Fruit

[kayb]

H'mm. Never heard of such. What do they taste like?

 

[liuzhou]

10 hours ago, kayb said:

H'mm. Never heard of such. What do they taste like?

 

 

Sweet and like a cross between melon and cucumber.

[liuzhou]

Actinidia chinensis - 猕猴桃 (mí hóu táo), Chinese gooseberry and is the ancestor of the common commercial kiwifruit, Actinidia deliciosa.

 

These ones have a red heart, giving them the Chinese name 红心猕猴桃 (hóng xīn mí hóu táo).

 

Edited August 8, 2019 by liuzhou (log)

[BeeZee]

Picked up a melon at Wegmans tday, it was called Lemon Drop Melon. Size and skin similar to canteloupe, flesh and seeds like honeydew. It tastes like honeydew with a lemon spritz, pretty tasty, although I probably prefer regular honeydew.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

 

 

I had almost given up on finding a real peach.    One that oozed peachiness.    Not a any farmers market or fruit vendor this year, and not awfully successfully in the last 5 -10 years.

 

So we're on Victor Road east of Lodi (CA) and see a sign, "Peaches from 30 year old trees."     "STOP THE CAR!"

A flat of beauts on a table under a shade tree at roadside.     Stash of used plastic bags and money jar.     $.50 each.    Big! 

Bought 6.    The real thing!      Like the family jigsaw puzzle, we are keeping a bowl of sliced peaches on the table with a fork.    Summer!

 

 

 

 

[Smithy]

23 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

 

So we ... see a sign, "Peaches from 30 year old trees."     "STOP THE CAR!"

A flat of beauts on a table under a shade tree at roadside.     Stash of used plastic bags and money jar.     $.50 each.    Big! 

 

 

 

"STOP THE CAR!" I love that. A woman after my own heart!

 

Any idea what variety of peach that is?

[Margaret Pilgrim]

1 minute ago, Smithy said:

 

"STOP THE CAR!" I love that. A woman after my own heart!

 

Any idea what variety of peach that is?

No, but we plan to stop on the way home and see if they have more and if the stand is manned we will ask.     It's close to an o'Henry.      Great texture, round sugar and acid balance.   

[Margaret Pilgrim]

So juicy, soooo good...   So PEACHY!

 

[ElsieD]

25 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

So juicy, soooo good...   So PEACHY!

 

 

Soooo jealous!

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Don't deprive me, Elsie.   It's taken me 20 years to find these!     :)

[TicTac]

25 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

 

Soooo jealous!

You should not be jealous!

 

Surely you can get your hands on some good Niagara or other local beauties?!

 

 

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, TicTac said:

You should not be jealous!

 

Surely you can get your hands on some good Niagara or other local beauties?!

 

 

 

I wish.  Other than apples, not much fruit grows on trees around here.  We do have a vendor from the Niagara area who attends our farmer's markets with fruit grown locally there including peaches.  When they first showed up, I was in heaven.  They brought lucious, ripe peaches.  Now they bring unripe, hard-as-rocks peaches.  They tried to tell me to just leave them on a counter for a few days to ripen, but of course, they don't.  Soften yes, ripen no.  No thanks.  I grew up in Southern Ontario and we used to make annual visits to peach farms where we would buy ripe peaches which my mother would can and which we enjoyed during the winter.   Wonderful, fragrant, ripe peaches.

[ElsieD]

2 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Don't deprive me, Elsie.   It's taken me 20 years to find these!    

 

I may be jealous of your peaches but I certainly don't begrudge you the pleasure of eating them!

[Margaret Pilgrim]

@ElsieD, I was thinking just minutes ago that if I were younger and dumber, I would try to buy up some of these incredible peaches and offer them here for cost + shipping.   But that falls under the caption of impossible dreams.

 

Do know that I was thinking of you...

Edited August 14, 2019 by Margaret Pilgrim (log)

[Smithy]

7 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

@ElsieD, I was thinking just minutes ago that if I were younger and dumber, I would try to buy up some of these incredible peaches and offer them here for cost + shipping.   But that falls under the caption of impossible dreams.

 

Do know that I was thinking of you...

 

 

I moved from California to northern Minnesota for 6 months, which turned into many years. My parents, who were San Joaquin Valley farmers, would occasionally send me "care packages" that were probably intended to entice me back 'home'. One very memorable birthday present came when my mother insisted that a flat of Truly Ripe Local Strawberries be shipped to me. My father was scandalized at the expense. My mother wanted to share the bounty.

 

The strawberries suffered in transit, of course. The packing peanuts (yes, those styrofoam thingies) had gotten up close and personal to the fresh fruit so that the package included strawberry-stained styrofoam; the coolant had lost its cool; and juices were soaking through the cardboard by the time the package found its way to my office. Still, there were some excellent strawberries in the mix: fine examples of real strawberries, better than what you get in the store...in fact, the Platonic ideal of strawberriness.

 

I never had the heart to tell my mother how much the cargo had been damaged. The good-hearted whimsy of the gift, combined with the successful few in the package after it arrived, made it a world-class present for me. Bless her.

[chromedome]

When I was growing up on the East Coast in the early 70s, peaches came from a can. Full stop.

 

Eventually we started to see fresh ones creeping into the supermarkets, but they were either a) rocks, or b) mealy and disappointing. Then, as a teen, I hitched to Vancouver for the first time. As I was passing through the Okanagan, I got a lift with a farmer who gave me a small bag of the just-picked peaches he was ferrying to his roadside stand. For starters I'd never seen a peach the size of a grapefruit (!), and I'd certainly never tasted one like that.

Afterwards I had to find a gas station where I could wash and change, because I was so sticky with peach juice (up past my elbows, and down my chin and shirt) that the wasps wouldn't leave me alone.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

10 hours ago, Smithy said:

 

I never had the heart to tell my mother how much the cargo had been damaged. The good-hearted whimsy of the gift, combined with the successful few in the package after it arrived, made it a world-class present for me. Bless her.

 

So you received a carton of pink styro and love.   

My mother used to send me artichokes instead of Easter eggs, but they are pretty indestructible.

And I sent our son a (one layer) frosted chocolate cake, regular mail, West to East coast for his 19th birthday, with instructions to refrigerate it before trying to remove the top Saran.    Kinda worked!

[blue_dolphin]

13 hours ago, Smithy said:

I never had the heart to tell my mother how much the cargo had been damaged. The good-hearted whimsy of the gift, combined with the successful few in the package after it arrived, made it a world-class present for me. Bless her.

 

And you got a sweet story to remember and share.  Thanks for doing that!

[blue_dolphin]

On 8/13/2019 at 3:57 PM, Margaret Pilgrim said:

No, but we plan to stop on the way home and see if they have more and if the stand is manned we will ask.     It's close to an o'Henry.      Great texture, round sugar and acid balance.   

 

I'll be interested in hearing what variety you have.  I love peaches and O'Henry is one of my favorite varieties, too.  

Here's a sign I've posted before from my favorite farmers market peach vendor, Tenerelli Orchards, showing some of the peach varieties in the order that they ripen for the market.  

They are located in the Antelope Valley area of LA County,  a bit SE of Palmdale.  This year, due to the mild spring and early summer weather, their stone fruits are ripening later than usual.  Today, they had mostly Elegant Lady peaches with a few boxes of July Flame and Fancy Lady that are a little past peak - recommended for immediate consumption or using in recipes.  They told me their O'Henry's are still about 3-4 weeks away.

I'm snacking on one of those July Flame peaches right now:

Edited August 15, 2019 by blue_dolphin (log)

[Margaret Pilgrim]

@blue_dolphin  I will definitely try to talk to the property owners.

 

In the meantime, I am so enamored with this peach that I started Googling growing from a pit.    This article  suggests that you can have a 20 foot peach tree grown from a pit in 4 to 5 years.     I can't get DH excited about this since we have had peach leaf curl problems both in town and in the country, but will save several pits and see if I can get son excited about the project.

[kayb]

Full blown peach season here in the Middle South. I've been buying them at the farmers' market for about a month, and we'll have another three weeks or so. I keep them on hand all the time; love them with yogurt or cottage cheese, to eat out of hand, in ice cream. And I have made an ancho peach sauce that is killer on pork tenderloin....if I could only remember where I stashed the recipe.

 

[liuzhou]

I spent a large part of today on a Dragon Fruit farm a couple of hours from where I live. The farm specialises in a red variety. Of course, this included eating rather a lot of the things. Straight from the fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 I shall elaborate tomorrow on another thread, as the day didn't only involve fruit.
 

Edited October 7, 2019 by liuzhou (log)

[Tracey Phillips]

Best way to have tomatoes?

 

With vodka, a lemon and Tabasco sauce 😉

[Margaret Pilgrim]

On 8/15/2019 at 1:57 PM, blue_dolphin said:

 

I'll be interested in hearing what variety you have.  I love peaches and O'Henry is one of my favorite varieties, too.  

 

We looked for our stand today but it wasn't there, kind of like Brigadoon.    Several miles later, already in Lodi, DH said, "I'm going back."    So we retraced our route and a mile or so east off Victor did find the signs on the ground.    DH mumbled a bit about options and then drove to the head off their driveway, saw a person further in.    They were tenants of a second house bur took DH to the main house, where the owner happily showed DH what his wife had picked this morning.    Just one tree, thought to be an Elberta.    This makes sense since that was the peach of my childhood.    DH bought 10 and the nice man tossed in 4 more, and added, "Stop by anytime."     We won't do that, but we will certainly be back..

Edited August 17, 2019 by Margaret Pilgrim (log)

[Margaret Pilgrim]

FWIW, and as luck would have it, our Lodi tomato man DID have O'Henrys just after we bought the Elbertas.    We sampled them and probably, hopefully, because it is slightly early for O'Henry, and all produce varies, but the sample was a poor relation to these last peaches we've been enjoying.    We will, of course, check back in a couple of weeks for comparison.   Until now, O'Henry was my "wait for" peach.