At 1:28 -0400 14/10/02, Alex Shvartsman wrote:

>Richard, do you eat much fruit?
>What vegetables do you routinely buy?

I believe in eating a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. I can't
afford to eat biodynamic or organic produce, and I make up for that by
eating the widest variety of "normal" vegetables that I can.

Just coming out of winter here, so haven't had much fruit lately.
Of the fruit available through winter I avoid bananas because I
have a mild allergy to them, and don't really fancy much of the
other fruit (papaya, cold-store apples, oranges, avocado etc).
When it's in season I'll eat all sorts of fruit, with a preference for
blood plums, peaches, grapes and berries (sometimes I'll buy a whole
tray of berries if the price is right). I make huge bowls of fruit
salad with the above plus mango, passionfruit, sliced citrus flesh
(orange, lemon and lime), melon etc. I'll eat it topped with crushed
nuts and seeds. Usually I'll go on a fruit binge, eating copious
amounts of it for a week or two, then back to meat and salad.

I eat almost all vegetables, and in large quantities. It's not uncommon
for me to sit down to lunch with my plate piled into a 6" pyramid with
salad and vegetables and a steak hiding underneath somewhere.

There are a few vegetables I don't eat for various reasons. I avoid
onions due to an allergy. I try to minimise garlic due to the onion
allergy, although I'm nowhere near as sensitive to it. I don't like
pumpkin, cauliflower or peas much, but still eat them occasionally
for variety. Brussels Sprouts I find so disgusting I never buy them,
although I was recently given a recipe for them by a stranger in
the produce shop which I might try sometime (quartered and lightly
sauteed in butter and bacon fat and liberally sprinkled with
Mediterranean herbs and spices).

If I see a vegetable I don't recognise, I'll generally buy it and find
out how to cook it later! I've bought some very strange looking things,
some of which were so horrible they had to be thrown out :-O

The vegetable section of my macronutrient profile (which I summarized
for brevity) consisted of:

carrot
pumpkin
parsnip
green beans
broccoli
capsicum
chillies
swiss chard
tomato
aubergine
courgette
cucumber
lettuce (cos and other loose leafed varieties, never iceberg).
fennel
bok choi
choi sum
a few other asian greens whose names I don't know!
nuts
dried fruit
eggs
fruit when in season (wide variety)

I also eat a wide variety of herbs although I didn't include them in
the macronutrient profile:
parsley (lots of this)
coriander (cilantro) (lots of this, leaves and roots)
thyme
rosemary
oregano
sage
mint (normal and the asian "hot mint")
basil (both the normal and asian sweet varieties)
lime (juice, peel and leaves)
garlic
etc.

Most of the meals I cook are heavily herbed or spiced. I love asian
food and cook curries and stir fries pretty regularly. I use chilli
in ridiculous quantities :)

 ...Richard.