Thursday, July 27, 2023

Cherries Were Sweet, Wormy, and Juicy

It is high season for cherries, and I find them every time I go to the grocery store. They are red, plump, juicy, and quite expensive. But none as expensive as we found them in June in Calgary, Canada, a farming town. I asked the locals why their cherries were 26 Canadian dollars a kilogram and was told that there was a shortage; the crop was smaller because the weather had been colder than usual, and cherries need heat to ripen.

So much for the non-stop global warming drivel and the need to eliminate CO2 from any human activity by 2030. Yet plants and trees need CO2 to grow, it is the gas of plant life. Nurseries add extra CO2 in their green houses in order to grow plants much faster. And we exhale CO2.

I did not purchase the expensive cherries in Calgary although I was tempted. I reached for their compostable grocery bags and then I decided against buying them and bought apples instead.

Our local Wegman’s carries cherries from California most days for $2.99 per pound and organic or yellow ones for $6.99 per pound. Even at the price of $12.99 per pound, they flew off the shelves in early June. Locals, government bureaucrats who inhabit this area, can afford to pay high prices for everything – apartments, gas, high-end EVs like Tesla, and very expensive homes.

I filled my bowl with red cherries and took them on the deck; they glistened in the sunlight in rich hues of ripened red. Within minutes a bee appeared out of the nowhere, attracted by the fruity fresh scent.

As I ate one and the fruit released its sweet juice, I was reminded of my childhood cherries, infested by fruit flies with their worms. They crawled inside the fruit and burrowed their eggs. We ate them anyway, we were so starved for fresh fruits and vegetables.

My friend Joe K., who served a while at the Embassy in Bucharest, told me the story of one Friday evening, when several friends gathered at his home to watch a VHS movie and he picked up a large bag of cherries which he placed on the kitchen table. As his wife went into the kitchen to bring the guests bowls of cherries, Joe heard a scream. He ran to the kitchen to check on his wife and found her staring grossed out at the kitchen table now crawling with hundreds of white worms which had emerged from the bag of cherries.

Come to think of it, I don’t remember ever eating a fruit, any fruit, during my childhood in communist Romania that was not burrowed inside by worms. Cherries in June and July were sweet, wormy, and juicy, and we ate them anyway.

I feel privileged and extremely lucky to live in this country where I can eat fruits free of fruit flies and their worms, especially cherries, apples, peaches, and prunes. 

Yet one day, I was in Shoppers in Fairfax, Virginia, and the cherry stand was buzzed by fruit flies and did not smell very well. I did not purchase any and left the store immediately, extremely disappointed. The abundance we used to experience once is no longer the same all over America.

2 comments:

  1. Howdy, again, from northeast Tennessee, Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh -- or Ileana, with respect and courtesy. Thank you for sharing your “life, such as it is,” article. (That's a topic section heading, on my website.) Growing up, in rural upper northeast Tennessee, I've plucked, polished on my shirt, and bitten into enough apples, to find a worm. It's better, if it's a whole worm, since the other half isn't in my mouth! I can't imagine being starved for fruit and vegetables, as you were, growing up in the Soviet Union. Russians told us similar stories, when my wife and I were missionaries there (1994 - 1999).

    I had to do the math! You wrote that, in Calgary, Canada, last month, cherries sold for 26 Canadian dollars per kilogram. That's about 19.61 US dollars per kilogram. One kilogram is about 2.2 pounds. That's about $8.91 for one pound of cherries! Amazing! As I usually say, “A Monopoly money dollar won't buy much, nowadays!”

    Yep, down here, it's similar. Yesterday, the local grocery store purchase was for 23 food items, which cost $86.91, before the 6.25% sales tax. Three pounds of Gala apples cost $5.99 ($6.00), or $1.99 ($2.00) per pound. (Rounding up, that's 7.95 Canadian dollars, for 1.36 kilograms.)

    Interestingly, our A/C unit stopped cooling last evening. Yesterday, the high temperature was 100°F (37.7°C). Well, it's the “dog days of summer” (July 3rd to August 11th). Our repair man is working us into his busy schedule. I was raised without air conditioning, but my wife is suffering enough.

    Who knows? Maybe the human-caused global climate change propagandists will just stop exhaling! That would lower CO2 levels and temperatures. Their hot air would stop. (Of course, that's just my sarcastic humor.)

    Well, I'll get off here. Our TV and Internet provider sent a new control box, which they'd told us that we need. I'm trying to get it connected correctly, to start working. It's a “better and faster” box -- which means that it will be worse and slower, of course.

    I'm an optimistic realist, enduring the slow demise of this once great nation, into “Socialist Utopian Oblivion” (as I call it). Blessings, to you and yours!

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