On walnuts

Most food is background noise to us.  We have our favorites - the foods that get us excited, that remind us of previous moments, that make our bellies full and happy (oh hello there pan-fried dumplings!).  Then there are the foods that we hate - that we have become trained to avoid for whatever reason - distaste, disgust, allergies, sensitivities, etc (I am, unfortunately, looking at you olives, garlic, and onions!). We tend to focus on our friends and enemies of the food world, while our acquaintances fade away, garnering little attention from us.

Every now and then, however, an acquaintance moves up to a full-fledged friend.  We spend a little more time together, discover previously unknown qualities about them, and then suddenly the kitchen needs to make room to store more of this new friend.  

I have recently gone through this leveling up of friendship with walnuts.  I hadn't been anti-walnut, previously.  Just a bit meh about them - only using them when it seemed necessary.  Now I am bringing home bags chock full of them and dumping them into the large bowl that has now been converted to full-time nut holding and taking up valuable kitchen space.  I can't get enough of their sweetly bitter, fatty taste.  I love that satisfying feeling of successfully cracking open that hard shell.  I love the sound of the shell breaking.  And I especially love excavating that craggy, brain-like nut meat.  I love it all.  I'm sad that I missed out on valuable walnut time for so long, but I have been busily making up for all that lost time together.  I do believe that my new-found friendship with walnuts will be a long, fruitful one.

On hidden treasures

Some produce is inherently charming.  Strawberries, blueberries, clementines, shiny green apples, romanesco cauliflower - all of these draw you in so easily, so readily.  How can one not resist those juicy red berries, those fun little dark blue orbs, those bright and happy citrus fruits (especially when sporting cute little green leaves on top), those crisp and proper apples just waiting to be picked, the bizarre and captivating brassicas - they are all so easy to love and eat and bring home and adore.

Others sitting in the produce aisle or at the produce market lack these innate charms and instant lovability.  Some are even prickly - both figuratively and literally.  Like, for instance, the pineapple - an alien-looking creature that is quite difficult to grasp and sports a brownish-yellow coat.  Or the artichoke - so sadly green and pointy.  Or the kiwi fruit, looking like fuzzy pieces of poop.  Or the turnips and rutabagas and celery roots - the lowly root vegetables whose outward charms are so lacking that we generally overlook them, rendering them invisible.

As much as I am a sucker for the produce in the first category, my heart truly belongs to the produce in the second.  The ones that need some love and care, to hack away the nasty hard parts to get at the delicious goodness inside.  The ones that need some extra prep to make them stand out and proud. The ones that need a bit of extra oven time to sing.  Today, I will be sure to fill up my basket with the hidden treasures of the produce world.