h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used to have fruit. In my fruit bowl of course, but now it seems to mostly be kept in my fridge.

Mum still has the tastefully arranged traditional fruit bowl, or bowls even as the orange, apple, pear banana bowl is accompanied by one purely for grapes, and another one with some plums from my cousin's tree, and yet further bowls in other places with blueberries, or cherries. I kid you not, hers is a serious fruit eating establishment.

I started off my life of domestic bliss with similar fruit bowl arrangements, but often at the end of the week my fruit bowl would contain two oranges that no-one had taken a liking to, some lego and perhaps a key we'd discovered on the mantelpiece and couldn't recognise, half a packet of polos and other odds and ends.

This sort of filing system carried on for years without comment until finally my daughter pointed it out - that our family fruitbowl was being used as a general holding bay for the lost and found detritus that no-one knew what to do with. I retaliated, and had a clamp down. I emptied the fruit bowl into an ice-bucket ( with a lid), being as there was not a single thing called fruit in it at the time.
Apart from the sunglasses that we couldn't remember who they belonged to, there were a toy car or three, yet more lego parts, a tiny cloth bag for something or other a few bits of paper with telephone numbers but no names, someone's key ring (whose??) marbles, cake candle holders, batteries - the list goes on and on.

So, my fruit bowl stands empty. The fruit remains in the fridge, or the shop - to be quite candid. I don't like fruit much.

Yep mine has alo become a receptacle for all kinds of detritus as well..too many things to mention..though a lot of Rizla papers and lighters, sunglasses, pens etc etc.

The fruit is usually plonked on top. Recently plums and oranges and grapes and bannanas.

strawberries are kept in the fridge.

Of late fruit has been one of the few things I really can enjoy eating.

At one time there was fruit. We'd buy fruit with the best of intentions but we always got too much, resulting in quickly becoming fed up of fruit but still we'd buy more because of Health and things and to paraphrase Eddie Izzard we got the fruit and put it in the fruit bowl and we piled it high and we watched it all rot...

Now it's full of colourful balls of yarn and the fruit is bought in smaller quantities and left in the kitchen.

This wasn't what I expected when I clicked on the link. "Fruit" can be a state of mind, if you catch my drift.

I don't have a formal fruit bowl, but my fruit is definitely arranged according to a plan.

There's a tray with bananas and nectarines on it. Every day I buy one greenish banana and put it behind the two that I already have. The is that the hot weather will ripen the green bananas in the two or three days that they have to wait before getting eaten. (I eat half a banana as part of my breakfast every day).

Every night, before bed, I eat a pear or a nectarine. [I alternate betwene them for the sake of variety.] Normally there are two nectarines and two pears, in the order in which they were bought. Each has three or four days in which to ripen.

My fruit bowl is under the stairs and contains electrical tape, bits of Orks and Space Marines and other bits and pieces.

Apples and pears, are kept in the fridge, nectarines/plums etc are kept on the work surface waiting to ripen and then rot (I can tell when the flies start to appear ). Strawberries get eaten on the day purchased.

My wife makes seasonal displays of artificial flowers for the coffee table. For some strange reason she still has the spring display
which includes artificial tulips, artificial Forsythia blossoms, in a Styrofoam base.

My fruit basket is the only receptacle used for its proper purpose so I know what you mean.

I am a fruitaholic more so since my husband died as he wasn't fond of it and like you there were oranges etc. shrivelled up. Now if I have apples, pears, blueberries, strawberries or any other fruit with a defect my badgers will happily consume them which is great along with any other bits of food - not that there is much waste as I like my food too much!

Websailor

Mine looks similar to this one:

http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j00zeAEmBMyPFch/Metal-Fruit-Basket-JMSL-002-.jpg

so there's not point keeping other things than fruit in it. It is usually empty, but currently contains apples I picked from a tree.

Morris the Cat redecorated my fruit bowl. It now contains - Morris the Cat.

I'm feeling much more normal already, I'm not the only one with odd things I don't know what to do with! Glad to hear about the orks by the way Mags - I've just collected my grandson, who came to stay here for a while, with a heap of them to paint. His mum told him not to take the superglue, in case he stuck himself to something precious here.


I love that metal basket Bel - maybe that would have stopped the rot setting in with me and fruit bowls.

Fruit bowls beget fruit flies. Alas.

Mine contains almost everything but fruit

I have been experimenting with cherries and blueberries (both of which I keep in the fridge) but other than that I don't eat very much fruit because of the sugars. I eat veggies every day though - in particular

>His mum told him not to take the superglue<

I hope you've got some then, Lanza, sometimes it's all that will fix the burgers, particularly if the models are used in 'proper' games.

I gave my middle son (then 13) a diamond nail file to shave the edges off his models, seriously, they're superb for that purpose. When he went home, he showed it to his dad with pride - 'look what Mum gave me!', he promptly took it off him - I've still not got it back.

yes, we've got some, but he's got to be supervised, he's only just eleven. He's just really supposed to be painting them. . .

I keep fruit in our fruit bowl- what kind depends on the season, of course. Right now we have a pineapple, nectarines, avocados and tomatoes.

I do sometimes keep avocado and tomatoes in a bowl on the table. Tomatoes have a much better flavour, don't they, when they've not been kept in the fridge.


I should eat more bananas though, I never do, the amount of bananas I must have thrown away is a criminal offence.


I also wish we had lovely peaches and nectarines - the ones they sell here are all picked when unripe so they never really get properly ripe before they start to rot. So unfair, I actually like nectarines. What happened to the lovely individual ones you could buy that were almost dripping with juice? Now you just get offered a punnet of inedible ones. Is this just a British thing?

Keeping tomatoes in the fridge alters their cellular structure- I read about it on a "foodie" site a few years ago but can't remember all of the technical details. I only keep them in the fridge when they are cut.

I am fortunate that local farmers who come to our farmer's market get nice peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots. Usually late summer, so we're coming on peak season now. They pick them ripe and they are so juicy that I just about need to wear a bib to eat them.

We haven't been buying bananas this summer because last year we had literally *millions* of fruit flies. No fruit flies this year. That may or may not be because of the lack of bananas. I haven't been getting onions more than one or two at a time, either. And once we cut this pineapple, all bets are off.

We've also had great cherries this year, but those go right into the fridge (as do berries, which I store in glass jars because someone once told me they keep longer that way).

Oh, and from time to time I'll come home from work and find one of the cats in the fruit bowl and all of the tomatoes on the floor, full of teeth marks. She's not allowed on the table but apparently being in the fruit basket (it's not actually a basket, it's made up of thin stainless steel bands and looks like a basket) doesn't count as being on the table.

I wish I could upload a photo I have of the 'wild' cats we have, the mama one was only a kitten when she had 7 kittens of her own, and was so hungry she began to get tame when people began to feed her. Most of the babies were adopted, all except two - but they creep into the house when no-one is looking on the prowl for food. I was bemused to notice a tomato had vanished from my work surface one day - and later found they'd stolen it as a plaything. Naughty kitties! - I saw it under the aloe bush they live in, in our shared courtyard.

How interesting about the tomatoes cell structure, psychocandy - I just do it now because I got a 'look' from one of the local Canarian ladies when she saw me about to put them in the fridge.

Cherry tomatoes are OK, but anything else gets mealy and watery. It's even worse if you refrigerate and then let warm up to room temperature- now it's watery and mushy! And refrigerating before fully ripened also stops the ripening process.