It’s week two of being back “home” in the US, and I can’t help but continue my mental comparisons of the States versus Spain. Something that’s been on my mind this week is how much I miss local fruit/vegetable shops—called fruterías in Spain—and how living among them has impacted the way I shop and eat. Today’s newsletter is somewhat of an ode to those fruterías, along with a bit of history related to my personal produce journey.
Longtime readers of Come como Kiki will remember that I’m from a small town in the southern part of the US. What you may not know is that for the first thirteen or so years of my life, my parents, brother, and I lived next to my grandparents. The biggest advantage to living beside my grandma (other than being able to convince her to let me eat unlimited Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Pop-Tarts on the mornings she put me on the school bus) was sharing her vegetable garden. A devotee to the Farmers’ Almanac, my grandmother was an avid gardener with a green thumb that I unfortunately didn’t inherit.
I have a lot of memories associated with that vegetable garden, most food-related but some not. Non-culinary recollections include concealing myself in the corn stalks while playing hide-and-seek with my older brother, as well as showing my neighbor a garter snake my dad had found and watching him (my neighbor, not my dad) run away screaming. As for actual food memories, I remember helping my grandmother dig up potatoes, soil caking under my nails as I searched for tiny tubers hiding under dirt mounds. There’s the year we grew sunflowers and collected the seeds to snack on. And probably my most vivid memory is sneaking ears of corn that had been freshly plucked from the stalks, shucking them and inspecting them for worms (which grossed me out way more than snakes), and eagerly biting into the sweet, milky kernels. There’s no need to cook corn when it’s coming straight from your garden.
I took advantage of having my dad in the next room over while writing this post and asked him what vegetables we grew in our shared garden. I could remember potatoes, corn, yellow squash, carrots, and tomatoes on my own. But my dad reminded me that over the years there were also onions, broccoli, beets, and cabbage, among other foods that I didn’t recall, most likely since I avoided them as a child. Who knew that we had grown turnips and parsnips at my childhood home, two foods that I tried for the first time as an adult?
After moving away from my birthplace—and as a result, away from my grandmother—to a slightly bigger city, our garden days were gone. Gathering cucumbers from the garden turned into selecting cucumbers from the grocery store. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this also narrowed my exposure to new vegetables: I was bound by what the buying manager deemed desirable for the common household cook.
A limited grocery store selection impacted my vegetable repertoire, but let’s get real—I was also a remarkably picky eater. If I came across an eggplant as a young child, I may have admired the deep purple color, but I never would have consented to actually eating one. I was a corn, potatoes, and green beans kind of gal.
My point—and I do have one, however slowly I ramble toward it—is that fruit shops in Spain (aka fruterías) have been instrumental in expanding my fruit and vegetable knowledge. Of course, by the time I moved to Spain, peer pressure in college to try new foods along with living in a major city with a farmers market in every neighborhood had already exposed me to a wider variety of produce. But collegiate influence came mostly in the form of Thai takeout, and as farmers markets were mostly a seasonal occurrence due to weather, I still had some growing to do. Plus, produce in the US is expensive (and only getting worse)—I picked up a head of broccoli at the grocery store the other day and was appalled to read the price tag. How are people supposed to eat more whole, fresh foods if they’re priced out of it?!1
You can find a frutería on almost every block in Madrid, and every single one is filled with seasonal, local produce.2 One of my favorite facts about Spain is that it packs five major climate zones into a land area the size of Texas. This allows for a wide range of crops to be grown within the country. Moreover, the produce is cheap (or at least compared to the US), making the fruit shops accessible both in proximity as well as economically.
The convenience of fruterías has led to me trying lots of new foods. Figs, persimmons, kohlrabi, and artichokes are all fruits and vegetables that were new to me upon moving to Spain (unless you count spinach artichoke dip as trying artichokes). There are also foods that I thought that I didn’t like that I now love since having had a low-stakes way of retrying them—mushrooms, for one.
Occasionally, though, being so adventurous ends in disastrous results. Take my recent encounter with higos chumbos, or prickly pear. When I bought the fruit, all of the spines had already been removed, so I thought I was good to go. Unbeknownst to me, the fruit was also covered with tiny hair-like glochids that are impossible to see and even more impossible to get out of your finger if one happens to work its way in (which of course, is exactly what happened). In my personal opinion, the prized pulp of prickly pear isn’t worth the pain of having a pair of prickles in your pinkie (try saying that three times fast!).
Now that I’m visiting my family, taking advantage of fruterías has an added bonus: I get to share all of my knowledge with my parents.3 Plantains and leeks (oddly not a common veggie where I’m from) are now added to grocery lists alongside broccoli and cauliflower.
One final note about the benefits of local fruit shops: vida de barrio. Vida de barrio is a phrase that describes that feeling of living in a close-knit neighborhood: saying hi to the doormen on your block, getting to know the owners of your local coffeeshop, and yes, being (nicely) picked on by the workers at the frutería for buying so many figs. Oddly, living in Madrid has provided me with more of a “neighborhood life” than growing up in a small town ever did, partially due to this more European model of small shops over big box stores (and probably walking everywhere instead of driving doesn’t hurt, either).
So how do we wrap this up? I could talk about how the US could try to incorporate a frutería model (too idealistic), the controversy of agriculture subsidies (too political), or how I have visions of persimmons dancing in my head (too dramatic, and too cheesy). The truth is, I just kind of miss the fruterías. But I know they’ll be there when I return, with a new season of produce and possibilities.
Are fruit shops common where you live? Do you frequent farmers markets? Any fun stories about trying new foods? Let me know in the comments!
See you Friday!
Ki
On fresh foods being expensive: If I ever quit my day job, I would probably work in some sort of nonprofit related to giving more people access to nutritious food. It’s a topic that I feel passionately about.
On local produce in fruterías: It’s not all local; there’s plenty of imported fruit. It’s just easier to find local varieties compared to the US.
On sharing knowledge with my parents: It’s nice to teach them something for once! Although the food learning still goes both ways—just a couple of days ago my dad was explaining to me how to clean and process walnuts gathered from trees in his back yard.
The humble frutería
La vida de barrio... That's it! One thing about "fruterías", here in Spain is that I could find something very interesting the first time I visited Barcelona (my mother and sister live there).
Where I live, "Fruterías" never display fruit or vegetables outside, at the door, in the street (maybe because of the weather), but in Barcelona every neighbourhood fruit shop has a fruit display outside, and it's a good idea!
We have something similar to fruterias here in the UK and they offer some the best fresh fruit! I tend to shop at local farmers markets and I always prefer to buy local because it's often cheaper and I love to support a local community shop or farmer over a big box supermarket.
I think one of the things I miss about Asian culture having grown up in Singapore is all the Asian fruit that you really wouldn't get here! Fruits like rambutan, mangosteens, jackfruit and guava. I used to buy rambutans in a red plastic bag - a bit weird and not "neatly packaged" - from a local shop after I went biking.