BS: Punnets and the contents thereof

Subject: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 03:31 PM

Naturally, I refer to strawberries (that excellent Englishman, what else, Dr William Butler said in the 17th century that doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did). Well I used to grow strawberries, and battled the birds, the slugs, the millipedes and the grey mould, the final straw being that late one night I caught two badgers who appeared to be, er, having it off on my strawberry bed, thereby completely trashing it.

So I buy strawberries. Most of the ones you see in bulk on supermarket shelves are dismal. Too watery, too acidic, not sweet enough, no fragrance. But I've discovered a double strawberry nirvana this year and last. First, the Red Diamond ones from M&S. Not cheap, but a four-quid box does two of you royally, three still generously. Second, Eve's Delight from Morrisons's The Best, two smaller boxes for four quid but more strawbs than the M&S for the same price. Both versions are heavenly: fragrant, intense, sweet, beautiful.

Do not buy the abysmal Malling Centenary, which seem to have taken over everywhere. And don't listen to the eejits who suggest putting balsamic vinegar on them. If you really insist on doing this, remember that even a half-decent bottle of balsamic costs at least fifteen quid and that the cheap supermarket watery slop that defiles the name is fit for nothing. It has to be clotted cream. Preferably Rodda's.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Charmion
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 04:14 PM

In Canada — okay, southwestern Ontario — hie thee to a berry farm (there’s lots) and pick them yourself. Have no truck with those vile things from south of the border.

Wash the little f***ers. Don’t be like me.

Then put some brown sugar in a little dish. Take each berry by the leaves and dip it in the brown sugar. Bite off all parts of the berry that aren’t leaves.

Take it slow. July strawberries are way too important to rush.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 04:21 PM

I had no idea what a punnet was, but then Gayle Wade sang about a punnet of strawberries a few weeks ago. The things you learn at Mudcat...

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 05:16 PM

Here's a useful tip. Wash your strawbs BEFORE you hull them. That way they don't get all waterlogged.

Here's another tip. Don't buy imported strawberries out of season (or at all). To use a euphemism, they're shite. We get stuff from all over the world these days and seasonality has largely gone out of the window. But strawberries don't travel. I'm not a purist in these matters and I buy veg from everywhere at any time of year as long as it's got the quality. But not strawberries, and, for me, not apples either. In fact, I crunch apples only from my own trees between August and November. The Discovery crop is almost ready. Can't wait. Neither can the wasps!

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Jul 23 - 07:26 PM

Charmion used the word in the declutter thread a few days ago, describing the basket of fruit she thought was the source of a norovirus that hit for a few days. I had to look up punnet and remarked upon it. I think that is where this comes from.

I grew up in a strawberry capital of the US, in a county along Puget Sound north of Seattle. My father used to buy gallons at a time and freeze them, he had two freezers at his house because of his love of strawberries and wanting a year-round supply. There were lots of U-pick fields, and we're talking decades ago when the berries were still pretty good, not grown to be so huge and tough they would travel anywhere (those are California strawberries.) If I try to grow strawberries here the birds usually get them first and this region is typically hot so early in the season we can't get much of a crop.

I suppose I could fill a punnet with my home-grown organic cherry tomatoes now. I have so many I can barely give them away fast enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Senoufou
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 03:15 AM

We have quite a few 'Pick Your Own' farms here in Norfolk. You get handed a punnet and go up and down the rows picking strawberries of your choice. The chap at the end weighs the punnet and you pay him. But some people stuff strawberries in their mouths while they fill their punnets! I reckon they should weigh the pickers before and after they start!

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 05:46 AM

Norovirus can certainly be picked up from raw fruit and veg. Picking your own sounds less risky as no-one else had handled the fruit before you. A big risk, I think, is bought leafy vegetables or salads that you eat raw, as it's a real hassle to get right in there to wash every bit, especially if there's a heart. It's a hassle to take on!

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 06:55 AM

We never had much joy growing strawberries either. We'd get the odd treat that you'd pick and eat as you passed the plant but never enough for a decent serving.

I find buying supermarket fruit in general is a bit of a lottery. I don't suppose it helps buying on line. The last 2 bags of clementines I ordered from Co-Op were hard, dry and only fit for the bin.

We tend to think of strawberries (in our case with double cream and sometimes sugar) as a special treat but the fruit are often disappointing.

I don't think I've tried strawberries but I've used frozen raspberries and frozen damsons from an online shop for jam making. I thought it a bit pricey but the jam I've made has been good.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 07:31 AM

STRAWBERRIES

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 11:07 AM

If the only strawberries on earth were ones soaked in salt or vinegar, I would never eat another strawberry again. You chlorinate your chickens too. I think you need stricter rules.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 11:25 AM

Years ago, when I was maybe 10 or 12, a local Berry Farm used to put an ad in the paper saying "come pick your own $0.25 a box". Maybe that was similar to a punnet. What we picked were called Arkansas berries, , quite small, but delicious.
Then for years, grocery stores carried big beautiful strawberries that had very little flavor. The last couple of years my local store has had 'specials' offering "buy two, get one free" for $5.99. There is no way that I, living alone now, can finish three plastic 1 lb. boxes. Because they had somehow bred those larger ones to taste better, I will buy an occasional container to cut up on my morning cereal..... and, do like Charmion says up above and dip them in sugar.
   Now if I had a source for authentic home-baked shortcake, (I am NOT a baker), those grocery store sales might appeal to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 11:25 AM

I've given up buying them - when I did it was always a case of hope over experience & I'd end up singing a few bars of "Is that all there is"

Visiting a friend a few years back I walked past a little street garden with STRAWBERRY PLANTS! Silly me, I should have suggested my friend get a few for her tiny garden so I might have had a chance to eat some proper strawberries.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 12:45 PM

Jon, my canning guru told me that buying frozen strawberries to use for jelly is an excellent choice, for two reasons. They are not the commercially huge tasteless berries picked to travel - these are a better flavored type picked riper and sent straight to the processing plant to be washed and frozen. And when you put them in the steam juicer (a fancy sort of double boiler with a large colander on top) then you get a lot of really nice juice because the fruit cells have burst in freezing. Save the solids from the colander to make some jam at the end.

Growing up in the Northwest one of the joys of walking in deep woods is finding wild berries, both strawberries and blackberries. The rule of the forest is to stop what you're doing and pick and eat them right then and there; you'll never find them again if you don't. The best fruit ever. Long thin vines across the forest floor, usually in places with dappled light or a few hours of sun at some point during the day.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Mr Red
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 01:40 PM

I came across a video that purported to be the ultimate answer to dissuade birds from pecking your strawberries. He painted pebbles (of suitable shape) red with white spots.
But do bird see colour as we do? Choose your paints!

His argument went somewhat like "the birds learn that strawberry looking things are hard and they don't come back". He swears it works,
but my take is you have to do it early and yearly because birds don't live that long.

As for slugs, use slug pellets but throw them in next door's garden, otherwise the slugs will congregate in your garden. (Gardeners Question Time - their tongues firmly in cheek)

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Raggytash
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 02:06 PM

I hate Strawberries with a passion.

At 17 I left home and worked a summer on a Strawberry farm as a chef, but to increase my income I picked the damned things every afternoon.

Haven't eaten one since, don't even like the smell of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Jul 23 - 06:25 PM

Not all strawberry varieties taste the same, no matter how well you grow them. It's taken me years to track down shop varieties with consistently beautiful flavour and now I have two, both available this year and last, both of which go on for weeks. Variety is always marked on the pack here. I wouldn't buy, or even pick, unnamed varieties. There are far too many which produce huge crops with no flavour, as with tomatoes. Once you've bought your strawbs, it's either today, tomorrow or the bin (or jam). I've never eaten a strawberry that's been frozen. Maybe they make nice juice for ice cream. Raspberries out of the freezer taste lovely, but don't expect much in the way of texture.

And why does Bonne Maman strawberry jam taste so bloody good...

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Jul 23 - 05:14 PM

No punnets, but my ex came by to pick up some avocados I found yesterday (great sale and varieties you don't often find) and I sent him home with a couple of perfect large garden tomatoes, a bag of cherry tomatoes, small cucumbers and a large gray zucchini. Plus a container of my favorite summer salad - diced tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta, when it is dished up topped with some Italian dressing. (And I'm reminded that I need some mozzarella to go with tomatoes and basil and balsamic vinegar.) We tend to reuse some of the heavy-duty bulk one-use plastic bags to store these in the fridge or transport around. Baskets can leak.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Jul 23 - 05:47 PM

Hold the balsamic. Get that mozzarella. Per person, slice up one ball of mozzarella. Lay the slices in a serving dish. Slice one avocado. Put the slices in with the mozzarella, or get all artistic and alternate them. Halve a big handful of cherry tomatoes (quality paramount) and throw them on top. Sprinkle the whole lot very generously with your finest extra virgin olive oil. Grind some black pepper over everything and tear a few fresh basil leaves on top. You won't need other food that evening, though a nice slug or two of red or white wine always go well.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Raggytash
Date: 20 Jul 23 - 07:23 PM

You forgot to mention the Strawberrys !! ...............:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 20 Jul 23 - 07:57 PM

You can have them after. We've had strawbs with clotted cream ever since early June. But that salad is superb. We call it tricolore salad.

An impending tragedy is that, so far, we haven't had picota cherries yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Jul 23 - 11:01 AM

I have a great memory of Dad coming back to Abidjan from Dakar with loads of strawberries. We had tiny syringes for giving the dogs shots, and a diplomat's liquor cabinet...

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 21 Jul 23 - 11:17 AM

Mushrooms come in those kinds of baskets, the various types have grown over the years from just the white button variety to some of the more flavorful sizes, colors, and shapes. No trips with these mushrooms, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Jul 23 - 02:18 PM

Just tried Mossers Eves and I concur.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 06:25 AM

Oh, and while I was there I bought a bottle Sorso Prosecco for £6.95 and a bottle of Ortense Pinot Grigio reduced from £6-odd to £4.99. Both excellent

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Mo the caller
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 06:46 AM

Mention was made up-thread of wasps. I've just picked all of my Czar plums, mostly unripe because the wasps are very busy.
I also gave up on the strawberries though there are still a few plants to pick at (or more likely notice before they are ripe and find the hull later) The self / bird sown wild sort that have popped up next to them do better.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Mo the caller
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 06:53 AM

And I agree about apples too. only eat my own. Funny year for apples, the Laxton's Exquisite (very early) has hardly any fruit though James Grieve (also early) is OK. Plenty on the Lord Lambourne (midseason). Hardly any pears. I've been enjoying pear crumbles from the freezer all winter, have to ration them next year.
Still I have a freezer full of brackcurrants

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Mo the caller
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 06:54 AM

Defrosted strawberries are like cardboard though

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 07:55 AM

Funny, Mo, I have two of the three apple varieties that you mentioned. I don't have your Laxton's but I do have Laxton's Fortune, which crops in September but is hopeless for keeping! My Lord Lambourne, for some reason, gets bitter pit every year. James Grieve is a real trooper of a tree, producing far more every year than we can use. The skin can be a bit thick, but it's my go-to grab-an-apple when I'm gardening. It's good from about early September. My earliest apple is Discovery, which I can start to munch by early August if I can get there before the birds and wasps. I also have a Fiesta, a lovely, crunchy apple, and Jupiter. All the ones I've mentioned taste great, and far outstrip anything you can buy in shops.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 08:07 AM

I know it sounds like I still work for Mossers but I don't! Their 'Wonky' apples are lovely but I have no idea what type they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 08:12 AM

Pecorino, 25% off three, superb. I think you might have mentioned it before, Dave. And Mucho Mas (Spanish red), two for £12, scandalously cheap.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Mo the caller
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 08:16 AM

My L Exquisite is also a 'straight from the tree apple. Very sweet nice when crisp not much other flavour. Bruises if you touch it. L Superb doesn't often crop well, and wasps like it as it has soft flesh interesting taste. Then comes Lord Lambourne, Sep / Oct first of the Cox type. I get loads from that, and if the skin is spotty it doesn't go deep. We planted Kidd's Orange on a tall-growing rootstock as we read that it would keep well. Almost dug it up because it wasn't fruiting but now it's my favourite. Cox flavour but crisper, good for eating Oct & Nov then loses texture but good flavour stewed. My Cox also took ages before it fruited, not many on that this year. I also have Crispin and Chivers, but much prefer to Kidd's. And for really late stewing after the Bramleys have softened there is a Granny Smith (a commercial grower said'they saw you coming' when we planted it) which isn't like the imported eaters.
I get far more than I can eat but take them to a food hub and to dance clubs and choir for the fund-raising bring-and-buy. We all agree that bought apples don't compare. There was a NZ variety that I used to enjoy late May which you can't get now, I'm told you can't get it in NZ either.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Mo the caller
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 08:33 AM

The name (which escaped me earlier) of the NZ apple from 50 years ago was Sturmer Pippin.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 11:27 AM

Yesterday at lunch with my daughter I delivered some homegrown tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes in a reused clamshell container that arrived at the house last week full of blueberries. She remarked that these were the worst looking blueberries she'd ever been given (and said she has to put an embargo on her fruit supply at home because one roommate will go through the pint of cherry tomatoes in one sitting if she doesn't prohibit it.)

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Charmion
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 12:25 PM

When I was a child, my family lived in a mid-Victorian village house with a large McIntosh apple tree in the yard. That tree completely spoiled me for store-bought fruit; not only was I convinced that apples could be freely available to all, I was also accustomed to grabbing perfectly ripe specimens off the tree at will. The only hazard was the cloud of wasps that formed every year in mid-August and remained on station until mid-October, depending on the date of the first killing frost.

The difference in aroma, flavour and texture between the McIntosh apple fresh off the tree and the typical McIntosh apple out of a plastic bag at Loblaw's is so great that the supermarket version feels like blasphemy.

Likewise the field strawberry versus the California item in its plastic box.

My grandfather spent a goodly proportion of his last years in a veterans' hospital surrounded by acres of parkland. My brothers and I were too young to be allowed in -- the threshold age was 12 -- so, in summer, we were left to hell around the grounds while the parents were checking up on Himself. When we discovered that wild strawberries grew across a stretch of lawn shaded by cedar trees, we actually stopped complaining.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 05:50 PM

wild strawberries is indeed a paradise. Was Grandfather able to wave at his grandchildren or do your memories of him stop when he went into care?

I have no memories of my grandfather even tho I was 7 when he died, & we lived about 20 miles away & saw our grandparents regularly. But I do have kind of memory of a neighbour of theirs who grew strawberries ...

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 10:09 PM

Charmion, I had a clear flashback to the tastiness of those apples when I was sent to hide my observation post party and its armoured personnel carrier in an abandoned orchard on the Gagetown ranges. We reversed among the trees and I found my crew commander's hatch right under an apple tree full of fruit. I pulled one off and bit into it. It was so far from the mealy apples we were finding in stores that I ordered the crew to stop what they were doing and to plunder the tree for any fruit that was fit. We shortly got new move orders and my driver fired up the carrier with an apple in his yap like a sucking pig as we drove off.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Charmion
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 10:23 PM

No, Sandra; my grandfather came back from the war on a stretcher, having been run over by a lorry in the blackout, so I never knew him before he was an invalid. The hospitals he was in at first didn’t mind little kids, so we were marched into various veterans’ pavilions from an early age. By the time Himself was admitted to the hospital with the wild strawberries, however, he was also blind from glaucoma, so there was no waving out the window.

It’s almost peach season in Ontario. I could eat peaches three times a day, every day, throughout August — but I have to get them at the farmers’ market. Peaches from Sobey’s are too likely to have been picked green and sort-of-ripened in those dreaded plastic boxes, so their texture is compromised and their flavour is about half what it should be.

It is my great privilege to have a friend with two Red Haven peach trees in her garden. Earth has not anything to show more fair!

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jul 23 - 11:22 PM

We had two small peach trees in our back yard when I was small, and the routine was to sit on the bottom step of the back porch and sit with your legs spread and eat them leaning over because of all of the dripping. We also had a pear tree I was very fond of.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: JennieG
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 03:27 AM

My maternal grandparents had several fruit trees in their backyard, back when I was a kid. Peach - apricot (to this day apricots are my favourite fruit) - plum - grew their own vegies, raised chooks. Their neighbour had a fig tree which Nanna Davis was given free reign to pick.

This wasn't a farm, it was a block of land in a (much smaller then than now) country town.

And, of course, there was a choko vine.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 03:04 PM

What is a choko vine? It looks like the answer is Chayote, a squash plant native to Central America. I guess it's another example of the New World plants traveling to other places (along with corn, tomatoes, potatoes . . . )

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: JennieG
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 06:23 PM

It is Chayote, known as choko in Oz.....probably because it chokes everything it grows over!

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 06:36 PM

Charmion has not brought up how, in Manotick, our neighbours' raspberries, and peas and beans were inexplicably blighted. (That stuff we raided from their garden was delicious.)

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 06:39 PM

back in the Olden Days when people lived in HOUSES with backyards, choko vines grew over the outside dunny (outhouse in other languages)

Australia remember when ... Does anyone still eat the fruit from the choko vine? one comment ... I hated the taste and texture,I used to use them for throwing at barking dogs the only thing they were fit for ...

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: JennieG
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 09:16 PM

I have made choko chutney - recipe from The Commonsense Cookery Book, a staple in many Ozzie households.

In this advanced internet age one can find a recipe for date chutney online. My mother really liked it, I remember giving her some.

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Jul 23 - 11:10 PM

Chayote are popular in Mexican and Central American markets here in Texas. I imagine they have cooking methods that go much farther back than those developed in Oz.

The produce I'm working with these days most frequently is sold in bushel baskets at farmers' markets. The grocery store sells via styrofoam trays and cellophane or individually, usually packed in plastic grocery bags. (I've bought peaches by the half-bushel, that is actually a large box.)

Subject: RE: BS: Punnets and the contents thereof
From: Charmion
Date: 28 Jul 23 - 07:43 AM

The first local peaches have arrived in Stratford.

Let the greed-fest begin!