What You See Is Not Always What You Get

It's simply impossible to hide overly-ripe bananas underneath the ripening ones. And if the bananas aren't eaten in a timely manner, the alternatives are to throw them out or mix up a batch of banana bread.

That's not the case with strawberries. I can't be the only one who believes that employees in the strawberry packaging plants are given incentives to put the VERY RIPE strawberries in the middle of the container where they cannot easily be scrutinized by amateur fruit connoisseurs like myself who take their fruit-picking very seriously.

I can't be the only person who painstakingly and foolishly takes the extra time to examine the see-through container turning it over and sideways and upside down (and more than once) to make sure there aren't any moldy stowaways in the bunch. And since I absolutely loathe people who sift and sort through food packages with the very hands that could have previously picked their nose or wiped their butt...food I might very well end up purchasing, examination of the finger kind is clearly NEVER an option.

I must have an addiction of the worst kind that makes me repeat this ridiculous behavior in the grocery store because I have the exact same experience every time upon arriving home and rinsing the parcel of delicious-looking berries. They are only delicious on the corners and the edges. It is a deception of the worst kind and I fall for it every time.

At least with rotten bananas, I can easily convince my children to eat them in bread. However, I highly doubt that it would go over too well if I threw a few moldy berries in the blender and offered them a strawberry smoothie.