To: Ilaine who wrote (49525 ) 4/23/2000 12:52:00 PM From: Crocodile Read Replies (1) | Respond to
Authenticity...
Was just thinking about fruit, and how "authentic" it is when we buy it at the store... or should I say... "lacking in authenticity" instead... although I'm sure that it tries hard to be all that it might have been... but it's up against a lot of adversity.... being picked before full ripeness, travelling on trucks, trains or planes, sitting around in crates, then exposed to hundreds of eyes in its brightly-lit display case before being dragged home and tossed into the cold, darkness of the refrigerator's vegetable keeper....
Why should I be surprised when... arriving home with nectarines or plums, I bite into one after carefully washing and polishing it...and...
Nothing... nay... actually worse than nothing... It's like biting into wax fruit... which (incidentally), I actually DID once try to do when I was staying with my grandmother. I tried to eat some very old, dusty wax grapes and a plum that were arranged as the centre-piece on the table in her formal dining room...
Wonder how many other kids have been tricked into trying to eat dusty wax fruit? Maybe I was just a bit of a bozo... (0:
Well, that got me to thinking about how fruit should really be when it is "authentic"... fresh-picked... ideal....
It doesn't come that way from a store... that's for sure... I haven't had a chance to sample any tropical fruits in their native environment, but my guess is that they must be dynamite on home turf... Somebody else would probably know that for sure, wouldn't they?
Buy I DO know about the fruit indigenous to this region... strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, grapes and apples... and peaches and cherries when I've travelled 100 miles west of here....
The fruit that you pick on a warm, sunny day just isn't in the same league as the pseudo-fruit sold in the stores... No way...
When you bite into authentic fruit, it's like dissolving the summer sun on your tongue... Like having everything that IS summer wash through you for a few seconds... to be consumed by it... A bite into an apple on a late summer's day transports me to other moments in time... a few in particular.... Afternoons spent sitting on my horse, letting her graze underneath a dozen very old apple trees around an old homestead... The sun was hot, I was riding bareback, the horse's soft coat against my bare legs... She was grazing from tree to tree...stopping to eat the odd apple as she progressed across the orchard... periodically bringing me beneath the apple-laden branches... at ideal picking height... so that I could select the most perfect, sun-drenched apples of all....
To bite one of these was like taking a bite out of the summer sun...
Clear, warm, apple nectar filled my mouth... my mind...
But the authenticity of fruit brings another thought to mind...
I'm reminded of how children react, the first time that they try milking a goat.
I've taken goats to fairs and schools a number of times... so that children could learn about them and even try milking one.
I'm always thrilled to laughter when a child tries to milk a goat and discovers that milk from "the source" isn't thin and cold...anaemic...
No, it's thick and warm... full of life...
So thrilling to hear the shouts... "IT'S WARM!! THIS MILK IS WARM!!!"
A mixture of excitement, wonder, and even a strain of indignation... for all of the years of being deceived into thinking that milk is some cold, slightly antiseptic white fluid, piped through stainless steel tubing and tanks, exposed to chlorine disinfectants and high heat and extreme chilling, and finally squirted into plastic bags or waxed cardboard cartons...to be stowed away on a shelf in the refrigerator...
Waxed fruit... Waxed milk... inauthentic... unreal...
I once had a friend who had grown up in Italy. His family had goats... He told me that one of the most powerful residual memories of childhood was the small morning ritual of standing...waiting patiently in the goat shed.. while his father filled his little tin cup with milk from one of the goats... And of tasting...absorbing the warm, frothy whiteness.... He said that 40 years later, he could still remember the absolute perfection of that moment... how complete his world seemed in that moment...
...like the fruits of summer...
....authentic.... real....... full of life....
