Raisin vs. Craisin

I wanted to start this blog with a sweeping introductory post, but I decided that would be kind of boring. So I'll just say briefly that I'm going to explore in detail my culinary pursuits -- which have been branching out oh-so gradually over the past year -- and then move on to the first of many highly specific analyses of consumption.

This once-finicky eater is now enjoying things like (gasp!) sushi, tomatoes and broccoli. I'm trying new things all the time, some of which I unexpectedly love and others I swallow and say "OK...." The pinnacle of my food expansion is the miraculous salad I eat quite frequently. Lettuce (must be spring mix or baby romaine), grape tomatoes, celery, carrots, bell pepper, green onion, broccoli, radish, almond, Craisin, tuna and dressing (preferably asiago peppercorn). Ingredients can vary, but those are the staples. Tonight, I was low on Craisins, so I tossed in a dried-fruit mix my sister sent to me this week after her children refused to eat them. Hence, I give you: the battle of Raisin vs. Craisin.

I have never eaten raisins. I know they are just dried-up grapes, but I have never found them enticing. All my life they have done nothing but ruin otherwise delectable cookies and cereals and chicken salads and cinnamon breads. Sure, there were Temptations-like cartoon singers who tried to make raisins cool, but have you ever seen a raisin that looked as pretty and shiny as one of those guys? I haven't. Raisins look like bugs. They're black and wrinkly, just ugly little boogers. My niece eats them to stay "regular." Even the Sunmaid girl can't convince me that "grapes and sunshine" are a good combination.

Enter the Craisin. I first met Craisins in trail mix in high school. Craisins were pretty. The color was appealing, the flavor sweet and delicious. They made the trail mix look better, and the look of a food is half its enjoyability. Craisins made a recurrence in the aforementioned salad via my mother. I fell madly in love with them, and having that salad each night for dinner simply became an excuse to eat Craisins. Just when you think you've added too many Craisins, add some more. Then I met white-chocolate Craisin oatmeal cookie. Hello, cookie, how I adore you!

Ginny, meet Waldorf salad. The cafe upstairs from where I work serves two salads: Caesar and Waldorf. The Waldorf salad contains apples, chicken, croutons and a mixture of sunflower seeds, Craisins and golden raisins. I'm to assume the latter comes from green grapes. They look a thousand times more appetizing than regular raisins, but still not quite as appealing as Craisins. However, they look friendly enough to eat without a second thought on my part. (Other foods I ate because they seemed friendly? Sour cream & onion chips, and asparagus.)

So there I stand, in my kitchen, examining the contents of the little red box full of dried fruit. Cranberries, lovely. Apricots, interesting. What's that other orange thing? Who knows, but it looks OK. Raisins? Ugh. They look like smashed black beetles. Rotting gum on the bottom of a shoe. Beaver dung. I decide to throw caution to the wind, and pour half the contents of the little box onto my salad. I am consumed with raisin thoughts as I eat. I pretend to hide them from myself under lettuce leaves and drowned in Kraft Free Honey Mustard. Still, I know they're there. I can taste them. It's an odd sensation, and I feel I'm betraying some unwritten law of my life. Thou shalt not consume the forbidden dried fruit!

Maybe it's because I was raised eating green grapes. Maybe it's because grapes have always had the mysterious seedless/seeded distinctions. Maybe it's because raisins don't have funny guys standing in a bog telling me how sweet they are. Maybe it's because they appear so vastly different from grapes that I see them as another species altogether -- one that is simply and inexplicably detestable. However, I will fight the good fight. I hereby vow to not pick out the raisins from the dried fruit mix as I pour it onto my salads in the coming weeks. I do this solely on the principle that it would be ridiculous to discriminate against this wrinkly absurdity in the presence of its (obviously) superior cousin, the luscious Craisin. However, I reserve the right to decline raisin-infested carbohydrates for both the foreseeable and unforeseeable futures.