Best Fruit Poll.

Oh shit I forgot about tamarillos/tree tomatoes. I haven’t had them in 35 years (I’ve never seen them anywhere except for the vines we had growing in our yard) but they’re amazing, especially with a little sugar sprinkled on them.

i'd never heard of tamarillos! what a beautiful fruit 😍

https://plantinstructions.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/tamarillos.jpg

Don't like most fruit and almost never eat it. Not my thing. Tomatoes.

it's really annoying that during the summer months, just having a few bananas in your kitchen is enough to create a viable ecosystem for a massive swarm of fruit flies. voted tomatoes.

I’ve had tomatoes on the ledge for a week or two and when I cut into one today: sprouted seeds :-///

I've never tried mangosteen, never even see one as far as I know

they don't keep well, if they start to go yellow inside then forget it.

is mandarin a stand-in for tangerine in the poll? They're not the same in my mind

The farmer's market late summer peach i had this morning was the best piece of fruit i've had all year. Just sweet drippy and sublime

Went with mango because it's the cadillac of fruits.. but I have a serious soft spot for grapes, as they grow wild throughout California (both native and wine grape escapees) and it's a real joy to be wandering along the railroad tracks somewhere and discover a vine with ripe, dark bunches and be spitting seeds as you continue your walk

Anyway I have a bunch of grapes tattooed on my shoulder blade but no mango tattoo

is mandarin a stand-in for tangerine in the poll? They're not the same in my mind

I would've immediately said strawberry until recently -- I haven't been able to pick a good carton in a while, and some of my cooling ardor is also probably because of trying to use them in baking.

But I've really gotten into mangos, and picking them has gotten easier for me. I used to be diligent about looking for the sap trails on their stems, but I think a lack of them doesn't mean they're necessarily unsweet.

<3 apricots, dried and fresh (although I usually eat them as pluots), and I've really enjoyed it in jams.

Passion fruit are really aromatic, but they have this weird umami, almost meaty taste sometimes (at least the ones that I've picked out).

Muscadine

― Heez, Sunday, September 29, 2024 5:45 PM (yesterday)

I think this would win if every fruitloving ilxor had tasted them, but alas.

tough choice between mango and pineapple for me, went with the latter because it has the sharp edge in addition to the sweetness

pineapples are kick-ass to be sure, and really good on shish-kabobs

pineapples also look really cool

blew my mind to see them growing in a field, had assumed they grew on trees.

I bought some TJ's dried pineapple recently and ate way too many rings too quickly and my stomach was killing me, pure acid

I bought a bag of green grapes yesterday that are huge and absolutely some of the best grapes I've ever had in my life. Crunch just one with your teeth and your knees will buckle.

i am addicted to sugar, so i usually just gravitate to the sweetest thing around. pineapple it is.

I’ve been growing a pineapple plant but I accidentally beheaded it a couple weeks ago :/

Mango has a soapy-ness to me that I don’t really like but it’s possible I’ve just never had good mango.

re: mangoes, I have to say I alluded to this upthread, but after I read this wonderful article I shared it and the author got in touch, and although he didn't end up putting the mangoes in my hand I did learn the process from him and so earlier this year a friend and I went halves on an order. it was expensive but I had to know. even the smell alone was otherworldly as we drove home from the cargo bay. the actual taste of them -- simply a lifetime peak eating experience, unbelievable. I ended up driving around town giving some to friends, they make you want to share their ecstasy, these mangoes. however in voting I have to take into account what I'm actually going to eat regularly as fruit rather than taste just a few times in my life.

We usually have a period (August, it's already over) where gigantic mangoes can be had at the local grocery for $10/10, so I usually buy boatloads during that time. I've gotten much better at slicing them up, I would say a big-ass mango constitutes a full meal and a good one at that

Pakistani mango season reaches London, and all the Asian shops pile the boxes high.

a native Hawaiian showed me a rad trick: slice the mango thinly, then marinate in soy sauce in the fridge for a half-hour or so, it's pretty darn good

i love hearing about fruit mystical experiences. i can't think of another food that inspires quite the same...

ooh yeah that's like the watermelon/salt/chili powder thing

xp!

When I was a kid we used to love going into the woods and picking wild elderberries, eating them by the handfuls. I don't know how many people here have tried them. They are only a little sweet, but have a deep earthy flavor. They grow throughout the northeast in semi-shaded areas.

After we picked them my mom would make elderberry pancakes for us.

Hey cat, I didn't live in New Jersey but in Western NY! We were happy to share everything with our neighbors. My father grew so much stuff that we ended up giving lots of everything away

https://www.ediblewildfood.com/images/thimbleberry-pictures/rubus-parviflorus-berries.jpg

Thimbleberry was a cool find when I was a kid in the forests of Northern California... you never saw very many so it was always a treat to discover a fat red ripe one

https://www.juneauempire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/31742971_web1_berry-picking-Vivian-.jpg

Ditto for the lowly salmonberry! Like a giant fat blackberry but bright orange, they grow all over the coastal northwest rain forests

The cool thing about fresh mangoes: you can eat them with the skin. Try it if you get the chance.
One shop here sells some mini-mangoes from Colombia. They're stupidly expensive, pale yellow, thin-skinned, you could grab 2-3 in your hand, and they're frankly amazing.
Some of the best mangoes I ever had were sold to me by a grandmother in a village in Andalusia. Otherworldly as others have said. I voted mango.

I've forgotten how good raspberries are, since they're on the pricier side. They're so light but creamy, with a punch of flavor.

in the order if which i would eat them if they were all in front of me and a perfect 10/10 version of each specemin:

1 - Grapefruit - pink, i eat about two a day, sometimes three in the summer when my grapefruit tree is producing like crazy. i feel so good after eating one, always calms my stomach.
2 - Mango - a good mango, fun to eat and sweeter than candy (others otm about dried mango too)
3 - Honeydew - might be the hardest fruit to find a 10/10 version of, but when you get one it's hard to beat
4 - Cherry - mt rainer or the super deep red ones are the best, super fun to eat too
5 - Peach - i could go nectarine as well but peach barely gets the nod due to it being easier to eat (the fruit doesnt stick to the seed)

I like that framing, I would go with peach/pear/blueberry/strawb/apple with those criteria

in conclusion, pears (perfect, ripe pears) are being neglected here

Everyone sleeping on plums in the stone fruit face-off. Nectarines have the above ^^ problem. Peaches have got the fuzz. Plums, have got the most beautiful colour of all the fruits inside and out, slightly smaller so you can pack a few of them away in one sitting, explode in your mouth without the juices dripping all over your nice white shirt.

plums > nectarines > peaches. Based on the Peach stanning itt, I'll chalk my peach opinion up to a supbar Australian variant.

Worth stating: Peaches, even the apparently subpar ones available to me, are still great; as are all fruits large and small.

I know it’s been stated that including chili peppers in this was a lateral move that distorts the poll but I immediately voted for them as soon as I saw that option because not only do I use them and their ground-up bits in my day to day cooking, they can also be delicious eaten as if they were a fruit, with all of the wonderful fiber benefits AND a kick

Blackberries and raspberries are wonderful in their own right because if you find anything that looks like them out in the wild, they’re guaranteed safe to eat (there are no poisonous berries that look like them, I learned this from a survival manual I made my parents buy me at a national park gift shop a hundred years ago)

I love peaches, but maybe I said this already, the peaches I now see in grocery stores are not very juicy, and the fruit doesn't stick to the pit, it's dry, and it is not begging you to tear it off from the pit while spilling juice like I remember

as far as poinonous berries go, don't mistake deadly nightshade for elderberries! Those are similar-looking but bigger berries

My favorite horse Frosty, cared for by our next door neighbor, who I fell off of in 7th grade causing me to break my arm and who I loved, ended up eating deadly nightshade berries across the fence, and he died

RIP Frosty

. . ."the fruit doesn't stick to the pit". . .

those are the serious eating peaches! the lesser eating peach is called "cling" for a reason. it is more a canning variety

dang, sorry for your Frostly loss Dan S.

i could go nectarine as well but peach barely gets the nod due to it being easier to eat (the fruit doesnt stick to the seed)

The method I've used to cut up stone fruits has been pretty reliable, provided that the fruit is just the right ripeness. Cut in half along the butt crack around the pit, then grab onto both halves and twist in opposite directions. Whichever half has the stone, cut in half again, and twist again; repeat again until you have eighths. (If it's overripe, the skin will most twist off the flesh.)

Stop the count, I’m too sad about Frosty.

The method I've used to cut up stone fruits has been pretty reliable, provided that the fruit is just the right ripeness. Cut in half along the butt crack around the pit, then grab onto both halves and twist in opposite directions. Whichever half has the stone, cut in half again, and twist again; repeat again until you have eighths. (If it's overripe, the skin will most twist off the flesh.)

― Muol Deng (Leee), Tuesday, October 1, 2024 7:18 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes this is great and its always a one of those small moments of anxiety just before where you have no idea whats gonna happen and when it goes your way its elation and when it doesnt... massive disappointment

Apples probably the true winner of this poll but for me, pineapple is what I'm always gonna go for first when presented with an assortment of cut fruit.

Nectarines beat peaches because no hairy skin