A new produce experience

When was the last time you tried a new produce? Or a new variety of one?

One of the reasons why coffee is an appealing industry to me is because the people in it are more open to trying new foods and flavors. I’ve always gravitated towards people who bond over food. This was also a must-have trait for me when I was single and dating: it was a dealbreaker if you weren’t open to trying new foods, places, and cultures. I didn’t expect or insist that they be a globe-trotter or be a self-declared foodie. It was more so that I needed my person to be receptive to a big portion of my life—not just new restaurants or travel areas—but also if we ever visited my parents or traveled to Taiwan to see my relatives, that they would try new flavors and dishes without pre-judgment or revulsion. I have too many memories from school where friends would try a food unknown to them and spit it out immediately OR just flat out decline because they deemed it too “weird.”

So back to the new produce.

I’m blessed to live in a multicultural area with a wide variety of grocery stores. I dipped into one this week that underwent new ownership and it was a fascinating representation of the neighborhood. It was a mix of Asian (all the directions), Central and South American, Eastern European, and Russian dry goods, plus produce like tropical fruits. My partner, who is Jamaican, picked up a bag of tamarinds and asked if I wanted some. It was a big bag, and I’ve actually never seen a tamarind pod in real life. I knew the flavor from tamarind balls, salt rims, and other food/drink that added the ingredient, but never the raw produce. 

First, I didn’t know how to eat it (you pop open the dry exterior, bite off a seed thing, chew the flesh off, and then spit out the seed). And then I wondered how we were going to eat this whole bag?? He had warned me that it would be sour and we couldn’t eat much at once, so I was worried they would go bad. They do not spoil quickly, and on my biased sour scale, they weren’t as sour as some dried sour plums I’ve had.

Our relationship has been peppered with moments like this, and oftentimes, we have to google to see if there are different names for the same thing or if they actually are different. 

For example, while we were at a plant nursery looking for edibles to plant, he spotted a sorrel seedling. He was excited because he hadn’t seen one here before, so we planted it and then harvested leaves to make the sorrel tea (which involves other ingredients). It didn’t quite have the intense flavor he remembered, so we thought maybe we had the wrong proportions. 

It turns out that:

1. There are many types of sorrel out there, and this was the wrong variety.
2. Sorrel is also called hibiscus. Light bulb moment here.
3. Outside of Jamaica, like in Latin America, it’s called Agua de Jamaica or straight-up “Jamaica.” SO CONFUSING. 

So now we know, and also the sorrel plant died. RIP.