What’s the best produce (or other food) you ever had?

July 2, 2024 by
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Over the last month in the Member Forum, EYB Members have been posting about the best produce they ever had. Member whitewoods kicked off the topic by recounting the best corn on the cob and best home-grown tomato they had ever eaten. Other Members chimed in, naming morel mushrooms, sugar snap peas, Alphonso mangoes, and the joys of growing your own produce in a garden or allotment. I thought this would be a good topic to bring to everyone’s attention in case you are like me and sometimes go a while without visiting the Forum.

Alphonso mango cheesecake from Great British Chefs

There are three “wow” produce moments for me. The first stems from the wild black raspberries in my garden in 2021. There was something magical about the weather that year, because the berries had the most intense, almost floral quality to them that never appeared before and unfortunately has not occurred again. I had a similar experience with my friend’s wild blackberries in Oregon in 2020. The third moment involves Alphonso mangoes, as it did for Ganga108 who discussed their experience in the Forum. I bought some Alphonso mangoes while I was on vacation and the difference in flavor between those and the “standard” mangoes I was accustomed to eating was astounding. I think I could have eaten my way through a train car load of those mangoes.

I also have a pivotal non-produce food moment: the first time I ate a steak that wasn’t cooked well done. My parents didn’t believe it was safe to eat meat that had any pink in it, so I grew up on a diet of tough-as-hell steaks, shoe-leather pork chops, and hockey puck hamburgers. I was at an out-of-town banquet for some now-forgotten extracurricular activity when I was served a medium-rare filet mignon that forever changed the way I ate steak. In case you were wondering what sort of high-school banquet served something that nice, a) we were in the middle of cattle country and b) I believe a company in the cattle or meat-processing industry was a sponsor of the event. What else explains serving filet mignon to high school students?

What are your “wow” produce (or other food) stories?

Category: Antipasto

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18 Comments

  • FJT  on  July 3, 2024

    I have vivid memories of picking tomatoes from the vine in my granddad’s greenhouse in Scotland as a small child and popping them in my mouth – the smell and taste was magical.

    Since we moved back to Europe vegetables seem to have a lot more flavour. I’m still trying to decide whether it’s because there is something about how they are grown that is different, or whether our palates were so desensitised by all the sugar and salt in other foods in North America that we couldn’t taste the vegetables.

  • lean1  on  July 3, 2024

    Sun gold tomatoes right off the vines. Warmed in the sunshine…perfection

  • averythingcooks  on  July 3, 2024

    I’ll not say “any and all produce that comes out of my garden” (but…yes it’s true:) but I will say that a true eye opener for me last season was my 1st crop of homegorwn garlic. Huge cloves dripping with garlicky goodness. the standard grocery store heads can’t even compete. I grow around 20 plants now and we don’t even have time to truly cure them for winter storage…we just use them….alot.

  • jdejong  on  July 3, 2024

    Last night my husband brought home our first flat of local raspberries grown in Ferndale. Berries grown in Whatcom County are always delicious, but these… Wow! The flavor, the texture, the juice, all perfection. We finished off 3 pints and are going back for more today. Thrilled that our local farmers are enjoying a successful harvest.

  • KatieK1  on  July 3, 2024

    Peaches in Paris. They are grown carefully and picked when ripe. Most peaches sold here in NYC taste like potatoes.

  • sanfrannative  on  July 3, 2024

    I was up in PA and got some tomatoes at the West Chester farmers market.

    Oh. My. God. So good!

  • whitewoods  on  July 3, 2024

    Oh, wow. I inspired a blog post. When I first saw your title, I thought it was just a coincidence. Just want to say thank you to those who replied to my thread. I read all of your posts, but I just haven’t had time to reply. I was amazed at everyone mentioning morel mushrooms. I’ve never had them before. I’m not really a big mushroom person but will have to try them some day.

  • whitewoods  on  July 3, 2024

    Also, “they” is fine because you didn’t know, but I normally use “she” and “her,” or as some people just say, “My pronouns are “I” and “me”.

    • Darcie  on  July 3, 2024

      Thanks for letting me know – I wasn’t sure so I used the more generic ‘they’.

  • EmilyR  on  July 3, 2024

    Whatever grows local with lots of sun. The foods of Hawaii, Italy, and California just taste better, but maybe it’s also the ambiance. All of the things I could grow in my garden in California… brad’s atomic grape tomatoes, pineapple tomatoes, lemons and oranges straight off the tree. We had much of our yard changed to garden beds with a company called Farmscape and a farmer would help teach me things. I wish I had all of that again.

  • readingtragic  on  July 3, 2024

    I remember some amazing apricots about 30 years ago – apparently it was a perfect apricot season. I had a little cousin staying with me, and he loved them too – so much that I kept missing out; I’d buy more and he’d eat them all. Every year when apricots are in season, I hope all over again, but they’ve never been as good again, unfortunately…

  • stahl_amy  on  July 4, 2024

    Figs from Hédiard the first time I went to Paris. Blood Oranges from Campo de’ Fiori. Star fruit picked off the tree in Belize.

  • Ganga108  on  July 6, 2024

    It has been fun reading everyone’s unforgettable food moments.

  • EskieF  on  July 12, 2024

    My Grandad’s New Potatoes, straight out of the ground (we had spent the morning in back-breaking child labour picking them!) – simply boiled, with a block of home-made butter to slather over them. So sweet!

  • syamada  on  July 12, 2024

    The minute I graduated from college, I left the Midwest forever and ended up in San Francisco, about as far from Fargo, North Dakota, as you can get. I was staying in a women’s hotel on Bush St, and across the street was a little Mom and Pop grocery store. At the front of the store, they had crates of enormous, perfectly ripe peaches, each carefully cradled in its own paper wrapping. What a revelation! Sweet with intense peach flavor and dripping with juice, a world away from the hard little green rocks I’d always thought were peaches.

  • demomcook  on  July 12, 2024

    I was very ill and in the hospital. I had lost my taste sense (and others) for over a week. My taste returned and I ate a strawberry that was the best ever.

  • ldyndiuk  on  July 12, 2024

    In 2022 my husband and I took an unexpected trip to Quebec City after our flight to Newfoundland was cancelled. We had no plans whatsoever, and on the first night there someone we sat near in a restaurant suggested we visit Ile d’Orleans, a nearby island that is apparently known for its strawberries. We took the advice and bought what turned out to be the best strawberries either of us have ever had. We might go back for more.

  • slimmer  on  July 29, 2024

    Everyone here is commenting on produce, but like the author I had a meat revelation. My mom, too, was of the era when meat had to be cooked well-done. We had roast beef for Sunday dinner, pork roast once, and something else the other week. The pork was fatty and gray, and I ate the smallest portion I could get away with. After college a friend invited me to dinner & she made a pork roast, well-seasoned & studded with garlic. Amazing, it was moist & delicious! That’s what pork was supposed to taste like.

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