Too bad food and I can't agree on when the time is ripe

by Beth Teitell
Tuesday, June 4, 2002

I'm afraid to go home tonight. There's an avocado on my kitchen counter that's been mocking me for two days.

Ha, ha. I'm rock hard, but I'll be perfect later in the week. Oh, you've got plans and won't be around for dinner then? I'm sorry. $1.98, what a shame. By the time you're ready for me, my green flesh will be speckled with black.

Everyone complains about work and family stress. But at least you can reason with your boss and relatives, or attempt to. Try explaining to a bunch of bananas how it would be better if they didn't all ripen at the same time, thereby forcing you to wolf down six in a single sitting, or to make banana bread, even though you bought the fruit because you're trying to stay away from baked goods.

``Are you sure there's not something else bothering you?'' a friend asked when I told her an avocado was stressing me out.

Well, there is a mango I also overpaid for that's already past its prime, but I didn't think that was what she meant.

I thought back to a pre-birthing class I took a few years ago, and recalled a warning the nurse gave expectant mothers regarding the timing of pain-killer medication.

``You don't want to miss your window,'' she said, explaining that an epidural can't be given if you're too far along in the labor. And, as I learned when I was turned down for an epidural while I was still in my eighth month, you can't get it too early, either.

Fruit has a window, too. Jump the gun, and you're biting into a crunchy peach. Wait too long, and it's mush city.

So there I was, feeling really down about my avocado, until I met a woman who has it worse than I do. She made a fruit salad over the weekend, and against her better judgment tossed in some blueberries that were about to go.

``If you think the stakes are high with your single avocado,'' she said, ``imagine how I feel. I've got all my eggs in one basket, or in one Tupperware container.''

A fruit salad is only as strong as its ripest link. If she doesn't finish it before the blueberries expire, the little devils will take the entire salad down with them. She could be looking at a $15, or more, loss.

Summer's bounty is great, but as with so many wonderful things - children, a deep tan - there's a downside.

``I get sucked in at the grocery store,'' the fruit salad lady explained. Forgetting who she is for the duration of her shopping trip, she buys vegetables in their nonfrozen form.

``I imagine myself steaming and parboiling and doing all these fancy things,'' she said. ``But then the weekend is over, I'm back at work, and by the time I get home at night I'm too tired to wash a vegetable, let alone cook it.''

``My refrigerator's vegetable drawer is like a cemetery,'' she said. ``It's where fresh vegetables go to die.''

Mine is, too - which is why I'm trying to get past the whole fresh fruit and vegetable thing, and to convince my loved ones to see it my way.

``You know,'' I told my husband the other day as I poured him a cherry Coke, ``they've made great strides in fruit-flavored jelly beans.''