I was seduced this week by the scent of the tropics in the Costco produce section. What kind of promotion was this?
Like a warm breeze wafting through an open marketplace, I could smell guavas all the way across the aisle.
Produce at Costco is perfunctory: a big box of spinach to throw in smoothies, or a pound of berries with no flavor, no scent, no sex.
But these white guavas had character. I kept lifting the plastic clamshell box to my face to breathe it in.
I drove home entertaining fantasies about how fast the fruit would disappear as our family smashed the juicy globes into our mouths. As soon as I got home, I cut into one.
I’d misjudged.
Hard, seedy and mealy, these were not a fruit to celebrate. I gave them over a week in the sun on the counter— and they softened, but never truly ripened.
I hate throwing good ingredients after bad. But I wasn’t ready to give up. When fruit is flat, or about to go bad— I cover it in sugar and make delicious jam.
When I overbuy strawb…