Ripe may not equal Ready

With almost 20 different types of fruits to choose from at your local grocery store, it may be hard to know when a certain fruit is good to purchase. Knowing if fruits are ripe enough to eat and enjoy is a skill that is acquired over many years of trial and error. This is a small guide to help you get to know what a few ripe fruits look and feel like.

Banana.  This fruit is probably the easiest out of them all.  It doesn’t take Guy Fieri or Gordon Ramsey to tell you if a banana is ripe and good to buy.  The only tricky thing about bananas is timing.  Personally, when I buy a bushel of bananas I know that I will eat them pretty soon after I bring them home, so I usually go for bananas that are mostly yellow with a few brown spots here or there.  But I would say a good baseline for bananas is buy them when they are all yellow, that way you don’t have to rush to eat them before they are bad.

Watermelon.  On the other end of the spectrum, watermelons can be one of the hardest fruits to determine.  Some say you can tell by the color of the white streaks or how deep the green is, but anyone who really knows their way around fruits can tell if a watermelon is ripe or not just by giving it a firm slap.  I have not yet acquired this skill/natural gift. This takes years of time spent in the fresh fruit section, as well as in the garden.  It is something you cannot teach, some say it’s even genetic.  My advice for watermelons, if you don’t know what you’re doing is: hang around the watermelon display with a magazine or newspaper and wait until a true professional slaps a melon and yanks one up.  Either casually ask him/her if the one you’re about grab is good, or just try to grab one that looks like theirs.  Until you yourself have obtained this talent, this is the only advice I can give as far as melons.