Fruit Blog

When you grab a box of strawberries from the supermarket, what’s the first thing you do? For most people in the U.S., strawberries come in small, transparent plastic containers. There is nothing to protect them in transit as they bounce around with turbulence or get handled by rough packers. That’s why, when picking a box of strawberries to bring home, the first thing you do is check the box from the outside for damaged fruits. Inevitably, there are always at least one or two obviously bruised fruits in the box, or worse, the initial powdering of mold that spells the...

What is a luxury fruit? You might think of chocolate-covered strawberries or decadent grapes being fed to someone on a chaise. But in Japan, the most expensive fruits on the market are perfectly shaped, explosively flavorful, and worth tens of thousands of dollars at auctions.  For hundreds of years, Japanese people have used fruit as blessed offerings to high-ranking officials or essential pieces of traditional or religious ceremonies. In Japanese culture, this appreciation for fruit as a worthy gift to respected figures has continued to this day in the form of designer artisan fruits that can sell for mind-boggling amounts...