Oh, you think this is too esoteric to mention? Boo you. I mention it because I am devoted to tart dried cranberries which I cook with my morning gruel, i.e., oatmeal.
You’re probably saying, “Why don’t you use raisins like everybody else?” Because I’ve advanced from the time when I was everybody else. Cranberries are different from raisins. For one thing, they’re dark red. For another, in their seminal dried form, they are tarter than raisins.
I like tart. And cranberries are good for us.
I’ve always gotten my tart dried cranberries at Zabar’s. Indeed, Zabar’s is the only store I’ve found that has ’em. Tucked against a rear wall facing the cake-and-pie section, Zabar’s shelves contain an assortment of dried fruits packed into individual plastic containers.
Until a few days ago, those shelves reliably had tart dried cranberries (good prices), sugar-free cranberries (very pricey) and regular old dried cranberries. Recently, though, the entire cranberry collection has been diminishing until…well, no cranberries of any kind except a few containers of orange flavored ones.
I note the tart cranberries and Halls sugar-free cough drops are involved with no or reduced sugar. Does this mean it isn’t the cranberries or cough drops that are packed into shipping crates, languishing in some exotic harbor? Is the problem with the no-sugar supply? Packed into shipping crates in some exotic harbor blah blah blah?
Of course, this is nonsense. “No sugar” isn’t an entity; it’s a non-entity. It doesn’t exist, not in shipping crates languishing within the supply chain. Not anywhere.
But where are the tart cranberries? Where are the cranberries?
I’d like someone to do an investigation.