North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran and Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

>From the standpoint of NAFEXers, fats are important to dilute the acids
found in many of the weird lesser known fruits we might grow.  At present we
are whacking all our autumn olives to keep them from blooming or fruiting so
they don't spread any more than they already have.  But I still remember how
wonderful autumn olives are when boiled up (important to kill those seeds!),
sieved, and mixed about 3 to 1 with cream. The berries are not especially
sour, but have a bit of an astringency that isn't so nice on the tongue.
Perfect for wine making of course, except for their refusal to clear.  Good
stuff though to pour over desserts.
    I'd be curious to know how many NAFEXers are "supertasters", the term
used for people who have twice the normal number of taste buds.  You all can
look it up, they tell how to count the actual taste buds in a small area to
find out.  Apparently supertasters are extremely sensitive to bitterness,
and only lots of grease to coat their taste buds can help them endure it.
Supertasters can show up in a family of ordinary folks, and will complain
all the time about whatever's on the table, no one else will be able to
figure out what their problem is.  I met one who grew up in a family of
turnip green lovers, she could not stand greens because they tasted so
bitter to her.  When she heard about "supertasters", she knew she was one.
(My husband says that "real princesses" is a better term.)
    Theoretically, if the gene for more taste buds exists, there should be
some people with fewer than the norm as well.  Zinc levels also affect
taste, if you are short of zinc, nothing tastes sweet enough.  So, are we
going to find most NAFEXers are gourmet supertasters, who find the old stale
produce at the grocery has gone bitter?  Or are we mostly folks who have
defective taste buds that need super fresh fruit and strong flavors to get
the same pleasure that others can get from a Red Styrofoam, sorry, Delicious
apple?    Donna

P.S.  re: Steve's comments on the supposed flavors of duck and goose fats.
I can't vouch for the quack quack ducks yet, but Muscovies are food of the
gods.  (They don't quack like a duck, though they swim and dabble in water
like ducks.)  I put some goose eggs under Muscovies this spring, most were
no good and the #%&*#%# snakes ate 4 eggs out of the one good batch, but we
now have two young geese standing around being alternately comical and
irritating.  The plan was to eat them, and the way they are acting, the plan
is still on.  I also put quacky eggs under a muscovy and there are 8
quacking meals, I mean ducklings hanging around eating my tomatoes.  The
japanese beetle crop was so pitiful it hardly did anything to feed the
poultry this year.
    Looking in a friend's Jewish cookbook, I read that as Jews moved
northward they got out of range of olive oil to cook with, and as the locals
all used lard, they had to find a substitute.  That is how the Jews got into
bigtime goose farming in places like Poland and Hungary.  The fat was called
"schmaltz" and that's how "schmaltzy" (sp?) got into our language.  The
muscovies don't have enough fat to skim off and cook with (though there's
plenty to flavor a pot of stew) so I'm very curious as to how goose or duck
fat will flavor dishes.  I hadn't thought about fruit dishes.....