Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 79: What's Your Favorite Seasonal Snack?
"I have been feasting with impunity on fruits that are being grown responsibly 3,000 miles from my home."
When you're a serious eater and a serious dieter you look for treats or snacks that you can eat with impunity at different times of the year. Yes, all you Michael Pollan and Alice Waters acolytes, I am talking about seasonal snacks that I can eat without worrying about my weight. Bananas have become a staple of my serious diet, but they are neither local nor seasonal unless you happen to live in a sub-tropical area. (I did have some killer baby bananas in Vieques, Puerto Rico, last December that tasted like they had been crossed with limes—banimas or limnanas, anyone?)
Summer in New York offers serious dieters many, many low-calorie snacking pleasures. I would like to say they're all grown within 250 miles of my home, but that would be a lie.
Blueberries are local or certainly regional, and especially cheap and plentiful right now. At Greenmarkets in and around Gotham you might pay $4 a pint. At the local street fruit stands right now I can sometimes find local blueberries grown by larger agribusiness concerns for $2.50 a pint. I snack on them like nuts throughout the day at the office.
Local strawberries are also plentiful and fairly reasonably priced right now in my neck of the woods, but I never know what to do with the stems and I always wind up with strawberry juice on my clothes. The day-neutral tri-star strawberries are especially sweet and juicy and well worth the premium you have to pay for them.
But in recent weeks I have been feasting with impunity on fruits that are being grown responsibly 3,000 miles from my home.
Yes, locavores might cringe at the notion that the best piece of fruit I have snacked on this summer is a garden-variety pluot from California. What is a pluot? A plum that's been genetically crossed with an apricot. Genius idea, isn't it?
Take a look at one of these bad boys. Sweet and gently acidic, these ungodly juicy babies are truly a dieter's best friend. That's what I hope, anyway, with the weigh-in coming up any moment now.
The Weigh-In
213. Up two pounds from last week. I'm not terribly concerned, since I dropped four pounds last week. I think I'll be all right, as long as there are pluots to be eaten.
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17 Comments:
Peaches and/or ice cream! All pitted fruits are a summertime staple.
tomthewombat at 9:00AM on 08/07/09
Pick-your-own blueberries and raspberries in season now, but still not cheap. And why didn't I really tend the plants I put in 30 years ago and ignored?
lemonfair at 9:13AM on 08/07/09
Ed, move to England for a bit. I am here now and shocked by the fruit prices, and most of the produce grown in the UK (which isn't so big, so really, it's all local...right?) I've been buying pints of raspberries for 1 pound--$1.70!
veggieout at 9:26AM on 08/07/09
I have more fruit from my CSA than I know what to do with. The season went: the last of last fall's apples, strawberries, rhubarb, sour cherries, bing cherries, peaches, red plums, yellow plums, donut peaches, and apricots. In the coming weeks I should start getting blueberries. Low spray, organic fertilizers, grown one hundred miles away, and very cheap. I paid $175 at the beginning of the season. For 25 weeks, that comes out to $7 a week. I get about 4 pounds of fruit per week. You can't beat it.
simon at 9:59AM on 08/07/09
Fresh peas. I buy them by the bag full and eat 'em right out of the pod. Sweet as candy, filling and tasty. I may actually have a bit of a pea addition .... (mind out of gutters now people).
AmazonGoddess at 10:01AM on 08/07/09
Cherries, I sit at my desk and spit the seeds into a coffee cup for hours.
annabanannas at 10:31AM on 08/07/09
Either cherries or cherry tomatoes. I could eat them until the tip of my tongue gets sore.......
CJ McD at 10:40AM on 08/07/09
Cherries, sliced cucumbers and firm peaches. Yum!
bkbella at 10:55AM on 08/07/09
It's definitely cherries in the summer. Every year I wait impatiently for them to appear, buy them as soon as I see them (despite the fact that they aren't at their absolute best yet & they cost a fortune), and mourn them when they are no longer available. Blueberries have been excellent for the past few weeks, so I too have been snacking on those like they're nuts. It's definitely harder in the winter.... I tend to drink a lot of hot chocolate in the winter. It's filling, it can be made relatively healthy, and it kills my chocolate cravings, and can be either a great pick-me-up snack in the afternoon or comfort snack at night.
kimberlymac at 11:31AM on 08/07/09
I'm with CJ McD and bkbella...my diet is loving those. I'll add raw red bell peppers.
Hobsy at 11:37AM on 08/07/09
Sugar snap peas are my current standby.
KarynMC at 12:37PM on 08/07/09
I'm so jealous of everyone eating cherries, I developed an allergy to them a few years back :( Loving tart Long Island blueberries though!
cyates at 1:15PM on 08/07/09
Pluot eh? Hmmm...I'd try it I guess! Though I have to say that GMOs of any kind freak me out a bit.
My favourite summer snacks are:
cucumbers with dill and cottage cheese, cherry tomatoes, farmers market carrots, fresh whole grain bread with farmers market honey....pickles (a bit unhealthy tho)
Keep up the great work ed!
hungrychristel at 1:18PM on 08/07/09
This year, it's nectarines, fantastic! Some of the best I've had so far were the cheapest from the supermarket on sale when nearby producers flood supermarkets with their harvest.
The cherries are ok, but I haven't seen the deep almost black purple ones I found at CostCo a few years ago. Those were so firm, and sweet, and tart, and rich.... damn I miss that kind of cherry!
Got my first purple figs of the season yesterday, these tiny little guys, still firm, not mush, and super sweet. Yum!
peekpoke at 1:18PM on 08/07/09
I've got fresh black plums from my grandmother's tree. Reminds me of my childhood, when we'd squat in the yard eating them straight from the branch, purplish juice running down our small chins as we wore devilish smiles of contentment...
Lorena at 1:41PM on 08/07/09
This summer I've become a total pluot convert! So sweet & refreshing!
flutephobia at 1:56PM on 08/07/09
My favorite seasonal snack is free fruit from parks and untended trees. In late June it was cherries, then raspberries and plums. Now it's mostly blackberries, though yesterday I had an apple that reminded me why I love them after a winter and spring of lackluster store-boughts, and I've been eyeing a 30' tree in the neighborhood packed with ripening pears. Delicious and preiswert!
Judes at 2:13PM on 08/07/09