One Man's Complaint

Buying decent peaches, pears, bananas, tomatoes, and other produce at the local grocery store is an exercise in futility for anyone who has ever reveled in having one’s own garden or fruit trees. Produce managers and vendors haven’t a clue that if they would deliver produce that is tasty, they might just sell more of it than the cardboard and rubber that substitute for reality in the produce section of today’s store.
Peaches should have “give” to them when gently squeezed. So should pears. Tomatoes that bounce on the floor shouldn’t be allowed to be displayed. Bananas that are any shade of green should be banned. Cantaloupe that don’t smell “melon-y” shouldn’t be part of the goods for sale.
All of the stuff one sees looks good, but the taste isn’t there…because it isn’t ripe or the tenderness has been bred out of it so it would withstand the rough handling all the way from Chile. And people who don’t know better buy that stuff and think they’re getting something good.
Some of the farmer’s markets aren’t much better. Some of those folks know they can foist shoddy produce off onto customers who don’t know any better than the crap they otherwise get in the super market.
What happened to watermelon with taste? What happened to tomatoes that were to die for? What, for heaven’s sake, happened to corn on the cob that you could eat raw?
If there was one perfect fruit in the Garden of Eden, it had to be peaches. Ripe off of the tree, they are to die for. (They had to have been what the snake tempted Eve with.) They make the best jam and jelly the world has ever known. If you do partake of such a thing as a self-picked ripe peach, be sure you’re wearing something you don’t mind getting dirty, because the juice will run off your chin, you’ll go back for more, and you will be sticky all over until you wash it off. Try THAT with a Dillons peach.