The Fruit Explorer Stubs His Toe on an Orange

To All,

While rummaging through that emporium of the off-beat,Trader Joe's, I found a curious fruit called an orange. Let me say first that the color is off-putting. You would never want to have this stomach-turning color in your kitchen, except possibly at Halloween. The first person to eat this fruit must have been brave indeed. The variety I tested is called a naval orange since it is eaten by naval personnel to avoid scurvy.

The fruit is round, and the outer peel reminds one of the uniq, but it lacks the appealing asymmetries of the uniq. Also, this puny fruit is considerably smaller than a uniq. The peel does not display the cuttability of the passion fruit since it is too soft. Watch out and don't cut your hand. Keep an aloe leaf handy. If you throw the peel into the trash, expect it to stink up your kitchen until trash day finally comes. The smell is pungent enough for a perfume.

Once you have removed the peel, you find an uappealing, fishbelly white under-peel. You can with difficulty remove it, though the nutritionistas will howl since, you guessed it, as usual, the most revolting part is the most nutritious.

After peeling, I gathered my courage, put a piece into my mouth, and bit down. It was unpleasantly squishy, and juice shot all around my mouth. 

If you eat fruit so that you can delight in caressing the seeds with your tongue and playing spitting games with them, the naval orange denies you even these simple pleasures.

The verdict: Visually revolting, a hazard to peel, too squishy, stinks up your kitchen. Maybe someone will make a drink of this fruit.

This fruit illustrates one of the drawbacks of modern society, namely the ascendance of the marketeers. In Germany they tried to popularize this fruit by calling it an apfelsine, i.e., a Chinese apple. These out-of-control marketeers thought that by combining the familiar (apple) and the exotic (Chinese), they could hoodwink people into spending their hard-earned money on this turkey.

The Fruit Explorer Goes for the Garlic

To All,

Little did I know that a major theme of my retirement would be the search for a satisfactory garlic strategy. I am now on my fifth garlic strategy.

First, I started my retirement by keeping a head of garlic on my kitchen counter. Whenever I wanted garlic, I would remove a clove, peel it, dice it, and throw it into whatever dish I was preparing. Peeling a clove, however, was tedious and time-consuming; I wanted something easier.

Second, I got a container of garlic powder and would just shake some into my cooking pot. This certainly met the goal of ease of use, but the flavor didn't seem to be there.

Third, I got a jar of Adobo seasoning, which Maria had introduced me to, and would shake some into my dishes. This powder contains garlic as well as other seasonings. This improved the flavor, but eventually I was put off by the high salt content.

Fourth, while scouting the fruit and vegetable aisle at Market Basket, I found a mayonnaise-sized jar of minced garlic for only $3.49. This was cheap, easy, and was much closer to the true garlic experience. But could I do better?

Fifth, on my last trip to Market Basket's fruit and vegetable aisle I spotted a plastic container full of peeled garlic cloves. The container is one of those tapering plastic cylinders that restaurants use for doggy bags; it is about three inches tall and four inches wide at the top. It is crammed with about 80 perfectly peeled cloves of garlic. When I want garlic, I get a clove out of the fridge, dice it, and am ready to season. No peeling. Easy. Should I need a quantity of garlic that makes the dicing a hassle, e.g., if I make a mess of black-eyed peas, I have added a garlic press to my arsenal of kitchen tools. The peeled cloves are so immaculate that they are things of beauty; you can almost see your face reflected in them. Have I finally found nirvana? Is my search for the ultimate garlic strategy at an end? This strategy certainly wins the prize not only for ease but also for cheapness since I got 0.68 pounds of garlic for $1.35. My only doubt is that the container had a sell-by date less than a week into the future. Do peeled cloves of garlic go bad or lose their potency in the fridge? 

My container is marked "Product of China." I am now wondering if there are wage slaves in China who are perfectionists who spend twelve hours a day hunched over a garlic-peeling table. Or perhaps the cloves are pristine because they are cleaned in a bath of asbestos water.

The Fruit Explorer Struggles to Ripen an Ataulfo Mango

To All,

While sleuthing at Market Basket, I found something called an Ataulfo mango.  It is related to the standard mango but is smaller. In looks, it's a cross between a pear and a comma in that it has the size, coloration, and general shape of a pear, but it has a little bend at the small end. See the picture below to see its shape and compare it to a standard mango. 

A You Tube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxuD6Zjo5bM stressed that this fruit needs to be fully ripe. It advised that you let it sit on your window sill until it is all wrinkled. ("Let it get really ugly.") This advice spoke to me because of my experience with the unripe standard mango reported on previously. Perhaps over-reacting, I let this sit on my window for seventeen days until it was wrinkled like a 90 year-old face.

Finally, it looked so over-the-hill that I judged it ready to eat. I cut it lengthwise so that I got a nice, flat slab off of one side. There was a slight discoloration inside; perhaps I overdid the ripening thing. As the experts advise, I then scored it. That is, I took a knife to the fruit side and cut a cross-hatch pattern, with a little less than half and inch between cuts. I then turned the slab inside out, and, to my surprise, the fruit popped right up just like it does in the videos made my the experts. 

One thing the experts leave out is how to eat the fruit once it is so attractively presented. Not knowing what else to do, I gnawed it like an ear of corn. While perhaps inelegant, this worked fine. To my surprise, there was tartness rather than sweetness. I would call the taste mildly peasant. It was not a taste that stuck in one's mind. After finishing the first slab, I sliced another off the other side and ate it. I was eating it eagerly and not forcing myself. I could not tell that the discoloration affected the taste. I then tried to cut a third slab but couldn't because the pit took most of the remaining fruit. I ended up paring off the remaining peel and eating the remainder like an apple, but in fact there wasn't much more to eat. I was surprised at how little meat there was; I guess I have been spoiled by fruits such as pears that are mostly fruit.

Compared to some of the other fruits I have surveyed, at leasTht the ataulfo mango has a taste. Perhaps after repeated eatings it would become an acquired taste that one would relish. Perhaps.

The verdict: I hesitate to draw strong conclusions since it might have been that this fruit was overripe. Nevertheless, there was not much meat for $1.29, and the taste was middle-of-the-road rather than something to fire one's desire for more.

The experts say that the season is from mid-March until June, so I might give this fruit another try to make sure that I am not misled by a small sample.

Rick