Tasting the Fruits of the Earth

I just listened to a food journalist prattle about quince paste, and she lives in New York. She talked about buying pineapple quinces for a tasty paste, then learning about quinces from a Japanese shrub of some kind. I don't know about either of those.
I know about the quince tree in my grandmother's orchard in New Mexico. It was a pale fruit, and like a peach, needed peeling, because it was fuzzy.
It was fairly pale, almost white, and was used with peaches for exquisite preserves when my grandmother preserved peaches. It created a tart-sweet preserve. It was unlike any others. People knew of it and ate it in the early 1900s/

I suspect we are going back again to more than the quince.

Our ancestors ate more widely than most of us do, because they had the water and the space to grow more fruits and vegetables.

I have read today about the "Paleo diet" and don't think much of it. That is too far back. Whatever type of hominids then didn't live long.
Unless you are going to be harvesting (swinging the scythe) all day long or cutting trees, or digging canals, you don't need the amount of meat most restaurants offer, nor the carbs, etc. Actually, the diabetic diet, so-called. suits most of us: meat the size of your palm, carbs: half that size, and green-yellow veggies plus salad the size of the whole hand.

I never ate pasta growing up and don't know how to balance it against other foods. People who eat pasta regularly don't eat corn tortillas, and vice versa.
I eat tortillas.

My late mother-in-law loved persimmons, which had to be ripe and frozen in the first frost or in the freezer. She would be diving into one today.

I grew up eating pomegranate seeds, but it never occurred to me to squeeze all the juice out. Not a bad idea and still a tradition.

On the other hand, I never ate mangos or papayas until I was grown.

We are clinging to our local plants, and reaching for our exotic or forgot foods.

Seems like a tasty food basket to me.

I work in a soup kitchen once a week for five hours. I work on Friday and handle the snack packs homeless persons get to nurture them through the weekend when we are closed.

Some get food stamps. The popular sneer when I was growing up was the man or woman in a Cadillac driving up for their benefits. Now it is the folks on drugs. Both happen. Often it doesn't.

I can't change your mind. I am simply telling you what I see.

Compassion works. It should be a part of your life or you will be singing, "Me-me-me-me-me."

Exotic Food Products Vie with Organic Home Grown

OK.

You have a membership at Sam's Club.

I don't. A household of one doesn't need Sam's.

Apparently, a lot of weird fruits are forthcoming from there.

Ziwi berries, that, sliced, look like miniature kiwis, don't have the fuzzy coat and are miniature. They taste like ziwis.  Kids love them.

Grapples. these are ordinary apples somehow infused with grape flavor. I think also at Sam's.

A crunchy banana that has apple characteristics. I think I have heard of this and it comes from Brazil.

Thing is, lots of weird fruits are showing up in my granddaughters' lunches  that I know nothing about. My middle-schooler mentioned more, but I was overburdened.

My granddaughters eat a lot of US-produced fruit.  I am glad.

It is so strange, the drive for local and home-grown produce, and the drive for the exotic and where-the-hell fruits from exotic locations.

I used to worry most about the pesticides on foreign-grown produce. I  never used to worry about genetically altered food. I see more and more getting sick.

My pastor just unleashed a video on hog slaughter that may put me permanently off bacon and ham.

I get the point. Profit.

Let the consumer beware.  How archaic. And true.

An ancient word still serves our praise

If I had not met and married a  native Texan whose mother grew up in Itasca, Texas, I would never have learned the term, "larruping."

I had never heard it before. Many still haven't, but the  word is still in use.

It's a colloquial expression, but I found much about it on the internet, God bless it.

If something is larruping, or more likely, pronounced :larrupin', it is damn good.

In fact, according to the internet, it is excessively good.

That fits. The best food I ever ate was larrupin'. I kid you not. The word transcends class. For example, the Grand Marnier soufflé I once ate was genuinely larrupin'. Forty years later, I think of it and kind of shiver. The pomegranate cheese cake a friend made for a Christmas party two years ago was larrupin'. Another friend's delicious, gooey chocolate brownies with walnuts were, on the other hand, delicious. They didn't reach  larrupin'. I once had some alligator tail with lemon that was larrupin'. I had some green beans with Swiss cheese at a holiday meal that was so good, I skipped dessert and went back for more green beans. That was larrupin'.

It's an old-fashioned word.  I never heard it till I reached Texas. I would say, thinking about it, that it is a country person's way of saying exquisitely delicious.

I thought about the term today when my oldest son sent his daughter over with a still warm helping of beef roast, potato and carrots, in a rich sauce of commercial mushroom soup, vermouth, fresh garlic and bay leaves. I  wasn't too hungry, having eaten a light meal for supper. But the beef was tender, the carrots sweet--it was larrupin'.

Another component exists. Larrupin' means it not only tastes good in a bite, but in the many bites after that the hunger rises from the wonderful taste. Larrupin' means that after you have tasted and fed, you tummy is very happy. Very. Not necessarily overfull, but happy.

We all know what that is like.

My dogs are not gourmets.  They enjoy their Purina dog chow with either broth or 2% fat milk. They enjoy it. Every so often, I have leftover beef or chicken stew, and I give them a dollop with their meal. By dog standards, that is larrupin'. They know how to smile.

And after I give them this treat, they smile all evening long.

Just the way I am doing now after this unexpected gift of roast beef, carrots and potato in such a wonderful gravy. Yum!

And that is the true meaning of larrupin'.

Imagining a Haunted Elevator Ride for Halloween

Some folks today were putting old horror music soundtracks online, and I clicked on  the theme from "The Exorcist."  I thought, idly, that it sounded kind of like scary elevator music .

And I wondered, "Has anyone ever created a haunted elevator?"

You would have to be able to turn off the lights. One of those really fast elevators in a really tall building would be good.  Someone on the roof of the elevator dropping down stuff is too clumsy, but you could create some neat effects like cobwebs rubbing across the face. I bet you could do some really scary effects. Of course, once you reach the top, it immediately starts back down again.

All in the dark. With spooky music.

I don't think you would want too many inside at a time. One would be best.

Eh, someone probably has already figured this out. Or some crazy college kids soon will.  It would be a fun alternative, I think, to the haunted houses that abound. A genuine locked room, with pretty much total darkness.

I still remember being in Carlsbad Caverns on a tour as a kid when the ranger (they had people lead the tours then) had us all pull up a rock to sit on and turned out the lights. He left them off long enough for us to realize we had NO light to adjust to. I wasn't touching my parents, and it was a disorienting sensation.

Perfect for Halloween.

If some reads this and knows of a place where a haunted elevator event has occurred, I would like to know how it went.