One of my favorite things about the summer is the widespread availability of fruit. I think I have eaten my weight in strawberries this year, having purchased several flats. I cleaned most and froze them to make jam later on when peaches are ready, figuring I will do both at once. But I have also probably eaten 8-10 quarts. Just wash, cut off the top, and pop them in my fat mouth.
I don’t add sugar or anything. They’re perfect just like that. Tonight I made a fruit salad, though, with kiwi, strawberries, pineapple, peach, blackberries, and cherries, and I added a little honey to round it out and give it that smooth mouthfeel you get from honey. Right now it is refrigerating, and I can not wait for a bowl of it.
What is your favorite summer fruit??
zhena gogolia
Peaches.
NYCMT
Sour cherries.
[edit: either morellos or montmorencies. At the beginning of the affairs of all the great loves of my life, sour cherries that I had picked and prepared in delicious dishes magnified and enlarged those romances. Sour cherries are magnificent.]
Geoduck
Strawberries for me too. And peaches are good, assuming you get fresh ripe ones. The ones that get imported from 1000 miles away tend to be blech at best.
debbie
Black raspberries!
NotMax
Apricots. And nectarines. And honeydew.
Come September it’s Concord grapes, if one is lucky enough to find ’em.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
Blood orange
Edit: Oops, Spring fruit, still love them For a summer fruit it’s Mangos
cckids
Rainier cherries, which are just about in season!!!
And peaches, though it is so rare to get truly good ones, I mostly just miss those.
NotMax
@Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
Mangos are the zucchini of Hawaii.
“Go ahead and take some. Please!”
:)
Omnes Omnibus
Raspberries. The greatest fruit or berry of all time.
JMG
Grew up in Delaware, so peaches are my favorite. But lived 45 years in New England, so strawberries are way up there too. Also, cannot resist raspberries in any form from sorbet to jam to best of all live fruit. Also love apples and pears in fall. Perhaps this was too broad a question, John.
Felanius Kootea
Mangoes. I looooove mangoes. Growing up, we had a mango tree at the back of our house in Ibadan and I once ate so many mangoes (green and ripe) that I had serious stomach problems and had to go to the hospital and yet I *still* love mangoes.
Skepticat
Anything fresh, but it’s difficult here in The Bahamas. Almost everything has to be shipped in, and I salivated over cherries during my monthly trip to the store, but they were more than $8 a pound, and raspberries were $7 for four ounces. I love them, but perhaps not quite that much. After Dorian, an amazing number of papaya trees sprang up, but their fruits aren’t very flavorful. What other fruit trees we had were destroyed. I need to get back to the States for more than a vaccination, I guess.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
I’m not particularly fond of any particular fruit, except dried cranberries; but I’m spending this summer making a modified Caprese salad: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, plus cut up stone fruit and a salty vinaigrette made of olive oil and lemon juice (heresy for a Caprese, which should be olive oil only)
TomatoQueen
Peaches from Georgia if the market has them, Driscoll’s endless supply of red raspberries and then the bronze Heritage variety in late summer, more peaches ripen in August, then Tomatoes, Technically a Fruit.
Benw
@Omnes Omnibus: word is bond. Raspberries are the foundation of all my smoothies
dmsilev
Local (not long-distance-shipped-in) strawberries.
schrodingers_cat
Mangoes. Hapoos from Ratnagiri to be specific.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
I can’t believe no one has mentioned watermelon yet! I love ripe peaches too, but they can be rare. I grew up eating dead ripe apricots from apricot trees at our house so I can’t eat the ones you can get at a store. But even if they aren’t perfect, I can always eat watermelon (like the ones you can find now). Later on in the summer when they are dead ripe, I LOVE watermelon. Hard to believe anything so good is good for you! Strawberries are good too, as noted by almost everyone.
dnfree
Yes, ripe peaches. Have to get them from a produce stand, because too often the grocery store ones never ripen. They just go mealy.
I miss the days when we had our own raspberry patch.
NotMax
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
I do not care at all for the taste of salt. Except when sprinkled on watermelon.
namekarB
Yep. But it has to be picked when it is ripe. Nothing worse than the flavorless watermelons picked green and stored to ripen. I am also a little weird cuz I like black pepper on my melon
Chief Oshkosh
Peaches. But I need help knowing when they are just ripe, so I rely on a farmer friend “who knows.”
burnspbesq
Strawberries, blueberries, and cantaloupe. Used to love watermelon, but its glycemic index makes it a no-no.
Elizabelle
The peaches of my childhood. Raspberries, for sure.
And tomatoes, fresh out of the garden and still warm from the sun
ETA: South Carolina peaches are delicious; for some reason, we usually got those and not Georgia ones.
And, for the peaches sold now in groceries: I am going to learn to make a great peach salsa. Also thinking could eat them on yogurt with honey. To see.
schrodingers_cat
Also love peaches, nectarines, strawberries, corn and watermelon.
Elizabelle
A neighbor served us strawberries to be dipped into a small silver bowl full of powdered sugar. Thought that was tres elegant.
Also love strawberry shortcake. Bring it on!
planetjanet
Peaches. To this day, there is one particular peach I remember. It was summer and I was traveling from Chattanooga to Atlanta where I was going to be doing a summer internship at Georgia Tech. Somewhere along I-75, I stopped at a roadside stand off an exit in the middle of nowhere. It was a hot summer day. All I remember of the variety was that it was a freestone. The center was a rainbow from gold to orange to red. As I bit into the peach, there was a rush of juices and the flavor exploded in my head. It was simply divine. I have never found one as good since.
NotMax
Am one of those who can consume starfruit, which floods the markets here annually, without deleterious effect.
But it’s a “why bother” situation, as the faint taste reward isn’t really worth the effort.
Sure Lurkalot
@Elizabelle:
I lost a prodigious sweet tooth years ago and don’t eat much fruit anymore. But also, I find the fruit I buy just doesn’t taste as bold as what I remember and buying in small quantities probably adds to the lack of quality. That said, the cherries I’ve bought recently have been quite good.
hrprogressive
Watermelon! The cotton candy of fruit.
Also, strawberries are at the top of my list too. Blueberries. Mm.
Really, all good summery fruits are worth indulging in.
Gin & Tonic
Apricots. Actually, Alpine strawberries, but you can’t find them anywhere, ever. My mother used to grow them.
NotMax
@planetjanet
Sounds like a Hale Haven peach, which can range up to the size of a softball.
Kay
Peaches. I don’t love strawberries as much as other people do, although I’m glad you all love them! :)
hotshoe
I barely like any kind of fruit. I do like home grown oranges. Since oranges seem “made” for storage, it might be surprising that there still is a difference between store bought and fresh picked.
The variety I grow “Trovita” is late-spring ripening. Okay, June is not exactly late-spring, but I’m still getting fresh oranges off the tree every day. Happy summer, y’all!
planetjanet
@NotMax:
These could definitely get up to softball size. If I knew which exit it was, I would plan a road trip just for another chance.
Wag
Peaches, without a doubt. Especially peaches from Palisade on the Western Slope of Colorado. Sweet and juicy freestone fruit. Perfect.
But this summer I’m also looking forward to peaches from my own peach tree here in Denver. It looks like a bumper crop, which hopefully will make up for last years late Spring freeze that knocked out our fruit.
Fair Economist
Peaches. When the ones in the supermarket are actually ripe it’s like the scent takes over my mind and makes me buy them.
NotMax
@planetjanet
When lived in Pennsylvania, people used to all but camp out at the farmer’s market beginning the first week of August, awaiting the arrival of that year’s Hale Havens.
craigie
All of them, Katie.
But mostly nectarines. And peaches. Oh, and watermelon. And cherries. Apricots are good too. And plums, especially the purple slightly sour ones. Also pineapple – is that a summer fruit?
Phew.
planetjanet
@NotMax:
I will look for them.
Wapiti
These days my favorites are raspberries (U-pick farm opens o/a beginning of July) and blackberries (pick them wild in Seattle parks ~ mid August? I often get a late start.)
Wag
If anyone is planning a road trip through the national parks of southern Utah this summer, I would recommend timing it for when the apricots are ripe in Capitol Reef NP. There’s an historic orchard in the Park, and when the fruit is ripe, the Park Service allows you to pick your fill for a nominal fee. There are ladders scattered around the orchard so you can get to the high fruit. The apricots thrive in the cool nights followed by blistering heat. Almost as good as the Palisade Peaches of my previous comment, and extra special because we all own the trees!
dexwood
Torn between big, fat, juicy apricots and big, fat, juicy plums from my backyard trees.
Mary G
In Orange County, citrus of course, grown on my own trees. True Clementine tangerines with the puffy skin that slides right off are my favorite. Mandarins and regular oranges. Meyer and Eureka lemons. And U-pick cherries from Leona Valley. Peaches from my backyard low chill tree developed for Florida. Blackberries from my driveway bed. Apples from the tree that’s been here since at least 1968 that defies all the rules, but bears 30 or so mild green apples every year. Haas avocados. Strawberries that used to grow everywhere around here. Fresh pineapple from the 99 cents store. I am on a waiting list for a yuzu sapling maybe in 2022 or 2023. Plus other things I can’t think of. Summer is fruit heaven in SoCal.
Percysowner
@Chief Oshkosh: I rely on smell to see if peaches are ripe. It works for cantaloupe as well for me. Having to wear a mask really put the kibosh on buying peaches and cantaloupe last year.
@Sure Lurkalot: Ah, the curse of growing old. We really do lose a percentage of our taste buds, up to 50% by age 60. Things probably have changed in taste, but we also can’t taste as well as when we were young.
My fruits are cherries, red and Ranier and really good peaches. A local upscale grocery gets large shipments of fresh, great peaches around this time every year. They sell them in bags and in huge 25 lbs boxes. If I canned I’d go for the big box, but I usually settle for the small bags.
Keith P.
Either truly great peaches or black fleshed plums (ice cold)
Wag
@Percysowner: Sniffing cantaloupes at the cut stem is one of the highlights of summer. Checking a melon each day on the counter until it is perfect.
KrackenJack
@craigie: It may have changed with new varieties, but the Hawaiian pineapple harvest used to peak in June and July. In the olden times, high school students worked in the canneries during summer vacation. Pineapples are non-climacteric in that they don’t ripen further after picking. They will get softer, though.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: I second the raspberries. They grew wild along the creek where I grew up and we’d just pick and eat ‘til all the ripe ones were gone. The previous owners of our house put in a raspberry patch. Joy!
There’s a farmstand on the Eastern Shore that bakes and sells raspberry pies. I get one every time we cross the Bay Bridge.
Mary G
@namekarB: When they bred the seeds out of watermelon they traded the flavor.
Elizabelle
Not a fruit. But: fresh summer corn. Yum.
joel hanes
Have you ever had ripe wild strawberries?
Tiny, about the size of a split-shot sinker.
Intensely flavorful.
OMFG
No enormous cultivated strawberry is even in the same ballpark.
StringOnAStick
I’ve gone nuts for blueberries this year, and just discovered that we have 3 happy blueberry shrubs here at our new home; when they bloomed I had no idea what they were since I’ve never lived someplace where they can grow. They have awhile to go before they are ripe but blueberries and strawberries from closer to the Oregon coast are at the farmers markets now. There’s what I think is either a peach or nectarine tree in our backyard but the blooms were nuked by a late frost. Maybe next year.
dexwood
Oh, man, how could I have forgotten tomatoes? So fucking good from summer gardens.
Madeleine
I spent part of my childhood on a fruit farm and loved perfectly ripe peaches, wild blackberries, and the strawberries my mother picked because she knew when they were ripe. It’s hard to find their equal now, though the little strawberries at some farmers markets are wonderful and wild blackberries when I can find them—easier when I was in Michigan (and knew a spot where they grew) than now that I’m in NYC.
dww44
@Elizabelle:As it happens, South Carolina produces more peaches than we do. They let everyone know, too. I live in the big peach producing part of Georgia and our supermarkets actually sell local peaches during the season. In the off season they sell ones from California.
hotshoe
@Mary G:
Oh, sounds good — all of ’em!
Misterpuff
Blueberries from height of summer = late July. Best pies ever. Peconic Bay.
mrmoshpotato
Moving to the country gonna eat me a lot of peaches ?
LOOK OUT!
quakerinabasement
@zhena gogolia:
Peaches from Palisade, CO. Nothing compares.
Mike in Oly
Strawberries. Hands down. I wait all year for this season, as they are only good if they are picked ripe. Thankfully we have a large local grower that sets up stands about town to sell each days harvest. So delicious.
hitchhiker
I will be the last person to comment here, but I’m gonna do it anyway because a thread about summer fruit that doesn’t include the word RHUBARB is just not right.
Rhubarb pie (no strawberries!) made with fresh-picked rhubarb is the bomb. Nothing compares.
And while I’m here, try putting a little ground cumin, salt, and black pepper onto cut peaches. NOM.
nancy
Local strawberries during the season, then local blueberries. Only local because berries that are shipped from anywhere else have no taste.
JaneE
Yellow mini watermelons, cherries, white nectarines, green seedless grapes, strawberries. Really whatever is in season. Stone fruits, melons, grapes, berries, citrus, apples, pears, pomegranates. If I have a preference it is anything that can be washed and put in a bowl to grab and eat as is. After that are those that need to be cut or peeled, because lazy.
Juju
Cherries, especially Ranier, but any cherry will do. Pale nectarines and watermelon. I like local strawberries dipped in chocolate if I feel the inclination to dip the strawberries.
ceece
there is a specialty stone fruit grower in Morgan Hill CA that (pre Covid) had several fruit tasting / U pick events each summer. Cherries, apricots, plums, peaches, and all the hybrids thereof. Historic varieties, classic flavors, weird breeding experiments. Sometimes 75 different varieties available to taste! Then you could go out to the orchard on a little tour and pick what you wanted from many of the trees.
truly an amazing taste experience. I hope they bring it back after Covid.
favorites: Black Tartarian cherries, Silver Logan peaches, Royal Blenheim apricots, Snow Queen nectarines
(andysorchard.com)
mario
That peach I ate 30 years ago on the side of the road in Italy.
lahke
Orange-flesh honeydew melon. I think it must be a cantaloupe/honeydew cross, and they could surely come up with a better name, but it’s the best melon ever.
NotMax
@lahke
Watermelon, cantaloupe or honeydew can also be used to make a refreshing agua fresca. Cantaloupe. as a change of pace, is also yummy broiled.
Best melon memory is of one perfectly ripened Persian melon. None since have equaled it.
HeartlandLiberal
My favorite summer fruit is okra, chopped, breaded in cornmeal, and fried.
KBS
I love all the fruits mentioned above, but also want to add – serviceberries! I planted 4 shrubs last fall and I’m getting lots of yummy berries this spring. I’ve never seen them in stores or at our farmers’ market, but they’re native to much of the US and easy to grow.
mazareth
1. Bing cherries
2. Italian white table grapes from the farmers market in Salzburg, Austria. Don’t know the variety, but they had seeds, and were about the size of an apricot.
3. fresh figs from the same farmers market.