Adventures in the produce section

I looked around the produce section of my grocery store last weekend and came to this startling realization, “Hey! There’s a lot of fruit here!” When shopping for food I tend to go directly for what is on my list or just grab items that I’m familiar with. I tune out any extraneous data like I ignore most ads in magazines. But ever since my impulse purchase of a starfruit earlier this month, I realized there is a lot of food out there that I have never tried. While there’s nothing wrong with going bananas for a red delicious apple, it occurred to me I might be somewhat narrow-minded in my fruit world view. So, I’ve started trying some fruits and veggies which might be familiar to many of you all, but are as new to me as if I were catching a rerun of a TV show I’d never seen.

First up was the brown Asian pear. A protective white, netted, foam, covered its bottom half, which made it look like it was wearing pants. [...]

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