I wish we had less selection, in general. My family lives in Spain, and I’ve also lived in France. This is just my observation, but American grocery stores clearly emphasize always having a consistent variety, whereas my Spanish family expects to eat higher quality produce seasonally. I suspect that this is a symptom of a wider problem, not the cause, but American groceries are just fucking awful by comparison, and so much more expensive too.
What I would give for an actual fresh greengrocer 😔
Move to straya, plenty of jobs atm, free healthcare, not a lot of homes and no where near the consumer brand choice. But it also means rich are not as rich, and no guns (by comparison) so kids are safe in schools!
Most supermarkets have plenty of fresh food, its better and cheaper to buy from farmers markets, but you can get by with the super chains( not going to get into the profiteering from them, save that for another day).
Fresh food is weirdly expensive in the US. Got to give the US props for being consistently expensive when it comes to health related expenses I guess.
It seems bizarre for such a rich country to have the priorities so backwards.
health and well being? Nah.
I feel like this thread is going really be “available in your part of the US.”
Grocery stores and populations are pretty varied across the US. What you can easily get in a San Francisco, Manhattan, or Boise grocery store can differ quite a bit.
The original intent was to learn about fruits and veggies that most americans would be unaware of or dont have access to eg. brazilian grapes, ube, drumstick, adzuki beans etc. but good point.
Drumstick 🤤🥺
I prefer the Kentucky Fried cultivar
You can eat the leaves too
Sure but there’s also tons of produce that has a low shelf life or doesn’t travel well (e.g. bruises easily) so you don’t find it anywhere except right where it’s grown.
e.g. I live where Pawpaws grow. I’ve never even found a whole one because they perish so fast.
Oh man - It always feels like the pawpaws just hang out for ages up in the canopy whole and unripe to me.
I should have said, a whole ripe one, yeah
My best advice would be once they start falling on their own try shaking them out of the tree. But don’t try shaking too hard because it’s completely possible to shake unripe ones out too…
Bananas other than the Cavendish and a greater variety of potatoes. There are supposed to be so many varieties of each out there, but we only get one banana and 3 or 4 potatoes.
The cherimoya is also pretty good from what I remember, so I would like to have that again for >$5.
The variety of bananas in Vietnam was great. I was going to put that here since they are impossible to import quickly enough.
Big fan of cherimoya ✋ Looked into ordering some online once, the price is insane
I had a cherimoya in Spain and I LOVED it. Impossible to find here in NA though :(
I got mine from a higher end grocery store (Wegmans) so something like that is your best bet. Keep searching!
Ooo, the Ugli Fruit aka Jamaican Tangelo was good too that I found there!
I have a hard time finding black currant
Isn’t blackcurrant illegal in the US? I remember hearing that somewhere anyway.
Such a shame, cassis (blackcurrant soda) makes for such a tasty drink.You can order blackcurrant drinks online, as well as getting extract.
googles
It sounds like the problem was that they could host a fungus that affected other plants, but it’s been allowed on a state-by-state basis for some decades after they found a resistant variant.
https://www.grunge.com/879107/heres-why-blackcurrant-was-banned-in-the-us-for-over-50-years/
By the end of the 19th century, farmers noticed that blackcurrants had introduced an invasive species called blister fungus that killed white pine trees, per Business Insider. The fungus solely spreads through blackcurrants rather than from pine tree to pine tree. That means the U.S. was faced with a choice at the time: blackcurrants or the white pine. With national forests highly valued for the timber industry sales used to develop the U.S. as we know it, they chose to protect the white pine.
In the early 20th century, the U.S. government made it illegal to farm blackcurrants and put forth resources to eradicate all Ribes plants from the environment, according to Business Insider. Interestingly, European agriculture met this fungus long ago when it was introduced in blackcurrant plants, but they didn’t rely on white pine as fiercely as the U.S., and the “white pine was sacrificed to retain the Ribes,” according to “History of White Pine Blister Rust Control: A Personal Account.”
Blackcurrants come back
After more than half a century, scientists discovered a new variant of blackcurrant that was resistant to the fungal disease that threatened the white pine. Without the threat to the timber industry, the U.S. government “left it up to the states to lift the ban” blackcurrants in 1966 (via Cornell University). It wasn’t until 2003 when New York, where blackcurrants were most heavily produced in the late 19th century, became the first state to uplift the blackcurrant ban in the continental U.S. Since then, some other states like Connecticut and Vermont have also rescinded their bans. But neighboring Massachusetts and Maine (or “The Pine Tree” state) are some of the many other states in which such bans remain (per AHS Gardening, Mass.gov).
The plant itself is, you can get foods made with it.
I believe you can grow them as long as they are more than 150 feet from a white pine tree. The plants were originally banned because they were blamed for some sort of disease that jeopardized the lumber industry.
They are now legal to grow in many states. Unfortunately still not going to find it in a grocery store most likely. I grow my own in the backyard so I can have some at least part of the year. They’re perennial, very easy to grow, and produce a ton of berries. Gooseberries were banned for similar reasons, but are now also legal in many states.
Yes! As a Scandinavian living in the US: I would love to see black currant, red currant, and gooseberries in my grocery store.
Gooseberries grow like crazy in Colorado, every other garden around here has at least one bush. Never seen them at a grocer though.
I’ve heard rumors that, while we see two kinds of mango in the US, there are many more varietals in India, and they’re all better. I’d like to have access to some of those; mangoes rock.
I suspect this is like our tomatoes. The tomatos you buy in stores were cultivated to be pretty, to get harvested by a machine, and to ship without getting damaged. Meanwhile, heirloom tomatoes will split their skin on a humid day, but they pack a ton more flavor in. The same is true for the vast majority of our fruit and veg. Actually ripened on plant produce doesn’t have a very long shelf life.
That’s not what heirloom tomatoes are. Heirloom means they’re not hybrids. There are loads of heirloom and hybrid varieties with all kinds of properties, flavours, shapes and sizes.
I was generalizing about heirlooms not being very easy to grow to modern standards. I grow a decent verity of heirlooms and hybrids and the hybrids don’t split nearly as often.
Also large tomatoes which split are usually classed as beefsteak tomatoes. There are heirlooms like Brandywine and hybrids like Brandy Boy. And if you don’t grow tomatoes yourself you’ll never know the difference.
And if you don’t grow tomatoes yourself you’ll never know the difference.
What do you mean? Once you have home grown, or even farm stand, produce you realize that the vast majority of grocery store stuff is picked before it’s really ripe.
You’re confused.
That’s the truth, not a rumor.
All those different kinds of banana. All we get is cabendish which is, like, the worst of all the amazing banana varieties.
It’s the red delicious of the banana world
We have cavandish and red bananas here but none of the more interesting ones like the giant hawaiian cultivar etc. So completely agreed.
I think they meant to compare Cavendish bananas to the red delicious apple, which is red nut not delicious
I know. I was pointing out that banana selection is limited and arguably not very interesting here.
You can’t import yuzu fruits or plants. All the yuzu in the US is descended from the 100 original plants imported before it was made illegal.
But really, I want soft cheeses…
Google says they taste like a mix of lemon, orange and grapefruit. Is that accurate?
More like lemon-lime-pomelo, but WDIY.
I’ve had it here in Europe.
Personally, I think it tastes like a lemon that went bad. Like, kind of an uncanny valley thing. It’s close enough for me to think it’s one thing but far enough away from me to know it is definitely not what I want.
Jackfruit
I remember getting one when one of the supermarkets around here carried them and theyre huge fruits. Probably 20 pounds of fruit that we ate from it and by the time we were done I never wanted to see another one again lol. I wouldn’t mind trying them again now but probably maybe just a pound not a whole fruit.
A restaurant out here had a great jackfruit sloppy Joe for vegetarians but I think they discontinued serving it.
I’ve seen the big chain grocery stores carrying that around here. I have no idea how to eat it or anything though.
Apricots. They’re available, but they’re always shitty.
I’d kill for apricots like you can get in the EU. Cheaper than here and they were delicious, not mealy and bland.
Fruits from the genus Garcinia (mangosteen, achacha, and related). They’re supposedly some of the best tasting fruit ever, but very hard to find in the US aside from specialty growers in Cali or Miami.
the Gros Michel banana. I never had the chance to try one before they were wiped out.
edit: and the Hua Moa banana, because it looks silly
I’ll tack on apple bananas. They’re tiny and taste like an apple and a banana had babies.
The Gros Michel isn’t fully extinct, you can still buy them as delicacies. But from what I’ve heard they aren’t that great, just different to the Cavendish
Durians
Best I can do is fart on a cantaloupe. Take it or leave it.
They’re readily available in the LA area. You just need to visit an asian specialty market.
Finger limes
Kid named limes: 🫤
No I said fingerprints
Good night everybody
Cumquats. We can get them here, but I rarely see them. What could be better than a little orange you can eat like a grape?
I think you meant kumquats, your version may be creamier though. ;P
Guavas
I’ve got a tree in my yard that pumps out hundreds a few times a year. I have to give them away. SoCal
Give me 🥺
I just got into guava recently. I live in Jersey and my local ShopRite started stocking clamshells with six guavas or so, ranging in size from a goofball to something larger than a goofball but smaller than a baseball. Maybe like billiards ball sized. I’d never eaten them before like a month ago, and so the seeds threw me T first, but I’ve got the technique down now and shit, when they’re ripened, nice and soft, they are fantastic. I worry about the day when I get to ShopRite and the guavas are no longer.
Literally about to go to whole foods to buy guavas because you reminded me of the taste 😭🤤 You should cut them and season them with salt and chili powder, they taste fantastic that way.
How bigs a goofball? The ones at work are always huge.
They’re the size of my kids, since they’re generally the target if my references to goofballs.
And I guess my phone thought changing golfball to goofball was what I needed. Maybe I should read a little better what I write. Maybe next time.
