Dartblog

After three months living with us in Paris, a Dartmouth student observed one day, “You know, I never liked fruit before, but now I realize that I have never really had any.” At our home she had been eating sweet peaches and other autumnal fruits that had had an honest chance to ripen before being picked. The contrast with the rock-hard products of American industrial agriculture (or the Spanish agribusiness farms that now sell their debased produce in European supermarkets) is palate-shaking.

Most Europeans who come to the U.S. tell a mirror-image anecdote: when they first go to an American supermarket, they are astounded by how beautiful the fruit and vegetables are. But their surprise is just a prelude to disappointment when they taste our insipid produce. Picking fruit green, storing it for weeks or months in warehouses at just-above-freezing temperatures, and then achieving the appearance of ripeness using gas, is a recipe for mealy, tasteless food that otherwise would be full of flavor.

I bought the above box of green figs at the Tutti Frutti greengrocer in Maiori on the Amalfi Coast. You are seeing them in the raking morning sunlight. One can eat ripe figs skin and all. They are soft/squishy to the touch and boldly sweet and flavorful. I like to shop at Tutti Frutti for the good fruit, but also to hear the owners, Angela and Salvatore, talk to their customers. My Italian is pretty good, but my Neapolitan isn’t. I can sometimes overhear entire conversations and not make out a single word — but what a pleasure to hear the range of sounds in the still vibrant language of Naples.

Addendum: The Times had a piece recently celebrating the people who grow real food.