Of pluots and plums

After not really having slept all night, I woke up at 5:30, then again at 6:00, 7:00, and eventually at 8:50, when I decided to stop kidding myself that I was ever going to make it into work. So I'm at home today, resting and putzing around . . . it's nice to have a day at home, but of course it's hard to know what to do (and what to avoid).

So far the highlight of my day was that I ate a pluot. I'm not sure what it was supposed to taste like, but I quite enjoyed it anyway. When I bought it at the grocery store, I had a nagging fear that it was just the French word for plum, and that was why the pluots were $1 more per pound than the plums. But thankfully, wikipedia has allayed my fears: pluots are a cross between plums and apricots. That would explain why it was so sweet (and $1 more per pound, too). Apparently, they're usually only 25 percent apricot, so they're mostly plums. But dang good ones.

And that makes me wonder: are there regulations governing the declaration of all new fruits (or vegetables or other plants, for that matter)? Because if a pluot is really mostly a plum, isn't it just an interesting hybrid plum? And if you call it a pluot, instead of a hoity-toity plum, won't suckers like me be more likely to waste their money on it? That pluot may have been wonderful (and the pit ever so small and unobtrusive), but there's a conspiracy out there, and somebody's got to stop the market from being flooded by truckloads of "new" produce. Maybe they could call pluots "plums reloaded" or something like that. That would at least be more honest.

But then, I never would have bought pluots, and had the delightful experience of tasting this speckled, very un-French plum that is subtly enhanced by the supersweet flavor of the apricot.