Produce buying has been easier in recent years, probably because I'm not buying much fruit at the supermarket. Greengrocers and farmers markets tend to have fruit that's already ripe or that will ripen soon. So it's been a while since I bought home a bag of peaches that just refused to ripen.
Here's a handy guide to how fruits far after picking, from Shirley Corriher.
Fruits that never ripen after picking: soft berries, cacao, cherries, grapes, citrus fruit, litchis, olives, pineapple and watermelon
Fruits that ripen only after picking: avocados
Fruits that ripen in color, texture and juiciness but not in sweetness after picking: apricots, blueberries, figs, melons other than watermelon, nectarines, passion fruit, peaches and persimmons
Fruits that get sweeter after they're picked: apples, cherimoyas, kiwifruit, mangoes, papayas, pears, sapotes and soursops (also known as guanabana)
Fruits that ripen in every way after picking: bananas
Oddly, this list does not include plums, but they seem to be like apricots, getting jucier and softer but not necessarily sweeter.
There was a time when I didn't work evenings. When I could come home and cook. I made everything from scratch. Cooking was easy and ideas were fresh (like the produce) and everything tasted good. My daughter Maggie was still living at home and her sister Lyza was in town, as was my mother, Pearl. I started with the shorthand food diaries I had kept in the late 1990s. Then I kept finding things to say about food.
1 comment:
I dunno, my peaches still seem pretty hard most of the time. Getting fresh fruit is no picnic.
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