conuly | In *good* news, I went to the other grocery store today

to pick up pancetta, which is half the price it is at my closer grocery store, and it turns out that berry season has arrived! Two pounds of strawberries for $3! Two boxes of raspberries for $4! Neither of those are actually berries, but whatever!

I was also able to get purslane. That is also not a berry. Neither are the cherries I picked up for $2 a pound. We are going to be eating so much fruit this summer. Just can't wait until the farmer's market gets ripe peaches in. And currents.

I wait all year for fresh, ripe fruit that isn't bananas* or oranges** or apples. Can't eat those hard peaches and plums that you get most of the year. I'm gonna eat myself sick.

* these are berries

** so are these

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

raino

OK this orange being a berry messes with my head, if you mean it literally. I thought fruit was this thing from tree, which has hard seeds inside?

From:

conuly

Botanically, a fruit is the ripened ovary of a plant (not necessarily a tree), which typically means that it has seeds (but some things with seeds are not the ripened ovary of a plant, such as strawberries). Using this definition, oranges are fruits and so are blueberries, tomatoes, watermelon, avocado, bananas, cucumber, melon, peppers, cherries, and so on.

The botanical definition of a berry is any fruit which has seeds in a pulpy mass. This includes, but is not limited to, tomatoes, oranges, blueberries, watermelon. Also bananas, which in the wild do have seeds. It does not include cherries, strawberries, raspberries, or, indeed, most things with -berry in the name. All berries are fruits.

In the common, culinary definition a fruit is the part of the plant that is eaten as a fruit, which mostly means that it is sweet and has seeds except when it doesn't - bananas are fruits but plantains aren't, lemons are fruits but avocadoes usually aren't, and so on. Under this somewhat recursive definition tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers aren't fruits, despite having seeds, because they're not "eaten as fruits". They're vegetables, which under the common definition means something like "a plant or mushroom that we eat in non-sweet ways, excluding grains, nuts, spices, and dried beans/pulses". (Some people also mentally exclude herbs and aromatics, or exclude them in some situations but not others - I wouldn't overthink it.)

In the common culinary definition, a berry is a very soft, sweet fruit that belongs to the recursive category "berry" - so strawberries and mulberries and currants all count, but grapes probably don't, and cherries might.

It's very important to be clear which definition you intend to use, because of course they conflict. I like to use the botanical definition where the culinary one is more appropriate because it amuses me to do so.

At any rate, to my knowledge neither definition, in any common dialect, has to do with trees or how hard the seeds are. Some fruits, such as oranges, come from trees and have hard seeds. Some, such as watermelon, don't come from trees. Some, such as mulberries, do come from trees but have small, unobtrusive seeds. You might use the word that way, but I think you may be the only one.

Here, take a comic.

Edited Date: 2019-06-14 08:33 am (UTC)

From:

gingicat

I thought that bananas are herbs, botanically.

From:

jessie_c

According to Professor Ponder Stibbons, Bananas are pipefish cladistically.

From:

isis

I giggled!

From:

conuly

GNU Terry Pratchett.

~ A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.

From:

conuly

The plant is an herb not a tree. The fruit is a berry.

From:

spikethemuffin

>You might use the word that way, but I think you may be the only one.

Well, to be fair, botanists seem to have defined "berry" outside of common usage. (It bothers me, too. Sort of like "box turtles" are not turtles but they are indelibly referred to as such...)

From:

conuly

To be even more fair, common usage doesn't really have a coherent and consistent definition of the word berry.

From:

spikethemuffin

Did you just use "common usage" and "coherent and consistent" in the same sentence? Okay, fine, there's a "doesn't" in there, I'll allow it.

From:

spikethemuffin

Also, $2/lb. for cherries? WHAT?

From:

conuly

Shock that it's so low, or shock that I think this is a low price?

That store has some good deals on produce, but their dairy is so-so at best.

From:

fred_mouse

For me, that is an incomprehensibly low price - American cherries are in local stores at $30/kg.

From:

spikethemuffin

Shock that it's so low.

One of the few things I truly miss about Chicago is their gigantic produce emporia. Crappy dairy, as you said, and $8 a box for slightly-stale cereal, but you could eat healthy for days on ten dollars.

From:

steorra

I think "berry", like "fruit", is a term that has a different culinary definition than botanical definition, and both are legitimate in their own areas.

Strawberries were called berries hundreds of years (maybe even a thousand years?) before the botanical definition of "berry" solidified to what it is now, and the culinary definition is still in use, so I think it still counts.

From:

conuly

Yes, but using the botanical definition where the culinary one is more appropriate amuses me.

From:

steorra

Fair :-)

From:

bibliofile

We've been getting southern peaches already. Yum.

The local strawberry farms haven't produced much fruit yet, due to a comparatively cold and wet May. Some years, we'd be into the second week of picking already. This year, my usual go-to farm hasn't announced when the season will start.

I am suspicious of cherries from California, but the prices have been pretty good I admit.

From:

conuly

Lucky you with the peaches. I distrust non-local peaches immensely - in order to get here intact, they have to be shipped hard as rocks.

From:

glinda

Apricots are in season here and they are a thing of glory - peaches are still hard and sad - I find it oddly pleasing that apricots are still a very seasonal fruit and only available fresh for a short period, I think I enjoy them more because of it.

From:

conuly

Never been a fan of apricots at any degree of ripeness. Apricots and nectarines are like fake peaches.

From:

isis

I like to refer to raspberries etc as drupes, because that REALLY confuses people.

We had a monumental stone fruit season here last year and I am doubtful it will repeat itself this year, but my fingers are crossed. Local orchard fruit in the markets isn't cheap, but it's good, and when the city trees start fruiting (if they do that year) there are enough people who don't want to pick their fruit(! I know!), but are cognizant of the bear risk if they don't, that they list on our fruit-glean website and I go out there with my ladder and buckets and make out like a bandit. I still have apricots from last year in my fridge.

From:

umadoshi

I go out there with my ladder and buckets and make out like a bandit.

That is amazing. *_*

From:

zesty_pinto

How do you prepare purslane? I find it growing wild all the time and wanted to let a patch grow in my plot just because of that, but no idea how to prep for it. Treat it like parsley? Parboil? Eat the stems, etc.?

From:

conuly

You can cook it, but I mostly just chop it and toss it into salads. You can put it in any kind of salad, but my fave is just ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, PURSLANE, scallions with some salt, pepper, and vinegar. This tastes good without the purslane too.

I'm going to have this batch with a watermelon salad - the same as above, but watermelon, feta, and mint instead of tomatoes, scallions, and vinegar.

From:

zesty_pinto

Thank you! I'm assuming that means the stems are fine too? Next time I see some, I'll just let it grow out then and give it a shot!

From:

conuly

Oh, yes, if by "fine" you mean "edible" and not "thin".

From:

quirkytizzy

Reading your post made me hungry and happy that fresh fruits are now available. MUST GO GET SOME AND NOM NOW.

From:

conuly

NOMNOMNOMNOM

From:

shadowkat

Wait..strawberries and raspberries aren't berries...since when? Confused.

From:

conuly

Since botany. Strawberries aren't even fruits.

From:

shadowkat

Eh, lawyer, negotiator, writer, artist, but really not a botanist. Bleach. Dirt. Mold. Bleach. Allergies. Can't breath. You are confusing me with my kid brother who farms. I'm a city girl who lives in an apartment with no plants. ;-)

Edited Date: 2019-06-15 03:57 am (UTC)