We’ve almost given up eating fruit. Oh, we buy it, and in quite large amounts I might add (Hope springs eternal!). We just don’t wind up eating much of it; a lot winds up in the garbage can or compost heap. Frankly, fruit these days tastes like shit. Oh, it looks good and bears such enticing labels as “Just Picked”, etc., but it ’s usually tasteless. Peaches taste like potatoes, strawberries are these huge, fibrous, flavorless masses, cherries are enormous but thick-skinned and acidic. Yuck! If you’re under 30 you probably have never tasted a real peach, cherries, or even strawberries.

Fruit today are bred from varieties that emphasize size, appearance, resistance to bugs and molds, and ease of packaging and transportation across vast distances. There are rare exceptions. If you find yourself on the Niagara peninsula right around now, you just might find fresh Ontario peaches sold at roadside stands. Buy some and taste the difference. Strawberries from the Ile d’Orleans are just showing up and are pretty close to the Real McCoy. But these windows of opportunity are both brief and expensive.

Montreal’s Jean-Talon market is home to the guru of fruit vendors, Chez Loius, where upscale restaurants and foodies line up to plunk down substantial premiums for real, fresh, fully ripened fruit. Today I bought Ile d’Orleans strawberries, fresh figs, a melon from France, and Ontario peaches and plums. Desert was a sheer debauchery of fruit. Mr and Mrs. Italo were over for dinner while their home is being painted, and were rhapsodic in their description of the fruit. We gobbled them down like mad monkeys.