When perusing the produce at Whole Foods, my eye inevitably finds the yellow ‘On Sale’ tags, since- let’s face it- these are often the only items I can afford (get out the skillet, mama’s bringin’ home a whole eggplant tonight!). In my recent wanderings, I came across a little plastic clamshell of what looked like green grapes. The label read “Passion Poppers”, which sounds to me like something you’d find an ad for in the back pages of a magazine, but they were, in fact, baby kiwis. Yup, for only $3.99 you can take home your very own half-pint of ‘kiwi berries’. Before I get too snide about the inflated price tag, I should probably own up to the fact that I bought them- as evidenced by the above picture. This purchase, and its all-too-numerous precedents, demonstrate an interesting phenomenon, of which, I am happy to say, I am not the only victim: perceived bargains. The perception of a bargain, especially for the penny-pinching New Englanders that abound in these parts, is often too enticing for shoppers to resist. When faced with a sale item or ‘special deal’, such factors as need, previous desire, and practicality are forgotten, and taking their place is the simple knowledge that we can buy something today for less than we could buy it yesterday. In this scenario, the price might shoot right back up tomorrow- if it’s even still available tomorrow, that is, since everyone will be clamoring to take advantage of this deal. Is it the fear that others will take advantage while we miss out? Is it the implicit limited window of time that causes rational thought to be thrown to the wind? Or is it simply the notion that we’re being offered a commodity worth more than the asking price? Obviously, the concept that an item’s value is dictated by what one is willing to pay for it would refute this theory, but I think it might be the driving force here. The customer feels like he’s ‘pulling one over’ on the seller; as if he had personally negotiated the price down to a reasonable figure. Perhaps in the frustration of our consumer-driven society, exacerbated by the economic crisis, taking advantage of a perceived bargain at Whole Foods is our cultural equivalent of haggling with vendors in a marketplace somewhere. Since attempting to drive a bargain with the stock boy is not an accepted means of frugality, jumping at the opportunity to save a dollar on apples or eggs will have to suffice. The sad irony is, of course, that if you wouldn’t have paid 4.99 for it, but you’re buying it for 3.99 on sale, you’re (I’m) still a sucker! Hell, I never would have dished out four bucks for a pack of baby kiwis if it wasn’t a ‘special’, (believe it or not, they weren’t on my shopping list), but somehow, I was drawn in. Alas, I found myself in possession of a half-pint of kiwiberries, and since regular kiwis were also on sale, I decided I’d turn my humiliating run as supermarket chump into a golden opportunity for some culinary edification in the form of a good ol’ side-by-side tasting.
So on to the good stuff: the eating of my newly meaningful, shamefully procured little fruits. The first and most apparent difference between the two- besides the obvious size factor- was the absence of the characteristic fuzzy brown skin on the babies. It is this very skin that earned the fruit its well-known moniker, as it was thought to resemble the kiwi bird when the plant was first brought to New Zealand. Originally a native of China, it was previously referred to as a ‘Chinese gooseberry’, and in China as a monkey peach, macaque pear, vine pear, sun peach or wood berry.
Upon cutting open the two fruits, the similarities became more obvious; the cross-section of the baby was a perfect little clone of its more common relative. What is it about a familiar object, scaled down a few sizes, that just makes it so darn cute? Eighteen years ago my American Girl dolls would have had the perfect addition to their tiny plastic lunches. The flesh of the kiwiberry was slightly more vibrant than the mama, leaning towards a punchy Kelly green, as opposed to the more chartreuse translucence of the typical fruit. When given a little love squeeze, the baby oozed a milky-green fluid, more opaque than the juice dripping off my knife after cutting through the fuzz-coated flesh of the mama.
Sniffing the two specimens revealed that the berries- which are also called ‘hardy kiwis’ due to the ability of the dormant vines to withstand temperatures as low as -25 degrees Fahrenheit- have a mild, fresh aroma, and after sucking the flesh out of a few, and then just popping a couple in my mouth whole, I found the meat to be dense, with a slightly chalky texture, and the flavor sweeter, but somehow tangier than the kiwis I was used to. They were decidedly citrusy, with both lemon and lime notes and a pleasant melon undertone. On to the big’un: here, I found the texture to be almost crystalline, as opposed to the creamy flesh of the berries, and it had a pronounced, grassy aroma. The flavor was more delicate overall, and compared to the hardy kiwis was like a tasty but modest Riesling next to a crisp German Auslese in which the sweetness is intense, but balanced by snappy acidity.
The winner? Both are healthy choices, with hefty doses of vitamin C, and while Chinese folklore does endow kiwifruits with cancer-fighting abilities, one can only assume there’s simply less existing research on the Lilliputian variety. If you have an extreme aversion to fuzzy coatings, the babies have an obvious advantage. Concerned about the use of excess plastics in packaging? Mama’s the clear choice. More bang for your buck? Mama wins again. In retrospect, my 3.99 was justified by the fact that I got a blog post out of it, but in the future, when I feel myself being swayed by the siren song of the yellow sale tag, I’ll pause a moment and consider my motives- perhaps next time I’ll save my dollars for that German Auslese instead…
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