Well, not technically a kid, but a very kidlike adult: Rosanne Spector will be administering MuseBlog next week while Robert takes a short break from the 24-7 online life.
As all Musers know, Rosanne writes half (the fun half) of Muse‘s incomparably quirky Q&A column. When she’s not doing that, she edits the award-winning magazine Stanford Medicine. She and Robert also recently co-starred in this endearingly klutzy cellphone video clip. She’ll be around the blog this week getting the hang of things and generally making herself useful. Say hello when you see her; she’s very friendly.
Name: Rosanne Spector, Q&A Columnist
Most often seen: Walking down her street in suburban California saying hi to the dogs in front yards.
Like: Plums, fireworks, books, dogs.
Dislike: Steak and kidney pie, vacuum cleaner sound, TV, hairy spiders.
In my spare time: I try to calm down.
Plums? How can you eat plums? They’re the world’s messiest fruit. Besides, they’re usually so sour they make my mouth shrivel up.
I usually try the napkin-sink approach for the first bite. I think plums are sweeter than that, though. Go eat a lemon.
I have these TINY little plums that are so sweet, they taste like sugar. They are soooo good.
The messier the better, I say. Robert, you are too neat!
Sorry about the outburst but you’ve hit a nerve here. My favorite plum — actually it’s a pluot (a cross between a plum and an apricot) — is Flavor King and the season just ended. No more Flavor Kings at the farmer’s market. They’re reaaallly sweet except for the skin, which is pleasantly tart.
Queen Julietaini has the right idea.
Hmm. I’ll have to give plums another try. After all, peaches are messy, too, and I’d do almost anything for a good peach. Maybe “peaches vs. plums” will become the new “cats vs. dogs,” and we’ll have to send for the pink bunnies.
That said, I’m convinced that people’s taste buds really do differ. For example, my father and my brother both don’t like watermelon. I can’t imagine disliking watermelon. Even at times when I don’t feel like eating anything else, I’ll almost always eat watermelon. I guess it takes all kinds to make a world, hard as it is to believe sometimes.
I’v had a pluot. I think they taste like plums.
Most pluots i’ve had taste plummy. But a few were more apricotish. I wonder how a plum/peach hybrid would taste. (A pleach?)
Maybe you Californians can tell me what ever happened to good, tangy California dried apricots. All I’ve seen in stores for the past couple of years are sickly-sweet ones from Turkey. Was there an apricot blight or something?
I looooove fresh apricots, and ripe mangoes. Yummers!
Well, they way everything’s being developed, I wouldn’t be surprised if all the apricot farms were plowed down. It’s a shame.
There are no more orange groves in Orange County now, all because of the stupid land developers. But there are still a lot of avacadoes around for some reason. ( Fallbrook is the avacadoe capital of the world! )
It wasn’t development where I live or blight. It was Turkish apricots. I think the story is they were much cheaper so California growers couldn’t sell the apricots and they quit. We used to have lots of apricot orchards (and cherries) where I live.
Still we have a huge healthy apricot tree but we eat them fresh or turn them into jam. Also a delicious sour plum tree.
I’m famous in my family for eating peaches with a knife and fork. I know it’s weird, and it’s not because I’m neat. I’m allergic to the juice (or just my skin is, I can eat them) – so I have to get the pieces inside me without touching my skin…
The way I eat plums is i bite a hole in it and suck all the juice out, like a vampire. That’s kind of ironic, since I’m missing my lateral incisors and until they put the implants in I look like a bloody vampire with braces. (My canines are emphasized by the lack of the teeth next to them, and they’re a bit further forward.) Oh, right, plums. After you’re done sucking out the juice and some of the pulp because it’s usually pretty liquidy, you shove what’s left in your mouth. We’ve got a peach tree, but the last 2 years the bloody things rotted before they ripened. What’s a pluot, anyway? You know what are good? Kumquats. I had some fresh one time………ohhhhhh. A bit sour, but I’m not sure they were entirely ripe.
i don’t know about anyone else but i just love almost every frutis
Kate, your probably right about that. My mom thought it might have to do with the horrendous amount of rain we got last year, but your’s makes more sense.
My canine teeth are all messed up. It’s a tragedy. :dramatic pose:
OOOoooo. Kumquats. Yum.
I like peaches. I don’t really like plums- too tart.. I really like pears if they’re nice and juicy..
I had some leches (sp? pronounced lee-chees) once and they were cool…
i have a small plum tree here. the only problem is it usually gets ripe to fast, so we always end up with more plums than we can eat. my dog thinks squashed plums taste good. my dog is extremly insane
californias being very pathetic with there farms. there a really cool farm where i live, but they want to turn it in to “affordable housing.” i highly doubt that. last time they said that, we ended up with these huge expensive houses that are really ugly.
I lke lychees too. (though not as much as pluots.) They’ve got that leathery skin that comes off real easily. It’s fun to peel them. And the fruit’s all flamablamablusly slippery inside. And they’re tasty. It used to be hard to find them where I live (in California) but now the supermarket I go to has them sometimes.
My dog (she’s no longer alive. boo hoo.) LOVED squashed fruits of any kind. The more rotten the better. Especially tomatoes. She also went crazy over cucumber peels. And ice cubes.
That’s flamablamablous(ly), all.
I’m sorry to hear about your dog, Rosanne. Are you going to get another one?
Thanks, Robert. Some day I’ll get another one. Probably not for a while.
‘S anyone ever had a fresh mango? Now that is bliss. I made the mistake of eating several at once, but you would have too, they’re that good.
Mangos are flamablamablous!
I think they’re scrumtralescent.
I had a lychee once, it was good, but too sweet for me.
I had lychee icecream once, and a rambutan. Here in Hawaii, lychees are available ever Wenesday at the farmer’s market.
mmmmm. lychee ice cream sounds so good.
I like mangoes too.
so many good fruits to eat, so little time.
Soon it will be the season for persimmons. I like the kind that ripen into big sweet blobs of jelly.
I love mangoes sooo much, but unfortunately so does my family so they eat ’em before me. ditto with grapefruit.
what’s a persimmon?
I like nectarines. mmm
and grapes
Persimmons are about the size of an apple or an orange. They’re reddish orange when ripe. They have a thin shiny skin that you can eat. There are two major types of persimmons. One kind isn’t ready to eat until it’s so ripe that the insides turn to gloop. If you eat it before then it makes the inside of your mouth shrivel up. It’s like drinking really bitter tea but worse. The other kind is ready when it’s still crunchy. Both kinds have a mild sweet flavor.
Here’s a picture of one of the gloopy varieties (my favorite):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Persimmon.jpg
gawd… everyone is the lower 48 has such good fruit… snif.. oh well i get shipped blecky fruit but AMAZING crawberries and blueberries and salmonberriis and bla bla bla!