Why I'm Eating Terrible Fruit

(NOTE: Based on time elapsed since the posting of this entry, the BS-o-meter calculates this is 15.678% likely to be something that Ferrett now regrets.)

Empty fruitThe box of blackberries I just ate?  Was terrible.  A sour, seedy box of tartness that even Gini acknowledged was pretty foul.
Yet I ate them anyway.  To the cries of the Internet, who asked, “Ferrett, why don’t you eat good fruit in your quest to acclimate yourself to eating healthy?”
And the answer is simple: it’s another excuse.
The central problem with my snacking is that I don’t want to eat fruit, so I find excuses.  I was doing smoothies for a while, but the smoothies took ten minutes to make, and chocolate milk was thirty seconds tops, so if Gini was running late or I was lazy that morning or hey, Erin’s here, I gotta make three smoothies… I didn’t make the smoothies.  Because they were tolerable, but I didn’t want them in any sense except that I wanted to have had them.  Which is, in much the same way that I often want to have exercised, not nearly the same thing as actually desiring a smoothie.
I wanted the health that came with them.  Not the actual taste.
So as it turns out, fruit is often pretty nasty.  Which I honestly did not know.  I knew there was “rotten fruit,” but I ate so little fruit in the course of my life that I assumed that all strawberries were pretty decent – sure, there were some excellent strawberries that people would drool over, but in my mind there was a certain minimum standard of strawberriness that vendors held to.  Strawberries were like Hershey bars in that they all tasted pretty much the same.
As it turns out, there’s tart berries and sucky berries and out-of-season berries, and you can’t tell the fucking difference.  The blackberries Gini and Erin ate last night were great.  The blackberries I had this morning, which looked identical, were icky.
Yet I chowed them down.  Because “eating only good fruit’ would be another excuse.  I’m trying to enter a new world, one where I can eat fruit everywhere, and part of that bargain is that some fruit isn’t that great.
If I only eat good fruit, then my fruit-not-liking mind will go, “Well, I don’t have to eat those bananas.  They’re not good!  So I’ll just eat this Pop Tart instead.”  And lo, strangely enough, I’ll start finding all of these fruity weaknesses, and I’ll be back to escaping the Land of Icky Fruits.  (And remember, in the World of Ferrett, all fruits are icky, even those delicious ones you love.)
No, my friends; I must treat this fruit like Gini treats her marriage with me.  Is Ferrett always sweet and wonderful and good-tasting?  No.  Sometimes he’s foul and wrinkled.  Yet Gini bravely consumes her daily dosage of me, for this is not a one-time occurrence, but an averaged value.  Some days, Ferretts will be meanish, other days Ferretts will be delightful.  She sticks with me regardless, because I have some awesome benefits.
So, too, shall I struggle through the bad fruit. Because otherwise, it’d be all too easy for my very devious Gollum-mind to create another reason not to have them.  Fruits are good and bad, and sometimes I’ll have bad ones, and I’d better learn to tolerate those tart little fuckers, too.

4 Comments

  1. Jericka
    Dec 12, 2012

    Y’know, I have been reading your blog for a while, and you have never managed to make yourself sound unappealing….
    Until today.
    Congratulations?
    Fruit is not interchangeable. An apple is not a pear is not a persimmon is not a pomegranate. All the ones that I listed, though are ACTUALLY IN SEASON right now in the northern hemisphere. For the sake of all that is good, try something ACTUALLY IN SEASON! I wouldn’t touch berries righgt now with a ten foot pole, and the tomatoes right now might as well be red cucumbers, but apples and pears are in! if you want instructions on how to get the seeds out of a pomegranate I have them! Pom seeds are good for you, and having them with a bit of honey on top of fat free yogurt is tasty(opinion, I know, but I have converted people into liking them!).

  2. J Moon
    Dec 12, 2012

    My son, who happens to be a chocolate (re: flavored milk) junkie, loves Magic Milk straws. They add very little in the way of calories to the milk, but supposedly tons of flavor. Unfortunately I can’t vouch for this as I have never tried them. They come in all kinds of flavors and can be found at Walmart, Target and Amazon. But sour fruit is good too!
    http://www.magicstraws.com/

  3. Frayedcat
    Dec 12, 2012

    Eat frozen fruit. Well, defrost it and then eat it. However, frozen fruit is just a good for you as fresh. I will find you citations if you like, but trust. There is some loss of texture but the quality and the taste are consistent. Frozen Berries are pretty much the same from one package to another.

    • Jericka
      Dec 17, 2012

      Frozen blueberries can be used to make a frozen dessert like substance. You pour a bowl of the loose frozen berries, sprinkle your sweetener of choice across the top, pour milk over(we use 2%), and stir before it hardens up.

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