Fruit is fantastic!

I just want to say-- I had some fruit yesterday and it was FANTASTIC!

Fruit is one of the four food groups, along with Legumes, Ruminants and Marsupials. Fruit comes in many shapes and sizes! Fruit has important vitamins and elements in it, like Mesopotassium, Armenia and Sylvania! Fruit comes in a variety of shapes and colors! No fruit has ever attacked a democracy! Fruit-- it's what's for side dish!

Okay, serially, I made a fruit salad last night and everything in it was just peak, tip top. And it was all grocery store bought, too-- Costco cherries which were incredibly sweet, juicy peaches from Whole Paycheck, etc.

The cherries were so good (and I had so many) that, a little earlier than usual, I did one of my annual rituals-- I made a cherry clafoutis out of the Joel Robuchon-Patricia Wells cookbook Simply French. I try to do this once every year, during the brief moment when cherries are perfect and cheap. Basically it's a kind of cherry quiche sweetened with sugar and kirschwasser (cherry eau-de-vie). Alas, I took it somewhere before I got a picture, but who knows, maybe I'll make another. The cherries deserve it during their brief time of cheap wonderfulness.

I have some other seasonal fruit stops in mind-- specifically Cunis Candies for the homemade peach ice cream and Mario's for peach Italian ice. Anyone else have ideas in mind for making the most of the month or so when fruit is so gosh-darned wonderful?

One thing I'd like to add is that there's fruit and there's fruit. At the Oak Park Farmer's Market on Saturday there were blueberries everywhere, but there were also blueberies at Nicholl's Farm. Tiny berries with an extreme sheen of blush, these berries tasted hardly anything like those other berries. Intense, complex, sweet around the edges but mostly tart in the mouth. Of course they cost more...

I'd love to catalogue and otherwise note truly "better" fruit.

Rob