Favorite Fruit

[Stinky The Clown]

Last night on the Food Channel they had a spot on a restaurant built around the fig. It is in California (Sonoma?) and most of the menu uses figs as an ingredient, if not the actual focus of the dish.

This got me to thinking about fruit because figs are my all time favorite. Not only do I truly love eating them, but they also bring me back to my childhood. Both my grandfathers had gardens and both had their fig trees. I recall so much that is "wrapped up fig leaves" so to speak. The sweet taste. The wrapping and burying (yes, burying) of the trees to protect them from the cold Connecticut winters (where I grew up) and New Jersey winters (where my maternal grandparents were).

In a combination of a love for the fruit as an homage to my grandparents, I have a fig tree in my front yard now. I just love those sweet, soft, succulent, fragile, joyous little fruits.

A close second to the fig, for me, is the raspberry.

What's your favorite fruit?

[Shakespeare]

1. I just bought a celeste fig tree!

And I'm in No Cal, just a stone's throw from The Girl & The Fig, the restaurant that you mentioned.

My favorite fruits are bosc pears, sweet dark cherries (big and so crisp that they're crunchy), white nectarines and honey tangerines. Yum.

http://www.thegirlandthefig.com/

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Yes! That's it. The Girl and the Fig

How lucky you are to be in fig country!

Have you been to that restaurant?

[Shakespeare]

7. Not yet, but it's on my "must eat at" list!

There are so many great places to eat around here, along with all the amazing locally grown organic produce (and meat and dairy), and all the great wines....I swear, I've died and gone to heaven!

[Shakespeare]

2. Have you seen this link for fig recipes, Husb2?

WONDERFUL fig recipes (and lots of them)!

http://www.valleyfig.com/c_recipes/index.htm

[Stinky The Clown]

4. I *have* seen that site, but haven't tried any recipes yet.

The walnut, gorganzola and fig pasta recipe looks marvelous! I have had it bookmarked for a while now. One of these days ......

MMMMmmmmMMMM! Three of my favorite foods.

[Shakespeare]

5. The arugula and fig salad (with fig and port vinaigrette) is to DIE for.

Arugula is my very favorite salad green, and this recipe is pure nirvana.

[DemBones DemBones]

20. Arugula and figs -- yum! nt

[livetohike]

6. Georgia peaches!

Just ripe off the tree.....mmmmmm :-)

[Stinky The Clown]

9. I love peaches, too ...... nice and sweet

I also love to make sorbet out of them. Even in winter when the quality is not so good, a lot of sugar and they make a wonderful sorbet so reminiscent of summer!

[wildeyed]

8. Blueberries.

And they grow well here. I am planning to add a few blueberry shrubs when I landscape the yard. Also want a fig tree.

[n2mark]

14. Are you from Oregon?

Whenever I buy blueberries the package always says Oregon. When I was younger, many years younger, I would pick blueberries for would you believe .25 a pint in upper Michigan?
This really tells my age. I enjoy blueberries with a light cream or milk and a sprinkle of sugar on top. My favorite pie is blueberries or blueberries and rhubarb.

[wildeyed]

15. No, I am from NC.

The soil here is acidic and apparently the blueberries love acid. The shrubs are attractive, too, so you can do them in a landscape.

My kids eat blueberries by the pint. Some pretty scary diapers, although that was probably more than you wanted to know ;)

[cmf]

10. I just don't have one favorite

If I had to choose, it would be the cherry. Only because the season is so short that I never get my fill of them. But I also love grapefruit, tangerines, apples, melon, nectarines, plums, strawberries, and avocados almost as much as I love cherries.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. You forgot

pears

[cmf]

17. It's on my second tier

along with oranges and grapes. :9 Bananas, peaches, pineapple, etc are on the third tier. It's actually hard to think of a fruit I actually dislike. maybe kiwi? But I'll still eat it if it's in a fruit salad.

[NMDemDist2]

12. sweet juicy navel orange where the juice runs down your chin, and sitting

in a summer field in 100 degree heat, eating volunteer strawberries and drinking icy cold well water--


the story behind the strawberries is when I was a young teen I had a horse. One of the areas I rode in was an old and neglected quince orchard. The orchard had a well that still worked, but was no longer used. I used to stop and water my horse in the summer and read under the quince trees. Then in high summer a vine around the well ripened into strawberries. Shade, my equine companion, a good book and a heavenly snack...... Nirvana!

we had a fig tree too in Northern Cal, and yes they were nummy, but nothing like those strawberries......

[Nicole]

13. strawberries

also love just about any type of melon.

[chillynurse]

16. favorite fruit ...

I would have to say my favorite would be an apple. Just a simple fruit, but it makes a grate dumpling.

[eleny]

18. My folks had a fig tree in NYC

They'd wrap it up for the winter and stick a pail on its top. I love figs and buy them one at a time when I see them at the market. To think I picked them to my hearts content way back when.

Now, I think it's a ripe peach or nectarine that I enjoy the most. Raspberries are great, too. A park nearby to where I gre up had raspberry bushes growing around a golf course house. Mom would send me up there with an empty milk container to pick. What a joy to pick and eat. Warm, sweet raspberries!

You've brought back some of the best memories.

[DemBones DemBones]

19. I love clementines, plums, pears, kiwi fruit, pineapple, strawberries, ,

raspberries, navel oranges, pink grapefruit, peaches, apples, figs, green grapes,many fruits. Just getting good quality is the big problem with a lot of them. Citrus are the easiest to get good quality, I think. I love lemons and limes, too, will eat the pulp with a bit of sugar after squeezing the juice into tea or drinks, etc. But my big fave this winter has been clementines, wish they had a longer season.

I'm in Georgia-- the Peach State!-- yet it can be difficult to get good peaches here -- why Georgians have to go to roadside stands for decent peaches is a mystery to me. Why can't Kroger stock nice ripe peaches when they're in season?

[Frogtutor]

21. Nectarines when they're at their perfect ripeness...

which, I haven't found the secret of, yet! I love them because they have a similar flavor to peaches without the fuzz (I don't know why, I just can't stand the fuzz). We do have a peach tree, though.

Oh, and strawberries whose season eludes me even more. I NEVER know when or how to find good, sweet strawberries!

And avocados (guacamole, delicioso), one of those fruits that you don't often think of as a fruit: like tomatoes (another favorite of mine)

and I could probably just keep going and going, but I won't.

[Stinky The Clown]

24. I know what you mean about unripe nectarines

It seems almost impossible to find them as ripe as peaches.

Why is that?

[Frogtutor]

25. It's a mystery to me

I've had them maybe once or twice where they were absolutely delicious, but have no idea what the secret was. If I had never tasted really good ones, I wouldn't have known what I was missing!

[DemExpat]

22. I'd have to say melons, peaches and nectarines.

But others are very close seconds!

:bounce:

DemEx

[Trailrider1951]

23. No question, it's FRESH ripe pineapple

Icy cold and soooo juicy it squirts when you bite into it! God, if I could only have one fruit in my life, it has got to be pineapple.

[Mandate My Ass]

26. This is one category where fickleness is a virtue

I love seasonal fruit. Strawberries in May, cherries in June, melons in July, peaches in August, apples in the fall and by this time of year, I'm grateful for whatever I can get that tastes fresh. My sister got a box of Royal Riviera pears for an Xmas gift and we polished those off with relish.

And oh those Jersey tomatoes in August. I've become so spoiled by these succulent and delicious tomatoes that almost all other varieties are a disappointment in comparison. I live on them for a whole month. I actually gorge on them. Plain with a dash of salt and pepper, on a slice of Italian bread with EVOO, in a mozarella salad with fresh basil or sliced with a dollop of goat cheese. They're heavenly and I can only get them one month out of the year. :9

Yes, tomatoes are a fruit, dammit. :D

[NashVegas]

27. I Can't Help Myself - kinda off topic

But everytime I see this thread, I'm reminded of the Camper Van Beethoven song, "All Her Favorite Fruit."

She serves him mashed potatoes
And she serves him peppered steak, with corn
Pulls her dress up over her head
Lets it fall to the floor
And does she ever whisper in his ear all her favorite fruit
And all the most exotic places they are cultivated


I'm not so exotic. Still bananas after all these years.