Everyday Systems

Hi Reinhard!
I think that everyone should post their favorite fruit of the
"Day/month/season..." on this thread or maybe you need to add a topic to your EDS subsection.....The obvious title would be
"Fruit Shrine"...
Seriously, fruit is so wonderful and we all need to adjust our mindset as to other sweet and delicious foods in the world besides twinkies... (well I don't like those too much but I think that's the epitome of unadulterated sugary snacks! LOL...)
And wow, you can actually get healthy eating this stuff!!!!

Richard just told me he likes Pears best...
I vary from day to day and often from season to season...
But a good bowl of cherries is a real winner for me!
Golden pineapple is pretty rockin too!

So what's your favorite fruit in the Shrine today guys?

Pineapple Deb

I love mango when its in season - its my favourite.
Also strawberries, nectarines and a really sweet peach.

Yeah!!!!!!
Hi Snazzy
I love mangoes when they are almost fermented! Then I can catch a buzz off them!
Sticky good fun!
Peace and Love,
Deb

A delicious Elberta peach ... the "Georgia Mango".

Oooh, good idea...but like I said in my other post, I change my mind every time...peaches? Strawberries? Raspberries? Oranges?

The pressure!

Cherries... but they're so absurdly expensive here I hardly ever get them, even if I see them

A really good, perfectly ripe peach or nectarine is pretty good. I also enjoy blueberries very much, but like the cherries they're expensive and hard to get here.

Until recently, I wasn't really an apple fan, but since I started NoS and lost the sugar anaesthesia on my tastebuds, these taste better and better with each passing day!

It's amazing, this change in your perception of 'sweet', when you're not drowning everything out with 4 bars of chocolate a day!
C.

My old standby has always been the banana. Can be used for so many things.. you can just eat it plain, put it in muffins, make it into a smoothie, mash or slice it with some peanut butter, bake desserts with it...

The banana's cousin the plantain is also pretty good, but of course requires a little more work.

Papaya, mango, passionfruit...I learned to love these when living in the tropics.

Berries, Berries and More Berries. Berries of any kind....

Okay, this is on the expensive side, but I love these two also:
Fresh and ripe figs,,,,drool!!!
And has anyone ever had fresh (not in a can of corn syrup) lychee nuts?
Mmmmm!!!

Me want!
Deb

So I haven't seen Peetie here, but we all know what she will say!!!! LOL...

OK, since one of my favorite vegetables is really botanically a fruit, I'm going to nominate it here: tomato (what else)

Take the Clickbeetle challenge: Name other veggies that are really fruits?

Wild blueberries picked whilst hiking in the hills -
fresh strawberries also picked from the fields
Red apple, crisp, just picked from the tree, still alive...

these are my favorite fruits

also, those Ranier cherries (expensive)
and fresh, small, fuzzy peaches
prune plums (they're almost ready to be picked now) to put in pflaumenkuchen

those are a few more of my favorite fruits
could not pick just one

Berries. Melon. Cherries.
I could stuff myself to explosion levels on any of those. Fortunately they aren't cheap.

I also like pears, and banannas (if they aren't too ripe), and oranges, and grapefruit, and nectarines, and peaches, and nectarines, and sweet green grapes, and concord grapes, and kiwi, and plums, and mangoes, and starfruit, and tomatoes...

Pretty much, if its a fruit, I like it. The only one I'm not keen on as a piece of fruit is apples, but I like them baked or sauced or juiced or cidered...I think it might be a texture thing.

I probably like all fruits but my favorite fruit is CHERRIES. I bought some this summer at a ridiculous price, $3.99 per lb, but they were sooo good. I also like blueberries and luckily my grandmother has blueberry bushes that produce blueberries almost the size of quarters. They were huge and so sweet this year. I have stocked my freezer with blueberries and made some low-sugar blueberry jam too.

Here in the south my family does weird things with some fruits or so my Nebraskian husband tells me. We make sandwiches out of them; apple sandwiches w/mayo, pineapple sandwiches w/mayo, and of course banana sandwiches w/mayo. I've never tried a pear sandwich but it might be good too.

I never heard of making a fruit sandwich. You just put the fruit between two slices of bread with mayo? Is the fruit raw?

Yep. For example, the apple sandwich. You peel off the outside skin and slice it long-ways. You put mayo, not Miracle Whip, on the bread. Lay the apple slices on one slice of the bread, maybe sprinkle a little salt if you like, and put the other slice on top and enjoy. It is a crunchy, sweet/tart, type sandwich.

We make other kinds of weird sandwiches too. How about a cabbage and onion sandwich? Now not all southerners eat like this. It seems to be an oddity in my extended family.

Wow!!! Pulots are really good!!!!!!!!!
Worth spending a bit to try one for a treat!!!
A Fruit Thrill! (not a cheap one, but yes, totally worth it!)
Thanks Reinhard for the tip...
As usual, you have impeccable taste
Love,
Deb

Blue Daisy wrote:Yep. For example, the apple sandwich. You peel off the outside skin and slice it long-ways. You put mayo, not Miracle Whip, on the bread. Lay the apple slices on one slice of the bread, maybe sprinkle a little salt if you like, and put the other slice on top and enjoy. It is a crunchy, sweet/tart, type sandwich.

Blue Daisy: What kind of bread is best? Should you toast it or leave the bread soft?
This sandwich sounded really weird when you first mentioned it, but when I think about my family's traditional peas-and-bananas salad (w/ mayo), I figured I could give it a try. Plus, crunchy and sweet/tart sounds appealing, and I'm always looking for new ways to eat apples that isn't just biting into one. I just want to do my first sandwich justice.

Thanks.

-sibyl

Sybil,

Peas and banana salad w/ mayo, that is...different. I'm trying to imagine how it tastes. Is it sweet peas? We make a sweet pea salad with boiled eggs and mayo, salt & pepper. I'll have to tell my husband (he makes fun of us) my family isn't the only one that puts fruits with foods that don't seem like they would go with fruits.
For our fruit sandwiches we use soft loaf bread, white or wheat is up to you. White bread with apple and pineapple sandwiches is probably best. Some wheat breads can overpower the taste of the apples. Now for a banana sandwich, I like nutty wheat bread like Wheatberry.
Your mention of a salad reminded me of a salad my Mom makes using apples. You might like this too. I don't have the exact recipe, I don't know that there is one. I think she makes it by taste and appearance. Anyway, in a bowl she tears up iceberg lettuce, peels and dices apples, adds raisins, mayo, diced boiled chicken and salt to taste. She usually makes this when she makes her chicken casserole and uses the left over chicken. She uses about 3/4 of a small head of lettuce and 3 apples, the Red Washington type and a couple of handfuls of raisins. It looks like there is about a cup of boiled chicken, more or less. Mayo, probably half a cup. These are estimations. You really can't mess this salad up and it tastes really good. If you try it, just play with the recipe until you get the combination you like.

I love Bananas - year round.

In winter I love Oranges and Grapes - that is when they are sweetest over here.

But we are spoilt in SA and have huge variety in fruit at reasonable prices, so we usually have at least 4 different types of fruit in the house (and I love them all).

Daisy:

I honestly have no idea how to make the peas and bananas salad. I think it invovles tinned peas, as opposed to frozen or fresh, and I know it has mayo, bananas, and salt & pepper, but if there are other ingredients (and in what proportions) I don't know. The aunts make it. Its kind of a sweet salad, with a mushy texture. Definately an aquired taste.

The chicken-apple salad sounds yummy.

Sibyl, that sounds (minus the condiments) like the perfect salad for a four month old!!!! Or a ninety year old with dentures... I like bananas and I like sweet peas.. Just not together!
Sounds super weird! LOL.....
Ha ha ha.....
But thanks for the laugh!
Peace and Love,
Deb

I nominate guavas ... the fruit that's a "divider, not a uniter" ... you either love 'em or ... well ... one of my uncles says they are something a respectable cat will try to cover up ...

My grandmother lived in Florida and we had a neighbor with a guava bush ... so we often had guava jelly, guava sauce (made with the pulp left over from the jelly), and guava ice cream (the best ice cream in the entire world). For me, the scent of ripe guavas could stand for grandmotherly love!

I'm not a big fruit eater - a habit I really need to change. My wife loves all sorts.

On a daily basis I eat bananas, apples and pears. I had a nectarine last week. (Aren't I adventurous? )

Pineapples are nice too.

DaveA

Betsy! I like guava taste too!!! See, your Uncle is *WRONG*!!! LOL....
By the way, what was the answer to the "clickbeetle challenge"?
I tried to think about it for a while, and couldn't guess it!
It's probably something totally "non fruity" like celery or beets or something! (well not beets, since they are a root!)
Peas??? LOL...
Okay, I give up....
Yes Dave, you are so adventurous! LOL...
If you can get a good one, try a fresh fig!
I like the black ones... But they have to be good...
Pineapple rocks too...
A good apple is a wonderful thing, but lately I haven't been able to get any!
Lethal, I may be at your door in the next month!!!!!
Gotta climb some trees to get apple satisfaction!
Deb

The Clickbeetle challenge was to name a vegetable that's really a fruit ... other than the tomato ...

Cucumbers, squash, and zucchini all are fruits ...

Green and red peppers, jalapenos and the like, too ...

I'm sure there are others that I can't think of ...

Now here's the BIG challenge: name a fruit that's really a vegetable?

Now here's the BIG challenge: name a fruit that's really a vegetable?

I was going to say watermelon, because that's kind of what I always heard (and I know they are related to cukes, pumpkins etc), but because that family falls under the "fruit" definition...this is where I think it becomes quite complicated, no?

I think the best answer is that which is what depends on who is doing the classifying. From what I understand, botanists don't use "vegetable" to mean plant or part of a plant, that that is a grocer's/culinary term, so we use it to mean non-sweet produce, so to speak.

Given that, we know that a fruit ripe flesh of a seed-bearing plant, but I understand that a vegetable is the edible part of a non-woody plant (which, since botanists don't make this distinction, could be a seed-bearing plant).

Even worse, a lot of fruit don't appear to have seeds, but that's just because either they're really small or they fall off at some stage or something (explains bananas, pineapple, berries, I think).

So, a"fruit" can be a "vegetable" (recap, the edible part of of a non-woody plant), but a "vegetable" won't be a "fruit" if it's not the ripe flesh of a seed-bearing plant--so a cuke is both, a carrot is a vegetable but not a fruit, and an apple is only a fruit (because it comes from a woody plant).


I wonder if I got any of the above right? Botanists?

Well, to make things simple, let's just say my challenge is to name a thing we use as if it were a "fruit", but which is not the fruiting part of the plant.

That is to say, it comes from some other part of the plant than the fruit.

In other words, culinarily speaking, it's a fruit ... but botanically speaking, it ain't no fruit.

There is one, I promise!!! And it's not a trick question.

Well, to make things simple, let's just say my challenge is to name a thing we use as if it were a "fruit", but which is not the fruiting part of the plant.

What the "fruit"??????!!!

I don't know, but I bet it's weird!
Love,
Deb

Ow. My brain hurts.

ClickBeetle wrote:Well, to make things simple, let's just say my challenge is to name a thing we use as if it were a "fruit", but which is not the fruiting part of the plant...That is to say, it comes from some other part of the plant than the fruit.

Ok, I think you're talking about rhubarb...buuuuuut, I'm not convinced that people would consider it a fruit to begin with, my friend's fabulous strawberry-rhubarb pie notwithstanding...peanut gallery comments?

Whenever it rains, my dad always says "think the rain'll hurt the rhubarb?" I have no idea why.

Rhubarb!!!
I love the sound of that word! LOL...
Always did..

Clearly your Dad was some kind of Sage or something to come up with such a strange and confusing bit of wisdom! LOL....

Love,
Deb

Blondie, YOU WIN!!!!!

Blondie is a smartie!!!!!
Yay!!!!!!
Thanks for the fun contest Betsy!
You guys are all cute with all this knowledge type stuff!
Peace and Love,
Deb

Blondie, YOU WIN!!!!!

<applause, applause>

Well, it's raining here, but Betsy, are you stormed in??? And do you think the rain'll hurt the rhubarb?

No, it was a small hurricane this time! (been through 4 ... maybe more, I've lost count)