Age Is Everything

I love plums.

I remember growing up in California and there being so many different types of plums- but the ones I liked best were the black ones with the red meat inside.  Usually, you get the black ones with the yellow instead.  They're ok, but they just don't taste as good.  Kind of like nectar peaches (aka white peaches)- they just taste so much better than the orange ones.

Well, I recently went to Costco for my weekly stockup and found that they had plums on sale

BLACK plums.

They looked REALLY good, too- and CHEAP!  Only $4.99 for the huge package of almost 20 plums!

So, I decided to chance it and try them- afterall, the white peaches that I had (shockingly) found the previous weeks were pretty good, so, perhaps they were selecting good stone fruits.

And they WERE good.  When I bit into one, I found out it was the type with the red flesh inside!

I hadn't had those since California!

So, naturally, I was curious about the origins of these fruits.

Dinuba, California.

I had relatives that lived there.  Boondocks kind of farm town in the middle of Nowhere, California.

But that DID explain why they tasted so good- nothing like the terroir of the soil you grew up eating out of, you know?

WELL, I was then suddenly, and irrevocably disappointed.

The package was labeled "Plumes Prunes".

Uhm....

They're not PRUNES until they're old and dried out!  A plum may be a prune by a prune is NOT a plum.

I know there is this (baffling) co-branding of prunes as dried plums now because, for some reason, prunes have a bad image.

But then, why take a perfectly good plum and try to call it a prune!?

It would be like calling a grape a raisin.

I NEVER hear anyone make that mistake.  So, what is this learning deficiency about prunes?

Prune recipe:
1 very ripe plum.

Take the pit out of the plum.
DRY IT UNTIL IT SHRIVELS.

Since you are adding heat, the fruit is chemically changed- it is NOT the same plum.

Is it really all that shocking that Americans are seen as dumb?