Recently, the Mild Wife and I decided to give the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA, for short) thing a try again. If you've never heard of the concept, it's basically a delivery of produce to your door, only the providers are local farms or providers. It's sort of like supporting your local farm instead of the supermarket chain down the block. As you can probably imagine, the notion of having stuff delivered to us rated highly on our list, and the fact that we could support local agriculture seemed like a pretty good idea, too.
In this case, we decided to give Imperfect Foods a try (I could've sworn they started out as "Imperfect Produce," but their website seems to say otherwise). The idea is that there is produce that won't make it to a grocery store shelf because it looks, well, ugly. The carrots might be gnarled, the fruit can be small, or a bruise might appear on a vegetable. So, you're not guaranteed to get pretty-looking food, but, as your mother was likely to tell you as a kid, it's perfectly edible. That basic premise lines up pretty well with the Mild Wife's and my notion that we shouldn't waste food, so we decided to give it a go.
All in all, we've been pretty happy with our deliveries. We get fresh produce delivered to our door, and with maybe one minor exception, we haven't any complaints about the contents of the delivery. It's basically working as planned.
The reason I mention this as background, though, is that you get to choose if you want a particular item in your delivery. So, every week, the Mild Wife and I "go shopping" on their website and choose items that we'd like delivered. There are definitely some staples that we usually throw into the mix (things like onions or mushrooms), but we also decided to throw in some "fun" items every now and again. We don't get jalapeños every week, for example, but sometimes we decide we want a little more spice in our food.
In this case, I voted for blood oranges. I didn't really have a reason for wanting them, I just wanted to switch it up. I also remember seeing them on menus and what-not, so I'm fairly certain I've eaten them before and I liked the flavor. So, I told the Mild Wife to check that box so we could get some delivered to us.
Well, the first time I saw the fruit opened up, I did a double take. As it turns out, I had never actually seen the fruit itself before. And while my brain knew on some level that the adjective in the name implied something about the color of the flesh, I was still surprised by the color of the inside of the orange. I did a very obvious double-take when I saw it.
You know who wasn't surprised by this? The Mild Wife. She's seen them before, and she knew what to expect. That's also why she laughed her head off when I did a double-take. She figured I just liked that particular type of orange, and that's why I had requested them. When she witnessed my reaction, she put two and two together, and laughed like crazy. I don't blame her, it was a pretty funny interaction. Still, she definitely got the better end of that deal.
Regardless, I ate the oranges and enjoyed them just fine. However, I have resolved to search on Google for produce items whose names I recognize but have not personally seen before. It'll save a little bit of chuckling at my expense.
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