their technique.

Strawberries -- For some reason, Dad decided one year to plant a patch of strawberries on the lawn. He was a fan, and strawberries were pricey at the time. Well, the collie next door, a pinched-brain little ditz, peed on them, and decided at that moment that there was no place else in the world upon which she'd rather pee. We didn't live in a duplex, note -- to get to our yard this dog had to escape her own yard, run down a path, down a flight of steps, leap a short fence, and run all the way across the lawn to the spot to pee on it. This dog was putting in the work. I've always treasured a good strawberry since, because we sure as hell didn't get any that year. 

Blackberries -- We actually had some wild blackberries growing in a wooded area outside our property, and while they were not as memorable as the blueberries I've described above, they were pretty darn good and the price was right. The only problem was that we had to be exceptionally alert to when they were ready to pick, because the blue jays loved them even more than we did and would strip the plants in no time.  

Watermelon -- Always a summer treat. Also, more of a project than a fruit. As regards the messiness factor, see mangoes, above. We didn't have a lot of barbecues at my house, but when we did, the presence of watermelon was as certain as marshmallows to roast over the charcoal embers. I don't have a lot childhood memories that other kids have -- catchin' tadpoles, playin' ball at the park, climbin' trees, goin' to summer camp -- but those times I remember very fondly. And I still like watermelon. A few years ago when the Mrs. and I were on a trip to Southern California to visit friends and family, in the arid in-state areas, we stayed at a hotel that kept a cooler full of water with watermelon in it out in the lobby. It was the most refreshing water I've ever had, and in the desert, this northern boy needed it. 

Honorable mention: Nectarines and Tangerines -- When I was a kid I always thought the nectarine had to be a tangerine-like fruit because of the name, and to this day I have to remind myself it's really halfway between a peach and a plum. The confusion comes, as with so many things, from the French. The -ine suffix means like or related to or made of; the nectarine is "like nectar" and the tangerine is "from Tangier" in Morocco. Thanks, French! 

How about you? Got any fond food memories to share?