I agree that pluerries are quite a bit better. Main issue with both pluerries and plums as well is many fruit that are better seem to come out to stores the same time. In May-August I am eating cherries because those are my favorite fruit, August-September I would rather eat peaches and September onward I would rather have a pear or fuji apple. I think home grown is quite different too. Come July I am planning on buying a 4 in 1 pluot from Raintree. King Soopers (our local Kroger) has them for sale) I remember trying a pluerry, pluot and some other kinds of fruit and liking them but I don’t recall them being too different in taste. All were good. The reason I don’t buy pluots or pluerry is that most of my fruit is bought at Costco.
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Mcintosh apples just don’t seem to have much going for them compared to other apples. Fuji is sweet and has a strong flavor I love, Pink Lady has the strong sweetness of a fuji with a tartness I love (I would describe it as the sour patch kids of the apple world in terms of grocery stores), Honeycrisp is somewhat sweet with those who do not like as strong of a flavor (I personally think Honeycrisp is overhyped after eating apples like Fuji and Pink Lady). Mcintosh does not have any good attributes. It does not seem to have too much of a tartness compared to say a pink lady and it does not have the sweetness of a Honeycrisp or a Fuji. There is a story to the red delicious. Red Delicious started out good but had all the flavor bred out of it. The red delicious went from the good eating apple to what the grocery stores want. Grocery stores want a big apple that looks picture perfect because the picture perfect apple sales more to those who are uniformed about apples. There are some who do their research and buy the apple that suits them or buy the tree that suits them but most don’t. I equate it to buying trees. You can have one tree that looks much more filled out with branches and leafed out but horribly pruned and a tree that has good pruning but is dormant and has few branches, The average person is going to go for the horrible pruned tree because it looks better to the eyes. Same situation with supermarket fruit. The customers go with what appeals to the eyes. A huge issue I see as well is a lot of apples cultivars are bred from red delicious and Macintosh.
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I have both of Raintrees 4:1 Pulots. If you get the Zee Sweet keep the splash pulot cut way back for several years same with the flavor queen on the combo pulot, both are very good plums but at this point I preaty much have a Splash and Flavor Queen trees due to how viggorious they are and deer damage,
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Are you growing aspargus yourself? I used to think I appreciated good aspargus, since there is quite a lot grown local and it’s easy to get it pretty fresh.
However, since growing it at home, we’re pretty much uninterested in any that is older that 10-15 minutes.
I’ll go out and cut it and then wash and cook right away. Just a quick steam in the micro using a Pyrex pie plate. (We killed some bone China plates by using them for it)
It is surprisingly sweet and has quite a different flavour from what you get after only a couple of hours holding time. ( chilling doesn’t stop the sweetness loss) We don’t even bother with butter.
Not so good for soup though. To get that classic taste, you need the older stuff.
So long as it gets the fast cook, it can then be stored or frozen and will hold.
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You could have just stopped at ‘grocery stores are bad’.
For me, I think I’d say pears. Even the few grower-direct ones I’ve tried just weren’t very good.
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I’ve had it fresh at a friend’s house who grows it, and I was a polite houseguest and praised it, but it tasted just as nasty as every asparagus I’ve ever had. I know that cilantro tastes like soap to some people, but I wonder if asparagus tastes like oily petrochemicals to some people too, or if that’s really just me. Sometimes it’s sweet, but it tastes sweet in a nauseating way to me.
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Honeycrisp apple.
Che fruit and akebia fruit.
And on the tropical side, star fruit and lychee.
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The sweet zee was the one I was thinking of getting. It does not look like my 3 in 1 multigrafted peach trees from restoring Eden are coming out of dormancy and those were not the trees I bought from that store so I may honestly get both though.
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Both are a good idea. The Flavor Queen and Splash bloom first and are on different trees. Splash for some reason, I don’t know if its common but bloomed first on lower limbs and later on upper limbs. Which was fortunate since the polar blast killed the full bloom flowers on the lower branches and the upper ones faired better. Geo Pride and Emrerald Drop bloomed later. My Flavor Grenade died a couple years after I accidently ripped it off and reattached it. Flavor Grenade, Splash and Emerald Drop produced fruit every bit as good as retail. Flavor King and new Dapple Dandy died after never recovering from deer rubbing.
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My list is okra, collard greens and kale. Never hope to eat them again… Maybe I just don’t know how to prepare them properly being a northern person. Okra was pretty as an ornamental plant.
Surprised to find that some dislike McIntosh? My favorite apple. Very popular in Wisconsin. The best I ever ate was from Vermont from Shoreham Co-op. I can eat McIntosh every day of the year and never tire of them.
When I lived in Minnesota for 8 years I was surprised that McIntosh did not have the popularity there as it does in Wisconsin. They all wanted Haralson which I never enjoyed much except for pies.
McIntosh seems to do best up north so perhaps for those farther south the flavor and color are not as good? My wife is not a McIntosh fan either as “too soft” for her liking. She likes apples that are hard and tart. So to be happy I can eat my McIntosh and she gets all the Haralson off the tree!
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I dunno, Macs can be pretty awesome. I do think they’re at their best when grown in the cooler parts of New York, New England, and eastern Canada, and they go downhill a few weeks after picking. All Macs I’ve had that don’t meet those criteria are definitely “meh” at best. But when they are just right, they have great flavor and above average (but not amazing) texture. Some of the other Mac types (like Cortland) are more adaptable climate wise, and their offspring Macoun hold up much better in baking. But a quality Mac is awesome for fresh eating.
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For my taste okra and asparagus are downright foul. The worst fruit I’ve eaten is pawpaw but maybe I never had a good one.
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A little more obscure, but for me it’s mamey sapote. I’ve purchased a few from ethnic stores and all have been insipid. So bad that I had to throw the whole thing out which is a shame because they are often fairly expensive. Not sure if I’m clueless about how to pick out a good one, they don’t transport well or if they are picked/shipped well before peak ripeness.
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Both Cortland and Macoun taste better to me but neither are my on my list of must eat apples.
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Your post makes me kind of thankful I didn’t buy one recently at an Asian market.It was in my cart and the cashier said the price was $19,in a,“do I really want to buy this voice?”
The outer hardness impressed me,sort like a nutshell.
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They need to be left untill they turn soft.
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I’ve only had good ones where they fell from the tree and then were kept on the counter until almost pudding consistency. I think they are best in smoothie form because when fully ripened they are so mushy. But very tasty in a smoothie!
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Try the red fleshed variety…they sell them frozen (from Vietnam). I love them.
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Ah! I’ll have to see if I can find those. Are they frozen whole or is it just the flesh that’s frozen and packaged? This is the variety that blew me away, but it’s pretty hard to justify the cost (I got a few in one of their “mystery” boxes, which are cheaper):
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@jaunders1 Ohhh snap Mamey is a fabulous fruit. Like most things its a matter of ripeness and freshness.
it’s very hard to get edible ones from markets outside of south Florida.
Scratch the skin and if it’s not reddish/orange underneath do not buy it. That’s why you see many fruit in international markets with nicks all over them - people are testing them LOL
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