Fruit again

First, thanks to those of you who voted in the most recent poll.  I'm pleased that 71% of voters disagreed with the statement that I am needlessly proprietary about fruit.  When I triumphantly presented my research findings to my Smaller Half she said something along the lines of, "I can't trust that poll.  It was probably answered by a bunch of white people like you who know nothing about  fruit."

Well - you can't argue with that.  It's demonstrably true that most of my readers are Australian, most Australians are white, most Australians shop at Coles or Woolworths, and Coles and Woolworths sell garbage fruit. I get really cranky at the little signs at the supermarket giving blatantly misleading advice about fruit and when it is at its best.  "Cherries - best enjoyed when firm and crunchy" was one I saw recently.  Nonsense.  Crunchy cherries are flavourless and sour. Cherries should be dark, soft, smooth, glossy, and sweeter than a mother's embrace on Christmas morn. Clearly the supermarkets have an interest in selling you under-ripe fruit - it's easier to store and transport with less wastage.  So until Australians learn to appreciate good fruit they'll keep selling us bad fruit.

On the topic of fruit, my Smaller Half asked me to nominate my favourite three fruits.  I thought for a moment and nominated the cherry, the white peach, and the strawberry.  The cherry and the white peach earned me praise but the strawberry earned me condemnation.  Not because the strawberry is not an intrinsically worthwhile fruit, but because I had by its inclusion neglected the mango.

Now the mango is a nice fruit and all, but in my opinion it's over-rated. In particular, it's extremely annoying the way the little fibres get stuck in your teeth when you're raking your jaws up and down the inside of the skin and the outside of the pip to get the last little bits of flesh off.  Of course you could simply cut it up with a knife and not try to extract every last morsel of flavour, but if you do that I submit to you that you don't love mangoes enough to include them in your top three list anyway.

It's a Catch-22 situation.  If you like the mango enough to include it in your top three, you must eat it in such a way that it is excluded from your top three.

All hail the mighty strawberry.  What's your favourite fruit?