Tropical sounds good – in theory

I’m not that much of a fruit person, but once in a while, I just want some nice, fresh strawberries, peaches or blackberries, and an occasional Granny Smith apple. Out of season, it can be hard to find good fruit that is truly fresh and not anemic looking.

Maybe once in a great long while, I’ll impulse buy a container of already prepared pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew melon, which is really just enough before I get sick of it.

This year, before Christmas, I was given a lovely gift from one of my school districts, in the form of a huge box of beautiful oranges, so I feasted on those fruits, which are a million times better than the store varieties.

To get my “fruit fill,” I usually rely on frozen raspberries (and for those who know, yes, they do close my throat up, but you also know I’m a slow learner). I either buy fresh raspberries and freeze them to eat, or get the bags of already frozen berries.

I used to like green, and sometimes, black grapes, but not so much after a recent choking incident. Let’s just say, green is a much better color on the grapes, than it was on me.

After said incident, I discovered a great way to get my fruit – dried. Not the heavy, squishy dried apricots or others like those, but actual dried fruit. Our dollar store underwent a remodel this fall, and when they re-opened, they had a lot more stuff.

Enter the dried bags of fruit. Peaches, strawberries, apples and bananas come in a small bag for only $1, and the only ingredient is fruit – no sugar added, no preservatives. The contents are a lot softer than I thought they would be and highly addictive, although, I don’t care for the apples much and refuse to eat bananas.

I don’t like bananas fresh, I ain’t gonna eat ’em dried, neither.

After going back to the dollar store an embarrassing amount of times, for an embarrassing amount of bags of peaches and strawberries (followed by rapidly polishing them off at home), I decided to branch out in my taste-testing.

I noticed there was a packet of tropical dried fruit on the opposite aisle of the dried fruit I had already tried. Hmm, how bad can it be? I mean, a little variety wouldn’t hurt, right?

Even though it seemed like a small bag of tropical mix, I only bought one, in case I didn’t like it. I was taking a chance on it anyway, since the fruits in there are coconut, which I absolutely hate with a passion, pineapple, raisins, bananas and papaya.

I took the little bag to work with me and once I started eating the fruits inside, that little bag suddenly seemed like my gigantic 31 tote I use as a trash receptacle in my car. YUCK is all I can use to describe how bad that tropical fruit is.

Not to mention, I’ve never seen raisins that size, those things were huge! And the papaya consistency ticked me off and I couldn’t even taste the pineapple. I plain old ignored the coconut. It was quite disappointing, that out of that whole thing, the bananas were the best part of it.

I guess I don’t enjoy tropical fruit, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, since I’m pretty traditional in my tastes and likes.

I think I may be cured of my fruit obsession for a while, I’m afraid, after that unfortunate debacle. And let’s not forget the grape incident – I’m sure my co-workers probably won’t.