They’ve been “in season” for three months. I ought to be able to get one that isn’t hard as a rock.
Bregman chasing slop in the dirt. Two down
Yordan!!!
End of three…Astros lead 3-1
Yordan!
Cantaloupe are the trickiest of the melons. When they’re good, they’re great, otherwise they’re worthless.
google the demise of the Pecos cantaloupe, it’s a Texas tradition that is sadly disappearing for various reasons
Yes, I remember the Pecos melons. Best ever. Sad.
Early summer melons are shit. They need 90 days to ripen and, at least here in California, anything you’re finding now was probably grown in a greenhouse. Not ideal.
ETA - God bless Yordan Alvarez.
I’m thankful every day that the Dodgers really wanted Josh Fields
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They’re grown in the ground in the Valley. They started harvest in March. They’ve had more than enough time to ripen, the problem I think is they pick them green to get them to market and keep them in the bin for 6 months. It’s like bananas…you can’t buy one ready to eat. You have to plan a week in advance.
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watermelons are much more forgiving here in Texas, and are still a thing
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The watermelons have been quite good this summer. The peaches aren’t awful, if you can get one that wasn’t picked raw. The corn has been good. The muskmelons (that’s what they are, a real “cantaloupe” is something entirely different)…shit.
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Picking fruit green is typical in the industry. Tomatoes are often stored in cold rooms with ethylene to help them ripen. Any apple you’ll find in the grocery store is from last year and stored in cold rooms with extremely low oxygen content (and often filled nitrogen) to prevent rot and further ripening. The food chain is amazingly complex and scary.
And now Lefty is sending me down a rabbit hole with the Pecos Canteloupe.
End of four…3-1 Astros
I know you know this (fyi for the masses), but early season peaches (the ones from the past month) are not nearly as good as the late season ones (from now on).
Early summer corn may be even worse than early summer melons. Kara grew up in PA which grows a hell of a lot of corn. She won’t let us touch a cob until, well, about now.
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Yeah, shelf life is king in the big markets. I buy from some local farmers markets when I can, and it’s kind of hit and miss. I can usually find stuff that’s good, you just don’t know from day to day what that is. Some days it may be tomatoes, one day it might be eggplant, one day corn. I bought two 20-lb boxes of canning tomatoes today for Mrs Hawk to make her base sauce. We use that for everything from Sunday gravy to salsa. And it freezes really well.
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You have to remember, it’s not “early summer” here. We’re in the middle of it. Tomato season is almost over.
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1-2-3 inning for Blanco.
Halfway…3-1 Astros
Very nice!! We are incredibly fortunate in California with the quantity and immediacy of fresh produce. The Central Valley supplies something like 60-70% of the country’s fruits and vegetables. We’re also the world’s largest producer of tree nuts, which also explains why we have such a fucking water shortage.
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Yeah, you’re in a good spot. Growing up in Florida was kind of the same. We grew everything. There was something in season year round. Florida’s agricultural problem has been over development. And the blight that decimated the citrus industry. All the orange groves I grew up around are gone. It’s damn hard to find an orange grown in Florida anymore.