What are your favorite fruits, and why.

[Chief Longwind Of The North]

Think about this one. What is your favorite fruit, and why. It could be your favorite for cooking, or eating raw, or using in a sauce, or desert. Does it flood your mouth with juicy flavor, like a ripe stone fruit, or balance sweet and sour, like a perfect black raspberry, or excited your nasal cavity with its aroma, like a ripe banana?

I love fresh grapefruit, pink or white, and ugly fruit. They are both tart, and sweet, eaten fresh with just a little sugar. Grapefruit juice used to be my go to after getting up. It just helped wake me up, and excite my taste buds for tings yet to come.

Grapefruit juice was my go, early morning drink of choice for years. Fresh squeezed grapefruit juice is wonderful when substituted for key lime juice in a key lime pie recipe as well. Grapefruit is also very juicy, and is a must in citrus salads.

This is actually a difficult topic as i love so many different fuits and berries, all for different reasons. The only hting they seem to hace in common is that they need to have a blallance of both seet , and sour. For instance, I love a ripe stone fruit, be it plumb, peach, or nectarine. The skin is tart, while the flesh is super juicy, silky smooth, and sweet, with just a little sourness, depending on the fruit. Even really good watermellon, with its sugary sweet center, is ballanced with the sour white of the rind.

For cooking, though love a good peach cobbler, my favorite is apple anything. Again, I love mixing something sweet, like a pink lady, or fuji, and something with a little bite, like a granny smith, or Johnathon. A great apple pie, with a lattice crust, to me, is the epitome of a great desert, hot or cold, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream beside it.

Ok, your turn.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

 

[Andy M.]

Blueberries. They are in my favorite pie, my oatmeal, muffins, and in a topping for my ice cream. I can buy them fresh or frozen (they don't seem to suffer from being frozen), wild and cultivated.

Then there are apples. A pink lady or a granny smith are great out of hand. I use macintosh for my favorite apple squares recipe. Cortlands go into my pies.

Green grapes. A great snack out of the fridge. Cold, sweet and juicy.

Apricots. I like the dried ones. Also, they make the best jam.

Not a big fan of melons and rhubarb is in the same category as cauliflower for me.

 

[pepperhead212]

If I had to pick a favorite to eat as is, it would be pears, though only a couple of things I make with them. To make smoothies, usually in combo with other fruits, as well as using in cooking, pineapple would definitely be tops. Peaches and nectarines are also favs, in season, but only organics - those are some of the most heavily sprayed fruits out there, with strawberries topping the list again.

I used to love grapefruit, but I can't eat it now, due to a drug interaction with something I take.

 

[WhateverYouWant]

If I had to pick one, it would be easy… pineapple!

Pineapple Sorbet

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Pina Colada

Pineapple Daiquiri/Smoothie (great with bananas too)

Pineapple Fried Rice

Teriyaki BBQ Chicken with Pineapple

Hawaiian Pit BBQ Ham Sandwich - hot steamed ham, Stubbs, and pineapple slice on an onion bun.

Hawaiian Burger - Mayo, lettuce, onion, burger, teriyaki sauce, jack cheese and pineapple on a whole wheat bun.

BBQ Chicken Pizza - sweet BBQ sauce, Moz & Jack, chicken, bacon, bell pepper, and pineapple.

I have a friend in Hawaii that occasionally sends me a 6 pack of Maui Golds (the best). But supermarket ones are good too if you have the patience to let them ripen.

I could go on and on… desserts, savory dishes, salsas, creme de menthe fruit cups, etc. Other frequent favs are lemons, limes, bananas, oranges, coconut, blackberries, strawberries and passion fruit.

 

[Kathleen]

I really don't have favorites. I seem to crave whatever is in season. So far, I've not found a fruit that I don't like as long as it is ripened perfectly. So currently, peaches have been great along with plums and nectarines!

 

[PrincessFiona60]

Lemon anything...curd, marmalade, lemonade, pie...I even eat them, peel and all!

 

[dragnlaw]

I'm with Kathleen on this one - whatever is in season, I can, and do, gorge myself silly on them.

Over the years I have become sensitive to some - raspberries (so I also avoid blackberries.. sigh) and pears. I can eat them if cooked into something but not raw or out of hand.

 

[Andy M.]

Lemon anything...curd, marmalade, lemonade, pie...I even eat them, peel and all!

I do love lemon desserts. Thanks to Lemon Lady, (Alix), I have great recipes for lemon cookies (2 kinds) and lemon squares/bars. Also lemon pie and lemon pudding cake.

I also enjoy pineapple. I make a great pineapple ice cream. Pineapple on the grill with grilled marinated pork makes a great al pastor substitute.

 

[WhateverYouWant]

I make a great pineapple ice cream.

Ever tried Håagen-Dazs Pineapple Coconut ice cream? It's serious yum!

 

[taxlady]

Mango, maybe. I like all kinds of fruits, and like Kathleen and Dragn, I really like the ones that are in season. I can't think of any fruit I dislike. There are some I'm less enthusiastic about: watermelon, blueberries, kiwis, but I'm still happy to eat them if someone serves it to me. Well, there are chokecherries. They are weird, but I'll pick a few and eat them, if I come across them growing on a chokecherry tree.

 

[pepperhead212]

Ever tried Håagen-Dazs Pineapple Coconut ice cream? It's serious yum!

Coconut and pineapple are two flavors that were made for each other! That's something that I add to pineapple smoothies, whenever I make them, along with whatever else.

I also like some fruits only in season - things like peaches, clementines, nectarines, plums, and a number of others. No fruits that I really don't like, but I definitely have favorites - I just wish that I could grow some of them!

 

[WhateverYouWant]

Coconut… I add to pineapple smoothies, whenever I make them

In what manner?

along with whatever else

You mean that bottle of rum under the kitchen counter? (c;

 

[Chief Longwind Of The North]

I forgot to put in banana as a favorite. IIt is wonderful when ripe, with a yellow peel, and just starting to develop little brown spots, the flesh firm, sweet, and fragrant, all the way through heavy brown spots, sot flesh, but not yet starting to gell. Taken a step further, over=ripe, bananas are phenomenal for muffins, quick breads, and puddings/custards.

of course when just right, firm and fragrant, you can make banana splits with your favorite toppings, or Bananas F
oster, where in each case, though you have powerful, complimentary flavors, the banana flavor is still pronounced, and an integral part of the desert.

Sadly, due to the high potassium content, I can only have a little banana, once in a great while.

Seeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North

 

[GotGarlic]

Cherries, blackberries and peaches, and of, lemon, are my favorites. We had a cherry tree in the backyard of my parents' first house and I loved climbing it to pick fresh cherries.

Another place where we lived had huge blackberry bushes behind the garage. That's where I first fell in love with the beautiful orb weaver spiders and the blackberry cobbler my mom made.

Peaches are just amazing when they're perfectly ripe.

And lemon - so versatile, so many ways to use it, both sweet and savory.

 

[valery73]

Fig tree

- I just wish that I could grow some of them!

I have a fig tree in my garden and there are so many growing this season.
Excellent to eat fresh just picked up but also coat in caramel or I make a fig jam that accompanied with cheese is delicious.

 

[pepperhead212]

In what manner?



You mean that bottle of rum under the kitchen counter? (c;

I have a pint bottle of coconut flavor, which I put a few drops of into the smoothies, and sometimes other things I want a stronger coconut flavor in. Once in a while I put some rum in, for the piña colada flavor, but not too often.

 

[WhateverYouWant]

I have a pint bottle of coconut flavor, which I put a few drops of into the smoothies, and sometimes other things I want a stronger coconut flavor in.

I have struggled for years to find a replacement for Mele-Koi's Hawaiian Coconut Snow which went away a number of years ago. I discovered it back in the late 70's at the Kona Plantation bar. It made the best Chi-Chi's and Pina Coladas.

I have since tried the universally recommended Coco-Lopez and Coco Ono and find them just too heavy and sweet. The Snow had great flavor and made light, frothy drinks due to some egg white and milk solids in addition to the coconut, and really let the pineapple flavor come through.

I've used the VitaMix to make my own coconut milk, but it is a pain, and the results are still not as good. So I am curious about your "coconut flavor" and "other things".

 

[pepperhead212]

SP, I use Arroy D coconut milk, in the cardboard containers, when making Thai and other foods calling for unsweetened coconut milk - it is my favorite, and is 100% coconut milk. If I only need a small amount, I sometimes use coconut milk powder. Sometimes I'll have some left over, and that will go into a smoothie, but it's the drops of coconut flavor that add the most flavor. Fortunately, coconut flavor is even better than vanilla, as the chemical that the artificial flavor copies is an even higher % of the coconut flavor.

I don't use those sugar syrup "coconut milks" for piña coladas - too sweet for me, too. I used to like that Mele-Koi's snow, too, but haven't found a replacement, either. Fortunately, I don't make piña coladas too often any more.

 

[taxlady]

I used to mostly use the coconut milk that comes in a can. But, now almost all of it has some sort or thickener, like guar gum in it, and I prefer not to have useless additives in my food. So, this is what I use a lot. I especially like it when I don't need a lot, because I just refrigerate the portion I don't need today.

 

[dragnlaw]

I have a fig tree in my garden and there are so many growing this season.
Excellent to eat fresh just picked up but also coat in caramel or I make a fig jam that accompanied with cheese is delicious.

hmmm, caramel coated sounds delish, jam & cheese sounds devine!

ps,
Welcome to DC Valery!