A Tribute to Fresh Fruits & Veggies.

A friend gave my family some passion fruit this week and it really got me thinking about how grateful I am to have fresh fruits and vegetables in my life.

I didn’t grow up like that and apparently treasure it now more than I realized.

Despite the fact that I grew up only 45 minutes north of Los Angeles, a virtual cornucopia of food variety, I lived in a food desert. Both figuratively and literally because it was, in fact, an actually a desert.

The only things that were grown in my area besides the tumbleweeds and Joshua Trees were alfalfa and onions, and before my time, they apparently grew an abundance of almonds as well.

In spite of the eternal drought conditions of the desert though (there has been a drought there as long as I can remember) people with houses still had lawns and trees and rose bushes. But nobody had anything useful like fruits trees or a vegetable garden, at least no one that I knew.

Most of the fruits and vegetables that I ate growing up were canned or frozen.

In school the vegetable variety consisted primarily of canned peas, corn and green beans. The only fresh veggies were shreds of iceberg lettuce and a single, pale, grainy tomato slice on hamburger or sub sandwich day.

Fruit was normally canned peaches, pears or fruit cocktail. I was always thrilled if I got a paper cup with a grape in it and felt extremely lucky if I happened to get a cherry in my fruit cocktail. Sometimes we were given oranges that were usually yellow and the despised (at least by me) red apple with a thick coating of wax and mealy, non-juicy flesh. Occasionally we got half of a mushy, slimy brown banana.

At home my fresh vegetables most often consisted of carrots and celery, the latter of which I ate almost daily with cottage cheese or with dill pickles in my tuna sandwich. Frozen broccoli was often present, though it was most often steamed into a pile of flavorless green mush that I despised consuming.

Frozen peas though were the favorite that was always available in my house. Sometimes I would pour them into a cup and just eat them while still frozen like some kind of weird chip, other times I would warm them up in the microwave and eat them drowned in cheddar (I long for the days when I could eat dairy without vomiting).

I was always excited once or twice a year when my mother, aunt or grandmother bought fresh strawberries and before they made a sugary strawberry mush to place atop a biscuit and smother with whipped cream for strawberry shortcake, I snuck a few fresh berries off the counter. They were divine.

I still remember the first time that I had a fresh apple. I went apple picking in the nearby mountains with my Girl Scout troop. We picked apples from the tree, wiped them on our uniforms and ate them right there. I never knew that apples could taste so good. I refused to eat anything but golden delicious and Granny Smith apples for a long time after that.

As an adult fruit picking became a tradition with my own children because those times were some of my most treasured childhood memories.

For several years I took my kids apple picking and peach picking. We picked wild blackberries on the side of a highway during a road trip. We picked strawberries at a U-pick farm overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And every year, we picked cherries in the mountains south of our home.  

When I was a kid, I picked cherries only once (I believe it was also with my Girl Scout troop), but it’s been emblazoned in my mind ever since. I was so excited when I tasted my first fresh cherry. Before that I had no idea that cherries weren’t actually just the bright red and sugary sweet blobs that my grandmother kept in a jar filled with crimson liquid in her fridge that my cousins and I were only allowed to eat on special occasions.

Despite the sugary treats my grandmother often allowed her grandchildren to indulge in, I had a lot more variety of fruits and vegetables at her house than I did at home, because that was where we usually assembled for family gatherings to celebrate holidays and birthdays.

I was a weird kid because I was always happy to see the veggie platter. There were often a couple canned things, like pickles and olives (I can’t imagine the number of olives we went through because my cousins and I always plopped one on the end of each finger and played with our scary hands for a while before we got caught and were told to stop playing with our food). But apparently, my excitement revolved more around the fact that I could eat my fill of the fresh broccoli, cauliflower and cucumbers that I never otherwise had.

Those family gatherings were also often filled with what I grew up believing were actual salads though. If you grew up in the 80’s I’m sure you are familiar with the diabetic coma inducing atrocity's as well because they were staples of picnics and barbecues. The marshmallow and Cool Whip laden Ambrosia and Green Fluff (that also included pistachio pudding). My aunt also added her own twist with a blueberry, whipped cream, Jell-O salad concoction. These were never desserts though. There was still always cake or pie or cookies or candy, or more often a mixture of two or three.

Real salads weren’t something that my mother made often, but I spent a lot of time with my aunt who frequently made salads consisting of iceberg lettuce, okay-ish tomatoes and peeled cucumbers topped with, what I thought was, home-made Italian dressing (Good Seasonings Italian Dressing is homemade-ish right?). I enjoyed those salads tremendously and probably could have eaten the entirety of the salad bowl myself if I’d been allowed to.  

Until I first had romaine lettuce in high school, I never knew that there was any other variety of greens other than iceberg lettuce and the slimy canned spinach that my mother tried unsuccessfully to get me to eat throughout my childhood.  

The first time that I had fresh spinach I was 14 and staying with my best friend at her aunt’s house in Toluca Lake. She was a TV writer and had the kind of money that I didn’t think was real. She made us salads with fresh spinach, fresh strawberries, pine nuts and a homemade vinaigrette that was other-worldly. I never knew spinach could taste so good.

When I was in high school, I dieted a lot and would follow the lead of my aunt often. She was doing Weight Watchers for a short time and made a “Chinese Chicken Salad” out of the Weight Watchers cookbook that I was obsessed with. It was the first time that I had ever had cabbage (besides the coleslaw that I was always disgusted by) and it was raw and I loved it.

I was blown away in the years following high school when I discovered sautéed cabbage and a spring mix and then much later kale and arugula and so many other varieties of greens that are now an integral part of my family’s diet.

My Mum (my chosen, life-long, surrogate mother) was the first person to expose me to the wonder that is the artichoke. My family eats artichokes often now. It’s a whole production, that we’ve spent years perfecting but is 100% worth all the time and effort.

First, we slice them in half, clean and trim them. Then we rub the cut side with lemon, drizzle with a little avocado oil and steam them until they are just soft. Then we add more lemon and throw them on the grill for 5-10 minutes until the outside leaves are a bit charred and the flesh is tender. We end up with a smoky, lemony bundle of deliciousness that we dip in butter and devour.

When my oldest was still at home, he used to hover around my youngest in hopes that they would be too full to eat their artichoke heart and he could snatch up some more of the best part himself. And inevitable conversation would ensue every time we ate them about who discovered that you could only eat the heart and fleshy bit of the leaves. Was it someone named Art and did he actually choke on the hairy inside?

I digress…

Back to the fruit, which is where this whole thing started.

I had only ever tasted exotic fruits in juices, which I now know were very likely artificially flavored.

I was an adult and mother already before I tasted my first mango. A co-worker brought some mangos to work and when I said I’d never had one, she gave me one to try. She laughed when I tried to bite into it like an apple. She told me to take it home and gave me a quick tutorial on how to cut it open. I had it later that night with my oldest who was two at the time and our minds were blown! We were addicted to mangos after that but had very few opportunities to eat them because, like everything else, they weren’t readily available where we lived.

Avocados were much the same. As a kid I only ever had avocados when my aunt made 7 Layer Dip at summertime gatherings and on the rare occasions that I was taken out to eat at Denny’s or an obscure greasy spoon by a relative that I didn’t see very often and was allowed to order a Club Sandwich. I never even had actual guacamole until I was an adult, but I’ve been absolutely obsessed with avocados ever since.

Now I’m extremely lucky because I live in an area where avocados grow in abundance and while I don’t have a tree myself, I have a friend who does and keeps my family in constant supply of the creamy, green treasures. In fact, avocados are so prized where I live that tree poachers are considered legitimate criminals.

Something else that I discovered a love for after moving here is Passion Fruit. I had never tasted a passion fruit until I was 40 years old and given one by my friendly avocado supplier. I never would have known how to eat it either. Who was the person that discovered you have to cut it open and only eat the juicy, seedy stuff on the inside? It’s an odd little fruit. But so. Fucking. Delicious.

I’ve discovered so many other delicious things here (like Romanesco, so much yum), at the farmers markets, co-ops and gourmet-ish grocery stores. I could apparently go on for days about those things and the wonders of roasted vegetables, cauliflower steaks, brussels sprouts and even marinated artichokes in my favorite pasta salad.

But I’ll stop, because I seem to have rambled on incessantly like those maddening food bloggers who write a damned-near book about the origins of their great grandmothers’ world changing, treasured pie recipe that they’ve recently decided to share with the world (because the world needs it) despite it having been kept only within the family for generations and now you have to read the entire story, when all you actually want is the fucking recipe so you can have some god damn pie.