I Brake for Fresh Fruit

All this time, I thought I was the Fruit Queen, as I've been obsessed with fresh fruit flavors, varieties and origin stories for well over three decades. Yet now a company called fruitqueen wants to bring me a box of farm-fresh fruit once a week. 

Joyce Zhang, Ben Hartman and Brian Carroll — all veterans of the food industry — seek out seasonal fruits from San Francisco Bay Area farmers and growers, box it up and make it available through pick-up or delivery. 

As they told a reporter at Eater SF, “The goal for us is to focus on things that are really delicious and height of season, but also maybe a little off the beaten track, like a special varietal that’s being grown that we really want to highlight, or a farmer or grower that’s doing something remarkable with their practices and that we think is really cool and want to shout about.”

Put me down as a yes — for some weeks, anyway — even though they've run off with my title.

While working as a food writer at a daily newspaper some years ago, I read a syndicated column from the Los Angeles Times by David Karp about the more than 50 types of kiwi in the world. 50! Mind officially blown — I knew of only one at the time, the fuzzy kiwi brown on the outside and green within. I contacted Karp and interviewed him, and he elevated considerably my interest in fruit. 

(To this day, if anyone is selling fresh fruit by the roadside, I am stopping to shop.) 

Karp called himself a pomologist, one who studies and cultivates fruit and often works in the horticulture industry "in research, teaching, and extension positions, developing, breeding, and evaluating new varieties of fruits and nuts." Currently, Karp is a citrus scientist, working as an associate in the Agricultural Experiment Station of the Botany and Plant Sciences Department at the University of California at Riverside.

I, the recently deposed Fruit Queen, am merely a consumer and more than a bit of a snob when it comes to mangos (California-grown Keitt are superior to all others), the Honeycrisp apples (thank you, Minnesota) that lured me away forever from my beloved Granny Smiths and Pippins and strawberries (nothing but Chandlers will do, true for me for the past 30 years or so).  

About those Chandlers — to my mind, the best ones grown locally come from Swanton Berry Farm, located in Santa Cruz County about 65 miles south of San Francisco. I stock up in late May and every week all through June, blowing the food budget on these perfect ruby gems, and freezing most of them to support my daily fruit smoothie habit well into October. I've bought them from four different local groceries, from a seasonal food delivery service and yes, from fruitqueen. 

I've also been to the actual farm, where I loaded berries picked by professionals into the car, bought a piece of Swanton's strawberry cheesecake and then sat with my friend Julia at a picnic table positioned across the road from the magnificent Pacific Ocean. A sublime afternoon! 

Tomatoes command some of my attention, and have for decades. When a restaurant owner near my home in St. Louis County first started serving Real Summer Tomatoes in place of the polyester orange varieties present on so many plates there (and, surprisingly, here in California) year 'round, I asked him why he made the switch. "All summer long, my wife and I eat ripe, juicy tomatoes at home, and we decided one day to serve them at the restaurant too," he told me. 

What happened next? For much of July, all of August and even a wee part of September some years, his menu included special dishes featuring the best tomatoes available from local farmers. My friend Edward and I made regular forays to the restaurant during that time for what we called "Tomato Orgies." 

Today, I hold out for heirloom tomatoes. Or I did, until this summer when a single lop-sided specimen cost $10 at a posh local grocery. A friend kindly clued me in on dry-farmed Early Girls, and another friend introduced me to Campari tomatoes. Sometimes, tomatoes with a bit of salt and plenty of pepper are what's for supper. 

Often, Warren pears (so sweet, with no grittiness), Medjool dates, fancy figs of several varieties and fresh berries of all sorts are found in my home. Stone fruits are a favorite, but they were kind of a bummer this summer, and in truth, the best peak-season peach I ever had was from Southern Illinois. (There you are, Gail!)  Bing and Rainier cherries are my favorites. Regarding citrus, I am a fan of pretty Cara Cara oranges and the mighty Sumos, Japanese mandarina available from January through April. 

Seasonal fruits are always the best, even if you're pining for next summer's bounty in the middle of winter! A fall favorite is pumpkin — if it's in a pie, of course. As it happens, this very day a delicious pumpkin pie arrived at my door, made by a friend of a friend, an experienced professional baker who grinds his own spices and thus produces a zippier pumpkin pie than most. I ate a small wedge for breakfast and set aside a piece for later. 

Then I took the rest of that pie and most of an equally outstanding dark, dense chocolate pie decorated for Halloween to the lounge here in my senior apartment building. I managed to get out and back upstairs before the crowd moved in and the fist fights began!