Review: Dried Cantaloupe

Summary: Good

My story:
I'm going to start by apologizing as this is probably going to be a run-on blog. By that, I mean that I am just going to be typing wherever my thought process takes me so it may jump around quite a bit.

I finally got myself to the farmer's market, or rather I stumbled across it. I was looking into the mortgage process and the market was right in front of the bank. There was a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables.

I am so used to super market and produce for the masses that I forgot how to select regular farmed fruits and vegetables. They look like the rejects that you wouldn't get from the supermarket. A bunch are slightly bruised and have small gashes in them. They also do not look shiny with whatever stuff they put on in the supermarkets.

50 cents corn is a bit pricey for me but I got a bunch anyways since it has been a while. So used the July fourth sale where I can get a dozen for a dollar. No regrets, they came out awesome. I think prefer cooking them with the husk on. They seem to come out juicier if corn could be juicy, or I guess I could also say that it comes out less dry(?). Either way, I like corn and I could eat them all day.

Also bought some plums. I saw some peaches but I've been disappointed with the local peaches this summer so I didn't get any. The plums were not much better. The texture was ok but not sweet... at least it was not sour either.

Tomatoes were super awesome. The supermarket tomatoes are all so bland. They lack that tomato sour-like flavor. But these farmer market's tomatoes, surprisingly tastes like tomatoes. These were also difficult to pick since they do not appear so perfect, but still totally worth it. Somehow I bruised a couple in transport, so I cooked those. At least, I think I bruised them because they were kind of soft in certain spots and I am pretty sure I would have noticed them when I bought them. Either way, they still turned out great. My eggs and tomatoes dish tasted so much better. I didn't even need to add vinegar.

Next I stopped by the pickled food station. I saw giardiniera so I got some of those. I miss them as I used to have them occasionally back when I was in the midwest. There were also sweet pickles which were really sweet, unfortunately, too sweet for me. There were a whole variety of dill pickles and pickled olives. I didn't know quite how to use the olives so didn't get any of those.

Finally, I stopped by the dried fruits and nuts. For some reason, I've always avoided dried fruits even though I've never tried them. I think a couple years ago, I finally tried them for the first time and was surprised that it tastes almost like candy. I always thought it bizarre why people who do that to fruits since I've always enjoyed them in the original form (i.e. uncooked, undried, un-whatever-is-done-to-them, etc.). The vendor said there lots of people enjoyed the dried cantaloupe which I've never tried before so I figured I would give it a try. I like good cantaloupe at a certain ripeness. It is one of those fruits where if it is not ripe enough, it is too hard and not sweet. If it is too ripe, then it is too mushy (which is more tolerable than crunchy) and too sweet which I prefer not sweet. Ultimately, I prefer not ripe enough over too ripe.

Back to the dried cantaloupe... it turned out really tasty. A little too sweet which I find most dried fruits to be anyways. But it does make a nice treat in the mid-afternoon or mixed with other snacks like nuts or trail-mix. It is a bit pricey for my taste, $4 per pint, $6 per quart, and $8 for some larger size (sorry, I didn't pay attention by that point). It'll probably be cheaper in the grocery store though, maybe.