xkforceWhat vegetables and fruits do you wish were commonly available in the US?
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.
FlyspeckA restaurant out here had a great jackfruit sloppy Joe for vegetarians but I think they discontinued serving it.
Altima NEOI’ve seen the big chain grocery stores crying that around here. I have no idea how to eat it or anything though.
Call me Lenny/Leni
BlackoutBest 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.
I rarely see leeks, and when I do, they’re extremely expensive. Such a versatile vegetable that I wish more Americans knew about!
InfynisThey grow naturally where I live. Not the giant ones like Farfetch’d carries, but when I was a kid, I loved digging them up in the woods and just eating them raw lol
GhostalmediaWhere do you live where leeks are not common? Speaking for California here, they’re a common grocery store item.
The AssmanMidwest here, I too can buy leeks any day of the week
Yeah, probably has more do to with proximity to at least a B tier grocery store. If your local grocer is Target, Walmart, or Family Dollar, then you’re only going to have access to the vegetables from Veggietales and bread from a plastic bag.
𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍I think that’s a local thing. My grocer carries them, and they’re always in stock. I line in the Midwest. But I seem to remember eating them a lot in Oregon, too?
I have a hard time finding black currant
HumaniusIsn’t blackcurrant illegal in the US? I remember hearing that somewhere anyway.
Such a shame, cassis (blackcurrant soda) makes for such a tasty drink.
Such a shame, cassis (blackcurrant soda) makes for such a tasty drink.
RanvierThey are now legal 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 very easy to grow and produce a ton of berries.
talYou 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.
grunge.com/…/heres-why-blackcurrant-was-banned-in…
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).
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.
And cloudberries! I want to taste cloudberries!
Yes! Forgot about those.
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
anon6789Bananas 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!
Nashi, or Japanese pears. Had some in Japan last year, and they were fantastic. Texture more like a soft apple, taste was great.
Google tells me asian pears are basically the same and if thats true, then they’re one of the best fruits I have had.
Round, yellow, rough skin? Crisp like an apple, but sweet like a pear (less tangy than an apple)? If that’s what you mean, 100% agree. They’re fairly common, IME; we got them all the time in PA, and see them frequent-ish in the Midwest.
BoozillaAny of them before soil depletion and banana blight. Fruits and veggies tasted so much better in the 80s. Melons in particular taste lifeless now. Once in a while I strike gold at the local farmer’s market or in our own garden.
And tomatoes. Tomatoes used to be amazing. Even the worst ones were amazing.
Now they just taste like “wet”. If you want a good tomato you have to track down lovingly and carefully bred heirloom plants and grow them yourself.
Nah. Even a Burpee is good.
The main thing that ruins store tomatoes is that they pick them green and breed them for travel.
Pretty much any tomato plant that you buy will be bred for taste and resistance.
That said, heirlooms do have all kinds of crazy flavors and differences.
I bought a rainbow tomato seed pack, it had like 7-10 different varieties, I don’t actually remember.
The white tomatoes were a trip, with your eyes open they taste tart, but with your eyes closed they just taste like a really good tomato.
That said, heirlooms do have all kinds of crazy flavors and differences.
Yeah, I’d bet that some of them don’t last as long as the standard red tomatoes that you get in the store, but looking through heirloom tomatoes is kind of a trip, from a visual standpoint. Grocery stores seem to have pretty much standardized on about three red ones – and I’m not saying that they’re bad, but it does kind of mean that people don’t get to see a lot of variety. Unfortunately, I’m not a huge fan of just eating tomatoes plain, so never got super-interested in obtaining them, but they do look damned cool.
googles
Here’s a retailer that has images:
www.tradewindsfruit.com/tomatoes/
goes through looking for some interesting ones
Check out rareseeds.com they have so many different old heirloom seeds from all kinds of different plants.
The company name is baker creek
Oooh white tomatoes. Ever had the purple ones? Or the ripe green varieties?
Yeah! They had white, yellow, green, red, purple, black, orange. I think it may have just been the seven.
I could never figure out when the green ones were ripe
That’s pretty much the case with any produce at the grocery store these days. It’s all picked too green. It makes me sad because I haven’t had a legit ripe avocado in ages.
Put it in a paper bag for a day or two, let the ethylene build up and it’ll ripen it?
Can put a banana in there with the avocados if you really want it to go quickly.
That’s not the same as ripened on the tree, though.
Yeah, they’ll soften up a bit letting them ripen in a bag, but they won’t take anywhere near a good as one ripened on the tree a bit longer.
OMG, yes. The flavor “wet” has been added to my lexicon.
ripcordMelons taste just as good to me now as the 80s or 90s.
Ripe strawberries. I can buy them but they are never ripe and so taste terrible. Other fruit is often as bad.
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.
DeconceptualistSure 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…
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 🤤🥺
You can eat the leaves too
I prefer the Kentucky Fred cultivar
Strawberries that taste like they did 10+ years ago?
Strawberries are so easy to grow that they are almost invasive.
If you leave them alone, they will overtake whatever is near them.
Each strawberry plant I have sends off multiple runners, with multiple nodes per runner.
It is a very high exponential growth rate.
You can start with 4 and have over 100 in 2 years.
I know this because we have a random strawberry bush in a crack in front of our garage but it’s just from last year and only making tiny berries right now.
In a couple years maybe I’ll have good berries.
AppoxoI am not aware of strawberry bushes. Are you sure we are still talking about strawberries?
It’s a plant lol
Uh, do you maybe live around Missouri? We have false strawberries here.
Does the plant have 3 pointy leaves like this?
