Every month I eat fruits and vegetables that I've never tried before. Well, I did eat new fruits and vegetables every month until I ate my way through the Kroger produce section. I've been on the lookout for exotic fruits or oddly colored vegetables, but it's taken me four months to collect three new items. Never fear, though! I recently located an international supermarket that sells such oddities as corn and cheese flavored ice cream from Asia. They have all sorts of scary, prickly, fruits and vegetables that I can try or die trying (hopefully they don't have any poisonous bits). Until then, here are my three latest discoveries from Kroger and Trader Joe's.

Casaba Melon

The casaba melon looks like a yellow pumpkin in this picture, mostly because I have a crappy camera. All the food bloggers at BlogHer had fancy schmancy cameras that would make this casaba melon look so tasty you would leave rainbow colored drops of saliva on your computer screen. I have a point and shoot camera and little interest in digital photography, so this is what you get.

I like to say "casaba" and I liked eating the casaba melon. It tasted predictably melon-like, similar to a honeydew. It was easy to slice through, juicy, and perfectly ok. Not exceptionally good, but not bad either. I'll probably stick to cantaloupe though. My cat, Krupke, loves to lick the rinds of cantaloupe, but could not be bothered to swipe his tongue across the casaba rind. Humans - thumbs up. Cats - paws down.

Pepino melon

I like to say "pepino," but alas I did not like to eat the pepino melon, which did not look melon-like at all. I bit into it expecting a sweet, citrus fruit and had a soggy, cucumber experience instead. Wikipedia says it's supposed to be sweet, so it's possible my pepino was not ripe enough. I don't care enough to try it again though, and this pepino landed in the trash after two bites. Next time I'll just take a couple bucks out of my purse and rip them up to throw confetti off the balcony. That would surely be more fun.

Passion fruit

I've seen passion fruit on juice box labels and as a bubble gum flavor, but I'd never actually had a passion fruit. I bit into it expecting a sweet, citrus fruit and I had a sweet, citrus fruit experience. At least some fruits meet my expectations. It was a little messy though, like other passionate experiences. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.) It's always fun to eat purple foods too, like eggplant or purple cauliflower. Still, I'll probably stick to buying whatever fruits are cheap and in season rather than buying exotic treats like this.

I've been Licking the Produce for over a year now, and damn is my tongue sore. I've tried countless new fruits and vegetables. Well, you actually could count them, but I'm too lazy to go back through the archives and do that. Let's just say there have been a lot. Here are some more.

Yellow Plum

The yellow plum really did start out yellow, but turned a nice shade of red by the time I took a picture. It tasted like a plum. What I enjoyed most about the plum was that it came from Chile, which made me think of Kyle, (Hey, Kyle!) and how cool it is that blogging has allowed me to meet people in countries that export tropical fruits to the US.

Assorted Squash

Last fall I tried all of the squash pictured above - an acorn squash, a gold acorn squash, a white acorn squash and a delicata. They all tasted like squash. That's why I didn't blog about it.

In the past two months I've desperately been searching the produce section for fruits and vegetables that I haven't tried. I was hoping some mutant product of Argentina would pop up between the oranges and the apples so I wouldn't have to buy this...

Rutabaga

A rutabaga. Anything but the rutabaga.

It's certainly not the most attractive of the root vegetables. During my previous trips to the produce section I would always spy it in the corner, between the butternut and acorn squash. It loomed over me, waiting patiently, my dark destiny. Finally, in a desperate grab for blogging material, I purchased one.

Then I let it sit in my fresher drawer for a month.

Yes, literally a month. I would open up the drawer, spot the grey, waxy, rock in the corner, and then I'd grab a peach or a pear and mutter, "I should really cook that before it goes bad." I did this week after week. Waiting. But the damn rutabaga refused to go bad. Damn you, root vegetables, and your long longevity! I looked at the rutabaga last night and realized I wasn't sure I'd know if it had gone bad. Was that white stuff a layer of wax or was it mold growing along the skin? I took out a paring knife and started to slice into it and was relieved to see that the inside of the rutabaga was a much more attractive and normal-looking orange color. So, I cracked and finally looked up instructions on how to cook rutabagas. I peeled it, cubed it, and boiled it in a skillet with some margarine, salt, pepper and a bit of chili powder and brown sugar.

It was good! I was shocked! It tasted sort of like potato. I suspect I enjoyed the meal not so much because of the rutabaga itself, but because the rutabaga served as a delivery device for the margarine, salt, pepper, chili powder and brown sugar. I've noticed there are lots of vegetables that can be used as a bland, base, filler ingredient which you eat solely so you can coat them in the tasty stuff that you really want to eat: celery and cream cheese dip, squash covered in butter and garlic, zucchini dipped in hummus. Add rutabaga to the list.

It also gave me an excellent opportunity to use my new skillet, retail value $60.00, but purchased at Marshalls for only $24.99. I walked in there looking for a pair of jeans and walked out with cookware, a huge metal wall hanging, and two pretty shoe boxes.

As for the Lick the Produce series, I might be able to hit a Mexican grocery store next week. If not, I'm going to have to look up a local Asian grocer, because I am completely out of material here. I ate a rutabaga for God's sake.

No matter how many animals they categorize into species and phylums and kingdoms, they always seem to be discovering giant squids in the North Pacific or new mammals in Borneo. And no matter how many fruits and vegetables I've tried over the past year, I'm always finding new ones that I've never heard of.

Seckel pears

Food is so much cuter when it's miniaturized. That's why I buy baby carrots instead of their full-sized cousins. When I saw an eight pack of pears each the size of a baby's fist, I snatched them up. These itty-bitty pears are also known as sugar pears, and after I bit into one it was clear why. They're very sweet. Their small size makes them great for portion control too. I ate one or two at a time when I just wanted a small snack. I'd buy them again, but I got them at the late, great Sunflower Market, so I'll have to find another sugar pear dealer before that happens. I'll comfort myself in the mean time with this site made by some people who are really bananas about pears.

Red Pummelo

The red pummelo could also be used as a medicine ball during my "Strength and Endurance" class at the YMCA. It's huge! I placed a bottle cap next to it in this photo so you can get a sense of scale. I cut it in half and was surprised at how thick the skin was. I bit into the flesh of the fruit and felt a bit disappointed that it tasted like a grapefruit. Then I took another bite and realized this was much sweeter than a grapefruit. Then I took another bite and decided I would never buy a grapefruit again if I could get a red pummelo instead. I also suddenly regretted not buying the grapefruit spoons I saw on clearance at Target the week before. I talked myself out of the purchase when I tried to think of the last time I'd eaten a grapefruit and couldn't remember. According to this site the modern grapefruit was developed from the pummelo. I haven't seen this in the store since I bought it a couple weeks ago, so I might just be stuck with grapefruits for now. Come to think of it, why are grapefruits called grapefruits? They don't taste or look like grapes.

Kumquats

I love to say the word "kumquat." Kumquat! I think it's the "kwa" sound in the second syllable and how it's followed by that snappy "t." The kumquat is a cute little fruit too, though the label on the box features a somewhat demented illustration anthropomorphizing it:

As the label says, you eat the whole thing, peel and all. The peel has a somewhat sweet taste and the flesh is tart. It was fun popping kumquats in my mouth, but they weren't that extraordinary. I wouldn't turn them down, but I won't feel unjustly robbed of their presence in the off season. It's so much fun to say the word "kumquat" that I doubt any taste experience could compare.

Once a month I wheel my grocery cart into the produce section and fill it with items that I've never stuck in my mouth before. This month's entry is dedicated solely to the unholy love children of the produce section, those mutant spawn that were never meant to be – hybrids!

Pluot

Back in August I was passing the peaches when I saw a speckled, plum-like fruit. I examined the sticky label and discovered my Kroger had started stocking Dinosaur Eggs. Wow, I thought dinosaurs were extinct! These must be worth millions! Yet, my local supermarket was selling the extinct eggs for less than 6 figures per pound, though they didn't specify what breed they were. Triceratops? Tyrannasaurus Rex? Upon further research, I learned the Dinosaur Egg is one of at least 13 varieties of the pluot, a cross between a plum and an apricot. Don't confuse them with the aprium or the plumcot. While I loved the creative marketing, the pluot tasted like a plum to me, just with a cuter name.

Broccoflower

After I'd tried orange cauliflower and purple cauliflower, I was comforted by the fact that their demon cousin Broccoflower® was a color more frequently occurring in nature. This combination creature of broccoli and cauliflower is also a good source of Vitamin C and folate, if the package is to be believed. The word "Broccoflower®" is a trademark of Tanimura & Antle. So it's like the words Kleenex or Xerox or if you want to keep talking food, it's like Derby Pie, a chocolate, walnut, bourbon pie trademarked by Kern's Kitchen of Kentucky and named for the Kentucky Derby. You'll never find a recipe for Derby Pie in a cookbook because of the copyright issues. Instead people rename their Derby Pie recipes something like Pegasus Pie or May Day Pie even though everyone knows it's a Derby Pie. Just like everyone at the office knows you're having a Christmas Party even if you call it a Holiday Celebration.

But, I wasn't eating Derby Pie (sadly enough), I was eating Broccoflower®. And it tasted like cauliflower. It was a let down, really. Mad food scientists are going to all this trouble to combine fruits and vegetables and the results end up tasting no different than their parents.

Ugli Fruit

That is an ugli fruit. I'll give you three guesses as to why it's called that. Green, wrinkly people are automatically disqualified. The ugli fruit is from Jamaica and is also called the Uniq fruit. It's a cross between a grapefruit and a tangerine. Mine was a bit larger than a grapefruit, though the label suggested I split it in half like one. When I got it open, I realized it was much easier to just peel it apart like an orange. It also tasted like an orange, just more bitter and tart. It was like an orange dressed up in a frumpy, green suit. If someone had served the pulp to me on a plate, I would have never guessed it was an ugli fruit. The picture on Wikipedia is yellow though, so perhaps mine wasn't ripe enough.

All in all, the hybrid fruits didn't seem worth the extra cost I paid for them. They were novelty items that were more fun to buy and look forward to eating than to actually eat. If you're going to get a hybrid, you should probably stick to a car.

Once a month I try new fruits and vegetables. Sometimes I even know their names.

Cherimoya

Sometimes I do not know their names. Thank you to everybody who told me that the strange, green fruit I picked up at the grocery store is a cherimoya. They are a very popular fruit that have several web sites dedicated to them and Mark Twain called them "deliciousness itself." Still, I'd never seen or heard of them before. I'm evidently out of the fruit loop. I don't recognize any of the musicians in the Top 10 anymore and I cannot identify a somewhat popular and beloved custard fruit. I am old and out of touch with the world.

The cherimoya is described as having a creamy, custard flavor and it lived up to its reputation. It was very yummy, sweet with a tart after taste. My only complaint is that there are a lot of hard brown seeds that I had to pick out. As shown in the picture below, after I ate all the white stuff they took up one fourth of the remaining shell.

Sometimes if I'm feeling lazy, I will just eat the seeds in a watermelon or a grape, but biting into these seeds would have cost me some serious dental work. Someone should task the genetic engineers to breed a seedless version.

Dragon Fruit - Kiwano

The dragon fruit looks like a doggy toy. Or a strange aquatic creature. And the Google image search for "dragon fruit" makes me wonder if what I ate was a real dragon fruit. I conducted a fruit autopsy and the insides look fairly different.

The dragon fruit is also supposed to be mildy sweet, but when I stuck a spoon into its guts and put it in my mouth it tasted like – slimy, cucumber, seeds! It was like someone had taken the most tasteless part of a cucumber with the most disgusting texture and injected it into a doggy toy. I actually threw this out without eating the whole thing, a first in Lick the Produce history. I don't know if what I ate was a dragon fruit or not, but I'm never eating it again.

ETA: Thanks to Lesley and Tracy for revealing this is actually a kiwano!

Feijoa

When I did a search for "fiejoa" I returned almost no results, making me wonder if I'd picked up some completely obscure fruit. Then I realized that I'd spelled it wrong because "feijoa" is evidently too good to obey the "I before E" rule. What a rebel. According to Wikipedia, it is also known as a Pineapple Guava or a Guavasteen.

The feijoa is a tiny, has soft flesh and a sweet smell. So it's the fruit equivalent of a supermodel. It was very fragrant and tasted as good as it smelled, like a cross between a banana and a pear. I don't eat supermodels, but I'd eat a feijoa again.

It's time once more for me to try to eat fruits and vegetables that I've never eaten before, but only after I take poorly lit photos of them on my kitchen counter. However, eating new foods can be very tricky, as I learned when I bit right into a mango's waxy skin, so thank goodness there were instructions printed right on the label this time. Thank you acorn squash growers of America for realizing I have no idea how to cook your product! You saved me two minutes looking it up on Google.

Acorn Squash

The acorn squash does sort of look like an acorn. When I picked it up at the grocery store, I had an urge to hold it up to my face with both hands and twitch my nose like a giant squirrel. However, I did not dig up the linoleum and bury it in the produce section. Instead, I just split it open with my giant knife and scooped out the insides before baking it in a pan of water.

I scraped out the insides and served it with some margarine, salt and pepper and, wow, it was pretty damn good. I wasn't expecting too much from a squash, but it was fairly tasty. The acorn squash is a bit high on the glycemic index though, so I won't be eating this too frequently.

Pomegranate

Last time I was moaning about how I couldn't do a Kate Bush themed LTP entry because there were no guavas or sultanas or pomegranates around here. So what do I find at my local grocer's the very next week? A bin full of pomegranates.

The pomegranate is as difficult to eat as it is to spell. I still have to look it up in Webster's online every time and before eating it I read some directions. First you cut off the flowery top part.

Then you score it into four sections.

Next you place it in a bowl of water to soak, and then rip open the four sections, revealing all the seeds nestled in a white cocoon of... stuff.

You want to eat the seeds, not the white stuff. So you have to pick out the seeds which fall to the bottom of the water while the white stuff floats. Then you skim the white stuff off the top and eat the seeds.

By the time I was done with this, I felt like I'd disarmed a dirty bomb. The seeds were fairly sweet and tasty, but I wouldn't consider them worth all the work. Just hand me an apple instead. I prefer fruits I can just bite into and I know how to spell. I also hear pomegranate juice stains pretty badly, so don't attempt this wearing your Sunday best.

Stick out your tongues because it's time once more for me to Lick the Produce Section. Read along as I stick things in my mouth that I've never stuck in there before.

Orange Cauliflower

After trying purple cauliflower last month, I decided to give the orange variety a try too. According to Wikipedia it contains 25 times the level of Vitamin A as white cauliflower. Once again I sprayed it with olive oil, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and roasted it in the oven at 425 degrees for half an hour, turning it once halfway through. And once again I took it out, ate it and decided it tasted just like regular cauliflower. I guess Vitamin A doesn't have much flavor.

In retrospect, it would have been best if I bought a head of each color of cauliflower, cooked them all, and then compared the tastes side by side to catch any small variances in flavor. However, I would have been up to my ears with heads of cauliflower. I try to eat my veggies, but there is only so much beta-carotene a girl can take. The cashier at the grocery store probably would have given me an odd look too, forcing me to spin some story about making a vegetable mosaic for art class. It would be easier than explaining what a blog is.

Halloween is a little over a month away though, so this orange food could be useful in creating holiday themed food. It's healthier than candy corn, for sure.

Golden Kiwi

After trying kiwifruit last month, I decided to give the golden variety a try too. (This post is in danger of becoming a remake of my last Lick the Produce Section post, like the Americanized version of a British TV show. Blimey, should I insert some foreign slang, mate?) Eve and Jill sang the praises of the golden kiwifruit in the comments and I liked that it was significantly less hairy than its cousin. I took a bite and – Oh my God – soooo good. The golden kiwi is softer and squooshier inside than the regular kiwi. It has a texture more like an orange. It's also sweeter and less tart than the green kiwi. I will definitely be getting these again. I also like how the name "golden kiwi" reminds me of a Gold or Platinum credit card. It's not just a kiwi, it's a Golden kiwi. I feel like my credit limit increased just by eating it.

Papaya

When I hear the word "papaya" I start singing the Kate Bush song "Eat the Music":

Take a papaya
You like a guava?
Grab a banana
And a sultana
Rip them to pieces
With sticky fingers

If I had access to guavas, sultanas, and pomegranates, I could do an entire Kate Bush themed Lick the Produce Section post! I don't though, so we'll just have to settle for the papaya part.

After I bit into the waxy, bitter skin of a mango, I now properly research how to eat new fruits. I was surprised to discover that the papaya had seeds in the center and more closely resembled a cantaloupe than a huge pear, which is what it looks like on the outside. Unlike Kate Bush's suggestion, I did not rip it to pieces with sticky fingers, but used my big, shiny knife to split it in half. The papaya itself was sweet and tasty and I'd definitely eat it again, but I think it's a bit pricier than the melons around here. The seeds were bitter and can evidently used as a garnish, but I just used them to garnish my Hefty bag in the trash closet. According to Wikipedia the seeds are also "anti-inflammatory and analgesic, and they are used to treat stomachache and fungal infections." Well, how fancy! If I ever get athlete's foot I'll just stock up on my tropical fruit

Time keeps ticking, I keep licking the produce section, and man are my taste buds sore. It's time once again for me to report on the new fruits and vegetables I have tried to eat with varying levels of success.

Mango

When I think of mangoes, I think of the Gauguin painting Woman with mango. Typing that title makes it sound like another recipe from the cannibal's cookbook. I opted to eat the mango raw. However, if I had taken a closer look at Gauguin's painting I would have realized I should have waited until it turned red to do so. Instead, I got out my big knife and tried hacking into a green mango. I got about an inch into it and felt like I'd gotten my workout for the day. I checked the wikipedia article on mangoes and realized my mistake, but by that time it was too late. If I left my mutilated mango to ripen on the counter it would just have gotten moldy. I finished cutting out a wedge anyway, bit into it and it was about as bad as you'd think unripened fruit would be. I threw it out for the trash flies to feast on and bought another mango a couple weeks later.

This time I waited for it to turn red and soft and bit right into it. That was mistake number two. If I had finished reading that wikipedia article I would have discovered that you're not supposed to eat the skin. It's like biting right into an orange or chewing on watermelon rind. In fact, there is a fancy schmancy way you are supposed to cut a mango to get out all the good, fleshy orange stuff. After all those mishaps, I finally ate the damn mango already. It was tart, somewhat lemony or limey, but sweeter. I'd certainly eat one again, now that I now how to do it properly.

I checked Eat Fresh, Stay Healthy, a book about fruits and veggies that some kind reader suggested (thank you kind reader!), which also has the fugliest cover of any book I have ever seen ever in all my life, and it said mangoes are the "number-one consumed fruit in the world." They just don't show up in the US that much due to various boring importation reasons I won't get into. I had no idea they were so popular, especially considering how hard it was for me to eat one. Go figure.

Kiwi

I have had kiwi fruit before, but I had never bought one in my adult life because it was brown and fuzzy. Kiwi skin reminds me of shag carpeting and I've never had a desire to chomp on the carpet. Avoiding kiwi fruits was stupid though because, yum, they are delicious! After my experience with the mango I looked up information on the kiwi to be sure it was okay to just bite into it like an apple. Usually kiwi is served sliced up, but that would mean I'd have to clean my knife afterwards and I am always looking for ways to cut down on dirty dishes. Kiwi is now one of my favorite fruits and I'm definitely going to put it into high rotation in my lunch bag, weird fuzzy skin be damned.

Purple Cauliflower

When I saw the purple cauliflower and orange cauliflower heads in the produce section, I thought they had set it in water with purple food coloring. In grade school we did the same thing with white carnations to color their petals with streaks of purple. I didn't know why anyone would turn cauliflower purple or orange, but the oddness appealed to me and I needed a new vegetable to try, so I grabbed the purple head because I thought purple was a slightly weirder color than orange.

When I researched my purchase, I discovered that the coloring was natural. "The purple color is caused by the presence of the antioxidant group anthocyanin, which can also be found in red cabbage and red wine." I roasted this in the oven with olive oil, salt and pepper like I usually cook cauliflower and it tasted just like normal cauliflower. Maybe true taste connoisseurs would catch slight variances in flavor, but if you'd blindfolded me I doubt I would have been able to tell what color the cauliflower was. While the purple coloring was fun, I think I'll stick to the white stuff for now. If I stick it in a pool of food coloring I bet I can turn it any color I want to.

It's time for another edition of Lick the Produce Section, the adventures of a woman who once weighed 372 pounds but amazingly enough had not eaten every food on the planet. She's going to change that, and she's starting in the produce section.

Apricots
Apricots started showing up in the grocery bins this month, so I grabbed one. The cute, tiny, yellow fruit was sweet and juicy, but I couldn't help thinking it resembled a plum or a peach in sweetness and delivery system. They are all roughly, spherical fruits with pits in the center that could chip a tooth if I bit into them incorrectly. It's like comparing 80's hair bands. You've got your Bon Jovi, your Poison, and your Def Leppard, but can you really tell that much of a difference between them through the haze of AquaNet hairspray? Perhaps if I were eating these fruits fresh off the tree I would notice more of a difference. Instead, I eat them after they've been shipped from some other state or nation. There certainly are differences in tastes and textures between all these fruits. But an apricot isn't as shockingly different from a plum than it is from, say, an apple, if we're comparing apples and apricots.

Donut Peach

It's a donut! No, it's a peach! No, it's a peach that is shaped like a donut. Sorry, no sprinkles and icing included. The sticker says it is a white peach by Saturn. Wow, import taxes from Saturn must be astronomical. I don't know if this peach naturally grows in this shape or it is some twisted feat of genetic engineering. If it's the latter, I'm looking forward to the day when our fruit comes in a variety of shapes and even letters and we can spell out naughty words in the produce section. During Valentine's Day they could sell heart-shaped peaches.

The donut shape of this peach was really handy. Typically when I eat a peach, juice starts running down my hand and past my wristwatch. Sometimes it sprays my shirt. I realize I could just cut it into pieces, but that would require a knife and pre-planning and I just like to grab a peach and go. I just ate this peach like a donut and the sticky hand factor was reduced to almost 0%. Thank you genetic engineers! It also tasted, well, just peachy!

Green onions
Don't worry, I didn't start snacking on these raw or try to steam them in the microwave. I used them as a garnish in my egg muffins. Strangely, I'd only used white onions and red onions, but Al Gore must have had an affect on my because I've now gone green. Not much else to say other than they added a nice zing of flavor, were easy to chop, and freeze well. Oh, and after the turnip they're the other veggie that reminds me of Super Mario Brothers 2.

White Asparagus
Finally! A vegetable that includes instructions on the label! Thank you, white asparagus, for realizing I don't know which end of you is up.

Asparagus is one of the foods that I was sure I hated, though I could not remember ever eating it. It was like knowing gravity would cause me to fall off a building. No one had to tell me, I just knew this. Asparagus = bad. Undoubtedly some childhood experience with the vegetable convinced me forever that it was nasty and the green sticks should never be stuck in my mouth. However, I'm starting to run out of vegetables in the market that I haven't eaten, so I thought I'd give the white variety a try. And I'm glad I did.

The taste of the asparagus was a bit too bitter for me to truly like, but I loved the texture. So crunchy! Someone in the "weird stuff you've eaten" thread said they used to eat Styrofoam peanuts. The asparagus reminded me of that, but in a tasty, non-toxic way. I think part of the reason I love cereal so much is that I love crunching on it. I went to summer camp once with a girl who had grown up without a taste of smell, which also greatly reduced her sense of taste, so many of her favorite foods were determined by texture. When I met her, she'd recently had surgery that gave her back her sense of smell, which wrecked a bit of havoc on her life when she tasted cupcakes and chocolate for the first time. In her dorm room I saw a chocolate Hostess cupcake on the top shelf of the closet with a post-it note attached that said "Do not eat." That seemed very odd to me because if I was going to buy a cupcake I was going to damn well eat it, probably fast enough that I wouldn't have time to write any post-it notes. I later found out she was bulimic. I always wondered if her eating disorder was triggered by her newfound sense of taste. It must have been amazing to discover that sense, like suddenly being able to see in color after viewing the world in black and white all your life. You'd probably want to eat everything you'd eaten all over again. But sadly you might discover some of your favorite outfits don't actually match and that asparagus, while crunchy, doesn't taste as good as cupcakes.

Radishes, Redux
In my last edition of Lick the Produce Section, I steamed some radishes because that's what AllRecipes.com told me to do. Unlike the asparagus, the radishes did not come with instructions. Many of you informed me I might like radishes better as a garnish on a salad or mixed in with cottage cheese with some salt and pepper. You were right. Radishes do make a tasty garnish. And they've been in the fridge for awhile now without hosting a mold party, which scores bonus points with me.

It's time for another installment of "Lick the Produce Section," a series cataloguing my continuing adventures to boldy try new vegetables that millions of people have eaten before. People used to live off the land, don't you know?

Parsnips

A parsnip looks like an albino carrot. Could this be the work of Bunnicula, the vampire rabbit who sucks vegetables of their juice? It also looks like on organic baseball bat, so if ever an intruder were to break into my apartment while I was raiding the fridge, I could probably grab a parsnip and beat him death with it. Now that's a handy root vegetable!

After taking this home from the grocery store I looked up its glycemic index rating and freaked out a little when I discovered it was 97. The glycemic index is a measure of how quickly a food is digested and how fast it raises your blood sugar levels. A spoonful of sugar rates at 100. So at first glance it looked like I might as well be chewing on raw sugar cane as snacking on a parsnip. However, while the GI measures your response per gram of carbohydrate in the food, it doesn't measure how many carbs are actually in that food. That's what the glycemic load is for. The GL multiplies the glycemic index by the percent of carbs in the food, and luckily the GL for a parsnip is only 10. For comparison, a baked potato scores around a 17. *sigh of relief* Also, why does eating have to involve so much math? Because I love to eat pi, that's why! (har, dee, har, har. π jokes never get stale.)

I sliced up the parsnip and roasted it in the oven. I might have sprinkled some spices on there, but I can't remember because this was weeks ago. I do remember that the parsnip was pretty tasty, kind of sweet but crunchy. I'd definitely eat one again, though I might keep a spare in the fresher drawer to beat off vampire bunnies.

Radishes

When I steamed the radishes in the microwave and they made the water a pretty pink color. They also did not go bad even though I stored them in my fridge for a week and a half. And that's about all the nice things I have to say about radishes.

I'm not too crazy about that name to begin with. A "radish" sounds like some anti-biotic resistant mutant strain of a rash. I can just see a doctor telling some poor patient, "I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, that's not just a rash you have on your arm, it's a RADISH!" *cue dramatic strings*

I tried seasoning the radishes with some salt, but they still tasted somewhat bitter. The only thing that might make them more palatable is to drench them in other seasonings and butter. I can't see myself ever having an incessant radish craving. They reminded me a bit of the turnips actually. If I had just returned from 40 days starving in the desert and stumbled upon a radish garden, I would eat them happily, but otherwise I'd pick another vegetable first. They might work better just as a garnish on a salad instead of a main meal in themselves.

ETA: Okay, evidently steaming radishes is really weird. I promise to eat them raw from now on. Y'all can stop telling me I'm a weirdo now.

Fish

Okay, I realize fish aren't located in the produce section. I've never seen a fish garden with little fishy heads poking out of the dirt. That would make an awesome surrealistic painting though, or a cool gag to play on someone with a vegetable garden after buying a dozen plastic fish at the dollar store. Regardless, I wanted to mention that I've been trying some new fish. Why? Because there was a sale, of course!

Recently I've eaten flounder and tilapia and ocean perch, as well as an old favorite of mine, orange roughy (which in a blatant display of false advertising is NOT orange). Is it just me, or do most fish taste the same? They're like the tofu of the ocean, they just take on the flavor of whatever you serve them with, be it lemon juice or a feta and spinach spread. Granted, salmon has a distinct taste, and I suspect there are other types of fish that have their own distinct flavor, like catfish or bass perhaps. However, if you'd served me a bite of each of these three fish I really wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. There may be many fish in the sea, but I can't tell them apart. However, they have those good omega-3 oils and they don't taste bad, so as long as they aren't full of mercury I'll be happy to keep munching on their tails.

I have continued my exploration of the produce section in the past weeks, inappropriately fondling vegetables that I do not know the names of as if they were strippers. There's no dancing pole in the vegetable aisle, which would make shopping more fun. But I didn't have to tip the stock boy a twenty in his apron string either, so I guess it balances out.

Spaghetti squash

I had never heard of spaghetti squash before, but I've evidently been walking past it on my way to the cheese section for years. I cooked it in the oven for about 45 minutes after splitting it in half and placing it face down in a pan of water. Then I pulled it out to scrape out the insides. Those last two sentences sound like excerpts from The Happy Torturer's Guidebook, but I swear that's what All Recipes told me to do. The squash comes apart like strands of noodles, hence the name "spaghetti squash." I ate it with some tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese and it was pretty good. I'd definitely have it again, though I'd never confuse it with actual pasta.

Turnip

The turnip sounds like it should be the butt of a joke. There's something ridiculous about the explosive "p" sound made when pronouncing its name. At least I had heard of a turnip before, but that was mainly because I played Super Mario Brothers 2 a lot and had to pull turnips out of the ground to power-up. I didn't get fancy with this turnip. I just chopped it up and cooked it in the microwave. It wasn't bad, but I won't be going on a turnip-pulling rampage like Mario or Luigi anytime soon, not unless King Krupa is on the loose.

Zucchini & Yellow Squash

These are obviously two different vegetables, but I used them together in a southwest-style chicken stir-fry and they're both squash, so I'll review them together. It's like how my teachers in grade school would always compare me to my brother, even though we were completely different people. We always got associated with each other by the fault of our shared DNA. Sorry, my squash sisters!

I think my brother put it best when he ate the leftovers of my stir-fry and said "I am amazed that I don't dislike these little yellow things." Aye, me too bro. The yellow squash and zucchini did well to bulk up the meal, leaving me fuller. They had a subtle taste to them, but also absorbed a lot of the flavor from the salsa and lemon juice in the stir-fry. Very tasty, definitely a winner, and they were easy to slice too. My brother even wanted the recipe.

I originally bought some cilantro for this recipe too, but after hanging around in my fridge for a week, it got all gooey and gross and I'm about 99% certain it wasn't supposed to resemble a slime monster, so I tossed it. Which was just as well because I wasn't sure how to chop it up properly. Chopping vegetables is a high-anxiety task for me. I'm always scared I'm going to cut off my thumbs and will no longer be able to press the space bar so allmytypingwilllooklikethis. I also always wonder if I'm cutting the food in the right way. I know there technically isn't a "wrong" way to cut up a vegetable, but there are surely methods that are more efficient or safer than others. Or at least methods that don't involve turnips spent spinning across the counter. Though a turnip does sort of look like a top, so maybe it secretly dreamt of spinning and I helped fulfill its ambitions. I make dreams happen! Or it was just scared of my BIG KNIFE.

Back down to 185. I must admit, I do prefer being on this side of the "half of me" mark, though I'm also enjoying my new muscles too.

I've decided to start my own personal "Lick the Produce Department" challenge, in which I buy fruits and vegetables I have never cooked with before. And then actually cook with them. Just buying the food and trying to eat it with my eyes would be rather silly. This week, I made eggplant pizza-ettes which were delicious. For some reason I thought eggplant would be purple inside as well as out. I was surprised to discover it was greenish and I'd actually eaten it before in pasta at The Olive Garden. Currently in the fridge – a yam, a zucchini, and a butternut squash. I've always been scared to try a new recipe if it contains too many ingredients that I've never used. Maybe by cooking with one new thing at a time I'll be able to feel comfortable taking on more exotic recipes.

I've been running on the trail this week and I'm starting to realize how much rougher the concrete is on my joints than the treadmill is. My knees let out little aches and moans as I climbed the stairs a day after my run. I think they were mumbling "Stop grinding us to the bone, woman!" They never did that during the winter months on the treadmill. I just bought some new running shoes, so hopefully that will help absorb some of the shock of running on a hard surface. The shoes have tongues, but they haven't started mumbling anything to me yet.

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. This made it irresistible to me. Maybe if they started dressing the apples and bananas in miniature dresses, produce sales would boom. Watch out Bratz dolls!

The interesting thing about eating a new fruit was that I had no expectation of what it should taste like. I love D'Anjou pears because they are juicy and sound vaguely French, but I didn't know how much the brown pear would taste like them. I read in the book Mindless Eating that our expectations of how a food should taste actually shape how we perceive it to taste. For example, a chef on a navy ship during a war accidentally ordered too much lemon Jell-O and too little of the soldiers' favorite flavor cherry. After the cherry Jell-O ran out, the crew started to complain, so the chef just took the lemon Jell-O, colored it red and served it. The crew was convinced they were eating cherry Jell-O again, even though it was actually lemon.

It was interesting going into an eating experience blind, though my impressions of what a pear should taste like probably left some chalky residue on an otherwise blank slate. The brown pear was crunchier than a D'Anjou pear, though not as hard as a Bartlett pear. It also had faint taste of bread to it. It was a satisfactory eating experience, but considering the price of the Asian pear, I doubt I'll buy one again, even if calling it Asian makes it sound very exotic despite the fact it was probably grown in this country. It's just as well because if I were ever to anthropomorphize this fruit for a blog entry and make it have a fake conversation with other fruit in the produce section, I'd have to make it speak Chinese or Korean or something, which is well out of my linguistic bullshitting abilities.

My next new fruit experience was the plum. I can't ever recall eating a plum, which seems very odd because a plum is nowhere near as exotic as a starfruit. It'd be like saying I'd never had coffee at a Starbucks. I liked plums so much that I've taken to buying 5 or 6 of them at a time. They're firm but juicy, sweet but somewhat tart, and come in a small serving size which is good for snacking. As long as I don't bite in too fast and chip my teeth on the pit, they're a great addition to PastaQueen's approved fruit list.

Last night I finally cooked the sweet potato I bought about two weeks ago. This is another fairly common vegetable that I have avoided eating all my life for no real reason. I don't have any psychological hang-ups against sweet potatoes. I never had a horrible sweet potato eating incident in my youth. I was never hit by a sweet potato delivery truck and buried in a pile of tubers, their eyes coldly staring at me as I was mashed by potatoes. It took me about 3 trips to the grocery store before I could even find the sweet potatoes. I never did find them at Kroger, which doesn't necessarily mean they're not there, just that I couldn't locate them among the bags of regular potatoes and red potatoes. Eventually I picked one up at Meijer when I was stocking up on pistachios since they have a larger produce section.

The biggest obstacle in eating the sweet potato was figuring out how to cook it. I was disappointed they didn't print instructions on it in ink made out of food coloring. All the recipes I searched for turned up complex sweet potato concoctions like salads and pies. I thought it best to try the sweet potato basically on its own for my first sampling so I didn't become biased against it if other ingredients made it taste nasty. I settled on a quick and easy sweet potato fries recipe which involved slicing the sweet potato up and tossing it with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, ¼ tsp of salt, and ½ tsp of paprika. Then I baked the slices for 15 minutes at 425 degrees F, turned them and baked for another 10 minutes.

This was a recipe I might need to destroy every copy of for the safety of mankind. The knowledge, it is dangerous. The fries were delicious. I ate the whole batch, which was bad because I used a sweet potato the size of a mutant guinea pig. I attempted to put half of the batch in a Tupperware bowl to stick in the fridge, but I kept picking out just one more fry before putting it inside. Eventually all I was left with was an extra Tupperware container to clean. If I make this again, I will have to be sure to buy a very small sweet potato since I obviously have no self-control.