I can remember the exact age (9) and exact time (Saturday afternoon, after soccer) that I had my first Asian pear. I’m guessing that they must have come onto the American market around the late 80s-early 90s. The reason why I remember the pear has less to do with its taste and more to do with its packaging. Asian pears came, and still come I believe, individually packaged in little styrofoam webbings. This attribute came in a long line of Asian products packaged in curious ways.
Witness, for example, the way in which the Chinese give money–in the form of a lee-see, which is a tiny red envelope about the size of a credit card. The envelope is bright red, sometimes with gold characters and other times with a little scene of happy children or something printed on one side. There is really no other reason for these lee-see envelopes to exist except for monetary gifts, and it’s not like you can’t give money in a card as most Americans do, but there was something so ceremonious and cool about receiving those little red lee-sees from my grandmother.
At the time, the styrofoam packaging made the pears look like little offerings or gifts and as a child, I was pleased at the ritual of “unwrapping” the fruit. Today, I don’t believe in the styrofoam booties around asian pears because they’re excess waste and while I’m sure they protect the pears, asian pears are no more sensitive than European pears. In fact, I might venutre to say that if Asian pears’ crispness (if you’ve never had an Asian pear, they are meant to be crunchy, like apples) is any indication, they might be heartier than European pears and therefore really don’t need the extra packaging. And to call a spade a spade, Asian produce companies are the most guilty of this kind of packaging–Asian markets have the fruit and vegetables all set out in the open, but in an Asian grocery store, you’ll find individual cucumbers twice-wrapped, first in its own cellophane and then shrink-wrapped on a styrofoam tray, sometimes with a little green plastic cut-out to look like grass in some freak postmodern satire of nature. My boycott is unfortunate because Asian pears taste to deliciously refreshing–mild and sweet with a tiny bit of tang as you near the core–that it pains me just a little to ignore them in the store, which I do because I can’t bring myself to plow through all that packaging (although those little styrofoam socks can be reused to protect your growing tomatoes from squirrels). They are, however, available in farmer’s markets and they can be grown, so every once in a while, when I see the speckled golden skin, I buy a few and crunch through them on my way home, thinking to myself that an unwrapped gift is not as rewarding, but just as good in the end.
RECIPE: Noodles with Beef and Asian Pear
Filed under: Clean Food Daily, Asian pears, fruit, pears
