Spring Fruit Power Rankings
Kiwis return to unsettle the rankings, but spring's king remains unseated.
Pound-for-pound, spring is a terrific fruit season. Without a Debbie Downer like bananas to drag down the field, spring’s offerings are all high quality. Of the six fruits I’m ranking today, five are arguably all-timers.
But the rankings are merciless and the fruits must be ordered. Before we get there, though, I sometimes use these as a chance to check in so here’s what’s happening:
Green Guides is operational and taking on clients. I’m working with my first client and totally enjoying the work. In order to find more clients, I’m learning a lot about marketing and sales and working hard to find joy in that fact. If you or anyone you know is working on a book project, let me know please!
Cascadia Chronicles is getting more focus, as I’m in promising conversations with a friend in Los Angeles about bringing those stories to reality somehow. I feel mostly in an ideation state regarding the second book, where some scenes from the second book’s storyline, set mostly in Oregon City and Downtown, have me super excited for where the plot is headed.
My AWA groups—Friday Night Writes and Saturday Morning Stories—are going strong and absolutely amazing writing happens. I’m sure you know I’m a huge fan of the AWA group writing method. These groups opened up whole vistas of confidence in my craft. If writing is one of your artistic expressions, please join us! (Or try out a Shelter Writers group.)
I have Green Room posts in the hopper, though posting may be slow this month as I focus on:
The end of Lana’s 6th grade year.
The switched up routine of summer.
The breakout of beautiful weather.
The aforementioned marketing for Green Guides.
A piece I’m writing for Osprey Packs about the upcoming Western States Endurance Run, and Tyler’s attempts to improve on last year’s 2nd place finish.
So I’ll check in here when I can! In the meantime, let’s finally get to the rankings.
1. Cherries
Most of Oregon’s berries and cherries aren’t out yet since the rain won’t let up. I haven’t even seen a Rainier yet, and the cherries I’m currently mowing down were grown in California. They’re fine, but they’re no Rainiers.
Cherries are unstoppable because they’re an ultimate all-round fruit: a Zen-like balance of sweet and tart and tender. That last word is key, because they’re a delight to eat: crunch away the ruby flesh, spit the pit. There’s a reason the metaphor for deeply pleasant life is a bowl of cherries: few fruits are as perfectly pleasing.
The New Seasons produce guy said we’re about a week or two out from the first Rainiers. If you haven’t tried the red/gold jewels and find access, I recommend remedying your Rainier rookiedom right quick.
2. Mango
My annual transition from grapefruits for breakfast to mangoes coincides with the arrival of Ataulfos (aka Champagne mangoes) in late February. They’re the harbinger of warmer weather, an early taste of the tropics in the midst of Gray Winter. In our house, mango season lasts through the spring, until the berries ripen.
My life with mangoes was revolutionized a few years back when I learned how to cut them properly. Here’s a step-by-step instruction from the CBC:
Using a paring knife, slice off the bottom to stabilize the mango.
Slice off one "cheek" of the mango, parallel to the pit.
Score the flesh side of the cheek in a cross-hatch pattern.
Invert the cheek to create a flower shape.
Run your paring knife between the flesh and the skin to slice off cubes of flesh.
The result should look like this:
I don’t bother with the stabilizing or cutting the cubes away. I just devour them straight off the peel. Afterward, trim the skin from the core and you can usually get some great bits eating around the edge of the mango cob.
3. Kiwi
This week I found golden kiwis returned, though they’re now grown in New Zealand. The current crop looks identical to the exquisitely juicy Californian-grown golden kiwis on my Fall Fruit Power Rankings but aren’t quite up to the par with. Could be they’re still early in the season in the Southern Hemisphere, and, anyway, I’m not complaining if golden kiwis have two peak seasons.
4. Pineapple
Pineapples probably held down a top three spot until this year’s Rise of the Kiwi, but I’m also a bit unsettled by the fact that pineapples are the only fruit with bromelain. You know how your mouth gets raw if you eat too much pineapple? That’s because the pineapple is also eating you. The rough feeling is your tender mouthflesh being disintegrated.
This fact has been on my mind, is what I’m saying, but I still eat pineapple constantly. In fact, last night I had a crazily delightful form of pineapple where it was marinated in gochujang, topped with kimchi, basil, and mint, and grilled. Delectable! My mouth got a little raw, but my stomach acids had the ultimate vindication.
5. Strawberries
Strawberries are such a pretty fruit, though they can also be a little overrated. Like, look at them up there! But only half are gonna be really good.
The exception to this are Hood strawberries, the delicate and dark red varietal with vivid flavor introduced by Corvallis farmers in 1965. While the Hoods were intended to supply Big Jam (by which I mean whoever the big companies are which make strawberry jam), they’re also the king of snacking strawberries. Sadly, Hood season only lasts a few weeks, usually starting in early June. Then we’re back to those ubiquitously underripe Cindy-Loo-Who straws with the mealy white centers the rest of the year.
6. Apricots
Apricots are the first of the stonefruits. They’re little and golden and I want to like them more than I do so I bought a couple of boxes because the boxes promised max flavor. I wanted to give apricots a shot to shine. Alas, they only made made me wish for riper nectarines and peaches. Apricot growers should be allocating their funds toward R&D, not Marketing. They need their own Hood or Rainier breakthrough.
Enough about apricots. The finer stonefruits are on their way, and we are on a crash course with summer, the King of Fruit Seasons. Will our copious rain yield a glorious crop or will some weirdo weather system set fire to all our orchards? You’ll have to follow next season’s Fruit Power Rankings to find out.
I’m all about eating local fruits, but mangos, pineapple, and kiwis are lovely additions to the mix. My hubbie loves bananas (hardly local), with frozen blueberries, and dried fruits (from all over, guess - raisins, dried cranberries, and dates… Fresh strawberries from Quebec just appeared in my local market, probably from the Montreal area. They didn’t smell like strawberries, so I didn’t buy them.