Eating my way through the NYTimes list of The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating.
Day 3: Frozen Blueberries
Specified frozen! I found that odd but my friend pointed out to me that when frozen fruits often maintain more nutrients than their fresh counterparts. Since they’re frozen immediately after harvest but fresh fruit is trucked around (New Zealand apples in Oregon, WTF? We’re next door to Washington, HOME OF APPLES) and sits on shelves for days and weeks.
I was also stoked about this item because my inspiration for this experiment was a direct result of my recent obsession with Top Chef. The contestants all speak so plainly (yet enthusiastically) for exotic-seeming food and they create incredible dishes in such bizarre circumstances there’s no reason why I should continue to eat the same 4 meals day in day out. One of the contests recently had one team of chefs making a dish inspired by the concept of blue (for a bridal shower: something borrowed, something new, etc.) where I learned there is NO SUCH THING as a blue food. We know this because Tom Colicchio (berating food critic and recent hero!) emphatically intoned, “blueberries are PURPLE!”
Fine! I enter into the frozen purpleberry experiment with some trepidation because I’ve been sugar-free (keeping even fruit sugar intake to a bare minimum) for 6+ years and was worried my body would be completely freaked out by any of the NYT’s serving suggestions: “Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.” I loathe fake health food like yogurt and soy milk (Chocolate flavored? The fuck?) that are just empty calories and chemicals but are generally consumed with no small amount of condescension.
I wonder if this is the most a person has ever belabored eating blueberries.
So I decided to just embrace the fruit sugar explosion experience and mixed the berries up with strawberry Kefir and granola. OMG! There is nothing I don’t love about this concoction. It’s sweet and filling without being gross, a beautiful color (totally purple), the weird texture-palooza it creates and most of all THE SMELL. This is seriously the best smelling thing I’ve had in recent memory. I ate it as a late night snack and was delighted when I woke up and my bedroom still smelled PURPLE.
3 years ago • Notes