Another great thing about the Asian supermarket I work at is that we have a great selection of produce. I've read up through a lot of cookbooks and still can't name all the different vegetables we have. When someone comes in looking for Gai Lan, I just direct them to the produce section and point to the seemingly never-ending rows of different green, leafy things. Most things in the store's inventory I know pretty well, but the sheer variety of vegetables can leave my head spinning.
What fruit we have is more seasonal. The few times a year we do get in lychees I jump to buy a pound or two. Sometimes we have apples, sometimes clementines, sometimes pineapples, sometimes melons, sometimes persimmons, and so on. It all depends. The three fruits we do have almost all year round (besides lemons and limes, which for some reason we keep with the veggies, but whatever), are kiwis, mangoes, and Korean pears. Kiwis are amazing fruits. They pack a ton of nutrition, including Vitamin E and a lot of Vitamin C, and I try to eat one almost every day. Mangoes are one of my favorite fruits ever (mangoes, pomegranates, and blood oranges, btw), but I don't buy them that often because they're more pricey and kind of a bitch to peel, unfortunately.
Korean pears are a category of fruit all their own. Also called nashi, these are very juicy fruits and very sweet with a taste that's like a cross between a pear and an apple -- except sweeter. If any of you readers have ever gotten an "Asian Pear" from a grocery store or farmers market, they're kind of like that but bigger. Way bigger. One of these pears is the size of a large toddler's head. Possibly even bigger than that. These things are enormous!
On a rare occasion, we come across a pear that's been damaged. Most of our customers take great pains to select the most perfect pears, so we can't really sell the damaged ones. For example, once a pear was punctured by moving the packaging, so there was basically a big chunk missing from the side. Once one had a discolored patch, and another time a third of one was covered by a black bruise. When fruit is supposed to be thrown out, I like to salvage what I can. Why not? After all, it's free for me, and on weeks when I'm struggling to buy groceries, slightly old fruit is still a good, healthy meal. Getting to take one of the damaged pears is always a treat. They're so huge that even if part of it is bad, there is still a lot of edible, juicy, delicious fruit.
Plus these things are freaking expensive -- six bucks a pear! No way am I going to be able to afford to buy one on a regular basis. That's why I love the few days when I am able to get a Korean pear. The most important lesson here is that, while I am a bit of a cheapskate, I strive to eat healthily on a budget. Another little bit of fluff I could add is that it's good to take enjoyment and see the positive in bad situations -- the still delicious part of the bruised pear.
Yeah, whatever.
XOXO
Gossip Ghoul
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