sf wrote:
>
> On Wed, 28 May 2014 15:07:54 -0500, "Pete C." >
> wrote:
>
> > The varieties of strawberries that are largest and thus
> > the least labor to pick are also pretty bland compared to the small more
> > labor intensive varieties.
>
> I don't know what you consider big or small, but I've had some pretty
> tasty big strawberries that I thought were big.... and I've even had
> very tasty winter strawberries, grown in Southern California. <shrug>

There are a few larger varieties that taste decent, but aren't popular
with most growers for other reasons such as disease susceptibility or
tendency for misshapen fruit. The common large varieties produce fairly
uniform fruit a good 1" dia x 1.5" long, but they have mediocre taste.
NPR has a story on this in the last year or so.

NPR also had a piece on the banana situation, both the taste issues with
the current commercial variety, the history of the loss of the better
variety and the current GM work to try to reintroduce variety to bananas
since nearly all current crops are clones and thus susceptible to
blights like the one that wiped out the previous variety.

On dairy, I have pretty well given up on the products of the 5gal/day
cows. I buy the Mexican sour cream which actually tastes like sour
cream, not mystery paste, and for butter I use Challenge for general
use, and something like Plugra for feature use like on my english
muffins.

The Forester Farm's branded chicken that Sam's carries is pretty good
and worth the price premium over the generic stuff. It's not the
horrible overpriced air-chilled stuff, but it's less than 3% retained
water, not "enhanced" and you can actually brown it properly.