Fruit Explorer Miscellany III

To All,

Here is another installment of follow-ups on previous e-mails as well as miscellaneous fruit thoughts.

Consider a small herd of cows that has been kept in the barn all winter and fed hay. In the spring they are released from the barn, and the gate to their pasture is opened. The cows, who have been penned up all winter eating dry food, stampede into their lush pasture bellowing with joy. That is what I was like when I re-entered Market Basket. Against all expectations, the employees triumphed over the bosses, and Market Basket has apparently come back to life in its traditional form.

The site http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch71.html, has the following to say about the ancient Greek and Roman view of garlic.

The Greek citizenry, especially the aristocracy, firmly rejected garlic and found its smell repugnant. Anyone smelling of garlic was considered vulgar and was prevented from entering the temples. However, in Aristophanes' play Wives at the Feast of Thesmophores, the women who were cheating on their husbands found garlic the perfect cover-up for a night of indulgence. Contrasting the negative Greek attitudes, Aristotle listed garlic among the foods he considered aphrodisiacs.

Like the Greeks, the early Roman nobility did not embrace garlic in their own diets but considered the herb worthy only of being fed to the laborers and slaves, to give them strength and vigor. Any man smelling of garlic was considered of low breeding. Horace, Roman lyric poet and satirist (65 to 8 BCE), said of garlic in his Epodes, it is "more poisonous than hemlock." Yet, Julius Caesar, Roman general, politician, and writer (100 to 44 BCE) was said to indulge his love of garlic without hesitation.

This is disappointing. It suggests that I will not be able to realize my dream (May 6) of acquiring a replica of a garlic press owned by a Roman senator.

You read on July 17 about my disenchantment with the sour (or bitter) orange. Carla pointed out that it is also called the Seville orange. Don't fall victim to this subterfuge of marketeers and be lured by this romantic name into letting this viper into your home.

I was pleasantly surprised when Mei-Ling revealed that in a jack fruit (August 4) even the stringy material between the fruits can be made into a tasty dish. Fruit, seeds, stringy material, wood--jack fruit approaches the green ideal of everything but the oink.

While reveling in the richness of the Internet, I had the thought that I might not be the only Fruit Explorer. Sure enough, there is a personality on YouTube called the Weird Fruit Explorer. At last count he had made 56 videos. I only watched a small portion of one of them since I did not want to be influenced by his approach or content. Here is his self-description

My name is Jared Rydelek. For a living I am a contortionist, fire eater and sword swallower; naturally, it gets boring. So I have taken up the hobby of traveling the world to try and find weird things to do and eat. On my channel I will be posting videos reviewing exotic fruit and the weirdest places I can find.

His YouTube home page is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChsbD6Clp-ZPqKwXJR3V7DQ/about if you want to check out the competition.  This is just for your information; I give no positive or negative recommendation. Please do not tell me anything about him or his videos.

I have finally had the idea that will provide my first billion. I will found a string of restaurants called the International House of Jack Fruit.

Margy sent me this picture of an owl made of fruit. You will see that melons, the most carvable of fruits (September 7), are used for both the head and the belly. I conjecture that sculpture originated shortly after early man domesticated melons. Most of the scrapers found in archeological sites are probably melon carvers.

Star Fruit (March 17) is back in the stores after being away for six months. The first time I saw it after its return, all the star fruits were green. Being an experienced star fruiter, I passed them by. The second time some were full yellow with the beginning of brown spots on the ridges. Bingo. I snapped one up. It's good to see my old fruit friends reappearing as the great wheel of nature continues to turn. (Here's an example of why I like Market Basket. A star fruit costs $1.99 at Whole Foods and Stop&Shop but $0.99 at Market Basket.)

The first five seconds of a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44fgNndZ4DA on the ten most expensive fruits features this shot of a man and his jack fruit.

The man is saying, "Before long, it became an obsession and I was no longer a normal person." There is no context for this mysterious statement, which is not explained and which has no apparent relation to this video, which does not mention jack fruit. I wonder if another poor soul has been lost to jack fruit. Perhaps I should start a local chapter of Jack Fruit Anonymous.
You might complain that the "Medley of Melons" e-mail (Aug 26) contained a generic melon party tip and that the horned melon, that most unusual of melons, deserves its own, customized party tip. Here is a tip that takes advantage of the horned melon's jellied interior. Issue each guest a garbage bag with holes punched in it so they can wear it as a raincoat. Also give each guest a shower cap from the stock that you have brought back from stays at hotels. Finally, give each guest half of a horned melon. Before you know it, you will hear squeals of glee as a horned melon fight breaks out and your guests squirt each other with green slime. There is no need to intervene as each guest will quickly exhaust the ammo in the melon half. As a final touch, scrape out each guest's horned melon half and present it to him or her, saying that it is a shot glass. When your guests leave, you will hear them chuckling and saying how they can't remember when they had so much fun. Later, when they do shots, they will reminisce about your party and the only time in their lives when they were allowed to play a green version of paintball.