We like pretty food

[Midpack]

Guilty about the no blemish fruits I look for.

That’s only natural in a grocery store or any place else, we all do it. You’re going to pick what looks best even though they will all taste the same in a given store, even at a farm stand…

 

[Koolau]

That's why "baby carrots" were invented. Ugly carrots, and I've grown a bunch, are peeled and trimmed to make ugly carrots attractive and profitable,

Imagine a toothpick from a trimmed and turned red-wood. Just a matter of scale, really.

 

[aja8888]

That's why "baby carrots" were invented. Ugly carrots, and I've grown a bunch, are peeled and trimmed to make ugly carrots attractive and profitable,

I buy baby carrots for my dog (given as a treat), he loves them!

 

[Koolau]

I buy baby carrots for my dog (given as a treat), he loves them!

Our family dog when I was growing up would eat every ripe grape she could reach off the arbor. She seemed to have no ill effects. Our pets seem to have interesting tastes.

 

[CaptTom]

I do recall picking oranges from my grandmother's tree in Florida. I thought they were grapefruits at first!

I remember when navel oranges in the supermarket were the size of what they call grapefruits today. And tasted about a hundred times better, too. Grapefruits were, well, the size of grapefruits back then. Not those tiny things they sell now.

I get that people are cheapskates. I sure am. But to me it's a total waste of money to buy some old, unripe, shriveled-up, tasteless piece of crap at any price. Who the heck buys this stuff and thinks they're getting a good deal?

 

[audreyh1]

They grow citrus here so we have plenty of good stuff in season. We drive past a grapefruit juice plant shortly after getting on the interstate. Dec thru Feb we see huge trailers full of grapefruits waiting for processing.

 

[Koolau]

Oahu still sells "pretty" pineapples to tourists. Other than that, most of the pineapple farming in the Islands is now gone. At one time the entire island of Lanai was planted in Pineapple. Due to cost of labor, that's all gone as is most of the pineapple farming on Oahu.

 

[ponyboy]

If I'm paying full price in a grocery store, I want them to look as near as perfect as possible. If we had a garden or fruit trees, I would eat whatever grows from them.

 

[folivier]

Thankfully in south Louisiana we grow a fair amount of citrus. Mostly a few trees in back yards here and there. These are local varieties picked when ripe, thin skins, delicious! I'm always on the lookout for fruit stands on the roadside, mostly honor systems. But there is still lots of tasteless unripe citrus in our groceries.
A few houses ago when still w*rking I had 12 citrus trees, Washington navels, Louisiana sweets, grapefruits, and satsumas. Couldn't eat them all. I'd juice the sweets and freeze so we'd have "fresh" orange juice most of the year. Sometimes it was so sweet we'd have to mix it with store bought juice. BTW I find that Simply Orange and Tropicana juice is very inconsistent. So much that we've started buying frozen concentrate.
I usually score a box of great tasting grapefruit from DSIL whose hubby can't eat grapefruit. They ain't pretty but they taste great. The way to eat grapefruit is to pull the pulp out from the segments. The segment skin is what's bitter. The pulp inside is usually sweet.

 

[pacergal]

We have nice Saturday Market here from May-Oct. with produce from local farms. Sometimes we also go directly to the two farms nearby, they both have "stores" or U-pick. Love all of the fresh fruits and veggies in season.

Nothing better in the summer than a Hood Strawberry--their season is so short, but man, are they good. I have an old work friends pound cake recipe that I will occasionally make for fresh Strawberry shortcake.

 

[CaptTom]

We have nice Saturday Market here from May-Oct. with produce from local farms.

That must be great. I remember when "farmers markets" were actual farmers, selling local produce above wholesale but below retail. Everybody benefited.

Now they're more like art shows. Mostly overpriced crafts and such. What produce they do sell tends to be no better than what's at the supermarket, but at double the price.

 

[Koolau]

If I'm paying full price in a grocery store, I want them to look as near as perfect as possible. If we had a garden or fruit trees, I would eat whatever grows from them.

I just always wonder what happens to the "ugly" fruit. How much of it gets pitched like all the lettuce I saw ready to be plowed under. I know they juice a lot of "ugly" fruit. But not all fruits are juice-crops.

 

[folivier]

Ugly fruit is often made into jams and preserves. Once it's pulverized and cooked it doesn't matter how it looks.

 

[Lorenzo]

I cut organic fruit and vegetables a lot of slack when judging by appearance. When an organic produce seller at the farmers market apologized for a wormhole I replied, "If it's not good enough for the worm, it's not good enough for me."

 

[indiajust]

The EU dedicated piles of rules to specifying perfect food. New Hampshire has the ugliest delicious root veggies ever. Rocks that turn carrots into lumpish chaos. And they are all free. Ugly delicious food is free. Perfect shapely food is pricey. Go figger.

 

[ERD50]

I just always wonder what happens to the "ugly" fruit. How much of it gets pitched like all the lettuce I saw ready to be plowed under. I know they juice a lot of "ugly" fruit. But not all fruits are juice-crops.

Ugly fruit is often made into jams and preserves. Once it's pulverized and cooked it doesn't matter how it looks.

And even that lettuce isn't really 'wasted' - it is composted and returns some fertility back to the soil. But yes, lots of imperfect fruit, veggies are used in other ways, tomato purees, applesauce, pie filling, etc. Not wasted at all.