Strawberries

[Stinky The Clown]

Does anyone else think like this about strawberries?

When I was a kid, strawberries were a lot smaller. A given container had a lot of different sizes of berries. There were a few that had 'bad spots' that got cut out. One or three was unripe. Every one of them tasted richly like strawberries.

Today's strawberries are much bigger. Each is near perfect in shape and color. And to the berry, they're far more bland and tasteless.

[Warpy]

1. Yes, the big ones are cardboard

and keep gardeners growing that strawberry patch year after year to get real ones.

I don't know why agribusiness considers bigger and tasteless so much better than small and flavorful unless it's because the harvest is a lot cheaper.

[japple]

2. Yep. And unless you grow your own, or get them from

a local grower, those big ole cardboard strawberries are the only thing available. Fortunately, we have a small patch of "Tennessee Pride" strawberries which are bug-eaten and imperfect, but delicious. Same with tomatoes, peppers and just about anything else in the produce section of the grocery store. Apples are another one of the fruits that are now so huge that a person can't eat a whole one, and they have no taste, esp. the ones from Washington. I always look for local apples, or the ones grown in Michigan, NC, or Virginia.

I guess that's the price we pay for "cheap" food. When you can buy a quart of cardboard strawberries for $1.88-$2.50 that have been shipped from California, local farmers can't compete. Sad state of affairs.

[Lars39]

3. I may have come across an exception...

Swerved over to the truck parked on the side of the road offering strawberries for sale a few weeks ago. These were *the* best strawberries I have ever seen or tasted, and they were large. They had just been picked a few hours before at Castalian Springs, near Gallatin TN. The color and taste was absolutely unbelievable. I'm thinking time getting to market contributes greatly to that cardboard taste.
I wish I had been able to buy more than 2 gallons. :9

[Warpy]

5. I think tasteless fruit is picked green and hard

so it will survive the packing and storage processes. As it's transported to the end sale point, it's gassed with ethylene to ripen it.

That applies to all of it, from tomatoes through apples and down to strawberries.

[Retrograde]

53. if you get them close to the source they're good

I've gotten some enormous ones lately at the local farmers market that were very tasty. But then they're grown in the next county over.

[grasswire]

4. no local berries there? eom

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Not yet ...... in fact, we have a freeze warning for tonight not 100 miles from here

[mtnester]

9. Ohio has a frost warning...stupid cold north wind

this is as late I have seen a frost warning in decades where I live.

It is going to be a cold, wet summer. And I have to tell ya, I swear our prevailing winds have changed primary direction...they used to be westerly to northwesterly, now they just blow 90% of the time straight out of the north.

[elleng]

10. Stinky, I'll get some Tues

from washingtonsgreengrocers. Don't know from where, but hoping.

PS, SOME at giant have been quite good.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

11. You use them, too?

Aren't they wonderful? I'd be lost without their fare.

And nice folks, too.........

[elleng]

14. Just started using them.

Yes, nice people. Provide too much for me/us to use efficiently. Only 2 of us, one cooks ala pakistani, and has spent a lot of time out of town. SO, trying to use their service effectively. Guacamole next week!!!!

[elleng]

39. Hey! Eating greengrocers corn (from FL) now.

Its ok; not great.

When do you receive their stuff?

[Stinky The Clown]

12. We have two Giants nearby. Maybe I'll try there

Safeway just has the giant ones from Driscoll Berries in California.

[elleng]

13. Same with Giant: Driscoll.

Just tasted what I got there yesterday. Pretty good.

There's another purveyor, can't remember name, used to be VERY good, not so great couple weeks ago.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. I'm allergic to strawberries,

so I don't have a whole lot of experience.

But, I'm wondering if what I do with Roma tomatoes that I get at the Giant - leave them out at room temperature and let them ripen - can be done with the rock-hard strawberries?

Would they ripen, or do they just rot?

I want cherries now, dammit, but all I see are red seedless grapes on sale for ninety-nine cents a pound.........................

[elleng]

17. Sorry to hear that, Tangelo.

I haven't seen cherries yet, either.

I do the same with tomatoes; Dad says, Don't refrigerate tomatoes! AND, will experiment with strawberries, but the ones I've bought have been ready to eat. Luckily (don't know why) mine haven't been rock hard cardboard.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

18. It works with the tomatoes,

and your Dad is right. NEVER refrigerate them. I grew up just eating them like apples, with salt. I still do that.

Did you say you live with someone who cooks Pakistani? That's so cool - what's the food like? I visited Lahore once, for two days, and have absolutely no recollection of what I ate. But, now, man, ellen, you are SO hip .........................

[elleng]

19. Like Indian, and too spicy for me.

Vegs, beans, rice, onions. Hip? Me no! Fortunate, mebbe! Met in Starbucks!!!!

Tell me about Lahore, please. He's from near there, and visited family last year.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

21. It was smaller than I expected,

but I'd just come from Delhi and Bombay, so my scale was off.

It was a long time ago, but I remember that there was an Old City, walled-in, really old, and parts of the wall, which, I think, went back to the 13th century or something like that, were still intact. Lots of shops, really colorful, and very nice people. I bought clothes there, beautiful swirling caftans, one of which I just came across the other day. I had no idea I still had it.

And there was a garden district, full of stalls and markets. Food vendors, too. Oh, man, the smells. And lovely people offering tastes of everything. Sadly, I don't remember what I tasted, but the colors and the lovely produce were gorgeous.

It was a whirlwind forty-eight hour stopover, so I'm not really knowledgeable about Lahore, but I wonder what it's like today.

You met in Starbucks? Oh, you twentieth-century scamp ........................... :)

[elleng]

25. Twenty FIRST century, if ya don't mind!!!!

Yup, that was my 'social life' before I left the house.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

26. Nice catch -

I meant "twenty-first," but, ah, well, it's late, and I'm heavily sedated.

Starbucks as a social life. I cannot imagine, not you. That was then, huh? This is now.

I've never been in a Starbucks.....................

[elleng]

28. yhm

.

[elleng]

20. Dad is growing tomatoes NOW,

in IOWA!!!

Yes Dad is right; has ALWAYS been (almost!) and now occasionally takes advice from his well-schooled kids, me and kid-brother.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

22. How's the weather out there?

I've been watching the tornadoes hitting Missouri. Looks like it's going to be a long, hard summer.

I wish I could grow tomatoes. My thumb is purple, I swear..................

[elleng]

23. Now, their weather is kind of like ours.

Their area (south eastern) has avoided bad storms, but gets very cold and snowy in winter.

He's started tomatoes inside; don't know where the 'older' ones are now. I haven't tried vegs here, but former neighbors DID, and gave us tomatoes AND basil, and sometimes, mozzarella! They moved, and so did I!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

24. One summer,

I decided to grow my own lettuce, just like my old Sardinian grandfather did.

This was, oh, maybe twenty-five years ago. Consider the value of the dollar back then.

I got one $100 head of lettuce.................

[elleng]

27. 'spensive!

Haven't made it to Sardinia. You?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

29. Ah, I have ......

My Pop first took me when I was fourteen-going-on-fifteen. He wanted me to see where he came from.

Gorgeous, beautiful, unbelievably beautiful place. I saw wild boars roaming around, sort of like deer, and his family - he was my grandmother's second husband, so he was my step-grandfather - treated me as if I were their own, which made me, a shy teenager in a strange place, so comfortable and so happy. They roasted a suckling pig as our going-away feast, which was a first for me. And, oh, was it yummy!

I couldn't understand a word anybody said, so Pop had to translate everything for me.

The water everywhere was like a blue/green I'd never seen before, or since. The closest was when I saw Crater Lake, but even that paled compared to the Emerald Coast.

And the food!!! The cuisine is, of course, lots of fish, but vegetables done in ways that just rocked. I went out on a tuna boat, and, when I wasn't throwing up, amusing all the sailors, I flipped out when I saw the first tuna pulled in. I mean, it was SO much bigger than the little can I knew, and then, unsuspecting, I made the big mistake of watching while they cleaned it.

Tuna is not white. Those cans? They're liars.

Then we headed to Rome for the 1960 Olympics. I saw Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a restaurant, surrounded by bodyguards. They were so beautiful, both of them. They chainsmoked and seemed oblivious to everyone else - their affair had just begun, I think. They were there to do some shooting for "Cleopatra," but then they went back to England. I remember reading about that in the Rome newspapers.

Man, I'm old ....................

[elleng]

30. Thanks for Sardinia!!!

GREAT that you met relatives there.

We are NOT OLD!!!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

31. That's what so special ........

They weren't my family - except by marriage. No blood connection, but you couldn't have told that by how they treated me.

We're not old, that's right.

We are ::: ahem ::: experienced...........................

[elleng]

32. yhm

Oh Yea, experienced!!!!

:rofl: :spank:

[elleng]

33. Just learned I won't get strawbs from them this week;

don't get organics. Oh well, I'll just keep eating from giant!

[housewolf]

6. One of my pet peeves, too

Every once in a while I'll buy a plastic clamshell box of big strawberries even knowing that I'll be disappointed. And I ALWAYS regret it! They are rock-hard, without much flavor or juice and sour. Big hard strawberries may ship much better than small berries but the big growers have bred out most of the the wonderfulness of strawberries... with the possible excetion of the eye-appeal. I gotta admit, those big perfect berries are pretty... and a perfect examples of the truism that looks can be deceiving.

[eleny]

8. Yes, it's a disappointment

The other night, though, they were so good combined with the cherries. Hubby made us dessert. He washed strawberries and cherries and gave me a bowl with both. I took a bite of a strawberry and then a bite of a cherry. The combo was so good.

And these strawberries are always redeemed in a bowl of cereal.

Years ago, my dad planted some strawberries here. They do come up but the robins always beat me to them. They're tiny and I imagine that they're tasty sweet.

[TreasonousBastard]

15. That's pretty much every fruit...

the stuff's made to be shipped and sold, not so much to be eaten. And nothing is picked ripe unless it's local, and often not even then-- too much would end up rotten and wasted.

We have an annual Strawberry Festival coming up, and that's always a good time for local berries. But, you want strawberries in May, you get California berries that were engineered to be huge and then picked just before ripe. The ones I just got were OK, but I had to sift through the containers to find one filled with medium sized ones.

[Arkansas Granny]

34. You could tell when strawberries were in season because you could smell

the fresh berries when you walked through the produce dept. A couple of other things I've noticed about the berries I find in the stores now is that they have to be sliced, you can't just mash them up with a potato masher, and the centers have very little, if any, color to them and are sometimes hollow.

When I was a kid we once found a patch of wild strawberries growing along the side of the road. We managed to pick enough to fill a small bowl and used them for strawberry shortcake. They were, without a doubt, the best I've ever tasted.

[Stinky The Clown]

35. We have wild strawberries growning in with our oregano in the front flower bed

The berries are very small and very bitter, even when fully ripe.

[Arkansas Granny]

36. Is it a true wild strawberry or could it be this groundcover called Indian Strawberry?

http://www.paghat.com/indianstrawberry.html

I have this in my yard. Although it looks attractive it isn't edible and spreads rapidly.

[Stinky The Clown]

40. It looks sorta like that

Although it is not anything we ever planted. Most everyone here calls it wild strawberry and everyone deal with it as a weed.

[tigereye]

48. I have some of those in one of my planters- and I've left it there since I love

the way it looks. I didn't know it was a ground cover- I wonder how it got there. I just assumed it was wild strawberries that a bird had seeded for me... :D

[Retrograde]

52. There's a West Coast version

Fragaria chiloensis, which is used as a ground cover here. It's supposedly the species that gives modern strawberries their size, but the ones I've seen have tiny fruit, which are edible but not really tasty - although the California natives ate them since anything was an improvement on acorn mush. They have runners and spread like crazy given the chance.

[sazemisery]

37. Stillwell Oklahoma - Strawberry Capital of the World

As a disclaimer: I know there are probably 50 Strawberry Captials of the World but this one is only 40 miles away from me.

At the Stilwell Strawberry festival, they have the best strawberries in the world IMHO. Why? Because they are everything Stinky described he tasted as a young boy. Smallish in size but different degrees of small. The mouth-feel is closer to a kiwi (except for the "banana" middle). And the taste! Distinctly strawberry.

Today's mass produced hybrid strawberries are tasteless, there is no juice to the mouth-feel, it's all pulpy tasting. And the size well there is no comparison.

I'm sure that, just like the tomato, producers and wholesalers wanted a strawberry that would: Look beautiful; stay "fresh" longer; withstand long journeys across country. And out of that came the tasteless, beautiful, strawberry we find today.



P.S. - This year at the above mentioned festival, the weather had been too cool for enough berries to ripen and they shipped in some from Arkansas to have enough for the gathering. The crowd was not pleased.

[Stinky The Clown]

41. That PS is funny!

Why do people try that sorta thing? I am sure the festival goes understand the vagaries of weather.

And "juice" ..... that's another thing modern strawberries lack.

[japple]

38. These came from my 8' x 8' strawberry patch, planted by my

Father (RIP) 4 years ago. I think this will be the best year since 2006.



This little weirdo looks a bit pornographic to me, which is why I put it on a pedestal.

[Stinky The Clown]

42. Those look like ::gasp:: strawberries!

May I come over and drool?

[japple]

43. You've been drooling a lot lately. Hey Sparkly, this clown

needs an MRI to make sure he hasn't had a stroke!!

[tigereye]

49. where is the best place to plant strawberries? I have a plant I would like to

put in...

[kestrel91316]

44. I get really great, red, juicy, flavorful (if a bit largish) strawberries at my

local certified farmer's market during the season. They grow them about 25 miles from here. The VERY best ones, a smallish (normal-sized back in the day) variety whose name escapes me, is only to be found at the farmer's market in Goleta, CA just west of Santa Barbara.

[wryter2000]

45. I don't remember them ever tasting like strawberries

Or at least, they never tasted ripe. They always needed to be macerated in sugar.

[japple]

46. Here's what became of all those berries I picked yesterday.

[TreasonousBastard]

47. I took a few pounds of those Driscoll strawberries...

with little flavor and used some to top a chocolate ganache cake I made for church hospitality yesterday. No one complained about the bland strawberries.

I mixed the rest with a pint of whipped cream with added sugar, vanilla, cocoa powder, instant coffee, and added a pint of the blueberries on sale this week.

No one complained about that, either, but I did get pestered a lot for the "recipe."

(Pretty soon we get local strawberries, and the Strawberry Festival looms upon us...)

[hippywife]

50. I've been buying the

Driscoll organic strawberries at Whole Foods and they have been wonderful. Nice and juicy and flavorful.

[elleng]

51. Haven't seen their 'organic.'

Will keep that in mind.

[NashVegas]

54. Monstrously Large. They Frighten Me

Because I am left wondering what was in the fertilizer and if they're GM/GE products.