I like to use these sorts of strawberries in salads. They are crisp like a cucumber sort of but taste different. I assume they keep so long because they are low in water and must be higher in fiber? I am interested as well if anyone knows. Permatomatoes last a long time too and are very firm. Same reason I suspect.

I avoid Driscoll brand strawberries like the plague, for the reasons gardengal stated. Horrible. Might as well eat the container they come in. Happy to wait for local summer berries. May even grow my own this year!

Out of season (fill in the blank) produce you can buy in the dead of winter travels thousands of miles and will never be the same as locally grown in-season products. Without the varieties that can survive the time and tussles of shipping, there would be nothing available to buy. It's an option, nothing more.

Driscoll in-season strawbs grown in coastal Calif are usually terrific

Driscolls

When out of season in Ohio (which is most of the year) we prefer Driscolls berries.

I wondered if they'd been 'preserved', but maybe they are just genetically modified to 'last'. I remember seeing a documentary years ago about how California strawberry growers piped carbon monoxide into the soil. It made the berries huge the same time it killed bugs.

I love raspberries any time of year, but it's amazing to me to be able to enjoy them in winter, at a reasonable price, from Chile!

It may be the way you handled them although some countries are irradiating foods so that they last longer with less refrigeration. My husband had a friend who brought a flat of strawberries to us one year. I was still working and the friends wife cut, dipped then in some type of solution, and put some in a glass canning jars. Months later when I was cleaning out the frig they had changed little when I found the last jar in back of the frig. She said she had done nothing special to them.

Chisue, when I buy strawberries that are not ripe yet or sweet enough, I serve them as Strawberry Romanoff. Just rinse the berries, but do not remove the stems and leaves. Pile them on a dessert plate and add a large dollop of sour cream and 2 Tablespoons of light brown sugar. Holding the berry by the stem or leaves, dip it into the sour cream and then into the brown sugar. Yummy!

PS Fresh strawberries arrive in our produce departments in California in time for Valentine's Day.

I don't buy produce from Mexico at all. There are no regulations on chemicals used in farming. I'd rather buy homegrown than gamble.

I only buy strawberries in season. All locally grown. Medium sized strawberries are the sweetest. I do have a friend whose family is in the business who grows an excellent large berry. I forget the name of the it but they are really delicious. Don't even need sugar. I buy those directly from her or the local farmers markets. We also have excellent pick your own berries just a hour or less away.

My main complaint is about bananas. Too many over gassed bananas that are left in plastic shipping wrap too long. They turn to mush while still green. Dole seems to be ok most of the time. But I will not buy Del Monte. Awful.

I have no problem with buying things from Mexico. It's not a third world country. Many Americans retire there. It's silly to me to be xenophobic about food. I have to laugh when people say they won't buy anything from China or Asia and then talk about the great Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese food they had at a restaurant for lunch that day.

"I don't buy produce from Mexico at all. There are no regulations on chemicals used in farming."

I believe such produce needs to meet US standards for residual chemical content and, of course, organic is organic. However, like so many other underfunded government agencies, I've read that there are not enough inspectors.

You'd be surprised to know how many of the "Mexican" produce growers are in fact US companies that locate South of the Border to lengthen their growing season opportunities for product. It's a high percentage. Many of those that don't operate directly have cooperative and hands-on collaborative agreements (with their own employees present) with local concerns

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We grow our own strawberries in season. The size is a factor of the variety. Our sweetest are small but some of the large ones can be wonderful. Our home grown are used as desert. I don't think of the winter berries as fruit. I use them in salad along with things like those crunchy winter plumbs or crisp pears.

LOL!! Call me nuts but strawberries, plums and pears should never be crisp and crunchy if they are properly ripe! Doesn't make any difference in the season. I just don't like hard, unripe fruit. Appes are different.

Bosc pears and seckel pears remain firm, even crunchy, until they start to spoil. They're best enjoyed before they soften.

Many pluot and plum types also remain firm until they start to spoil. Maybe something less than crunchy but solid and firm, not mushy.

I eat a lot of winter pears and they should not be crunchy!! They are picked while very hard and need to ripen off the tree, often as much as several weeks. They should be firm and not mushy when fully ripe but never crunchy!! They ripen from the inside out so if soft to the touch on the outside they are likely overripe and brown and mushy inside.

Kiefer pears stay crunchy. When they ripen they ripen from the inside out. I have a tree that if you wait until they are soft the middle is a fermented liquid. Tastes great but decided after one try that being safe was probably wiser. They are a grainy pear so better for cooking than eating so being soft is not necessary. Smelling like a pear is my indication that they are ready to eat even if the outside feels rock hard.

Open your minds to an expansion of your use of fruit. Cucumbers are picked when they are under ripe. No one has a problem with them being crunchy. A ripe cuc is yellow and soft. We all like crispy crunchies in our salads. Winter fruit tends to not be sweet or soft. it takes sun to make things sweet but this fruit can be used elsewise than deserts. Give it a try. I like blue cheese with my winter strawberries. You could surprise yourself. I like under ripe bananas with strawberries and pear with crumbled blue cheese. Totally different experience from summer fruit.

To my knowledge, carbon monoxide is not used as a soil fumigant and never has been, I forget who stated that earlier in this thread. I don't think that it has a use. Methyl bromide is the gas used for that purpose but it has been banned almost entirely in this country for several years. Carbon dioxide, a different gas, is used to kill pests in closed storage and transport facilities only, never in the field.

Irradiation, however, is very commonly used to protect fresh vegetables, fruits, dried herbs, and some meats. The gamma or x-rays are used to kill organisms known to cause illness or to speed up the decline of the fruit. Irradiation is often used to prevent potatoes from sprouting, too. The safety of irradiated foods has been studied for decades with zero reports of problems.

In spite of the fear that the term GMO creates in consumers' minds, very few crops in the US marketplace are genetically modified; even fewer of those are used for human consumption. There are no GMO strawberry varieties. (Apples are another story!)

The mystery of the strawberry is mostly about breeding, simple as that. Okay, not so simple, but it boils down to plant genetics and selection. The other aspects that have become increasingly important are handling and storage, which are a science in themselves.

Like it or not, countries south of the border DO have different laws and regulations regarding pesticides (insecticide, herbicide, fungicide, etc.) than we do in the US. Residue levels can be off the charts, even though they are supposed to comply to our safety standards billions of pounds of high residue produce ends up in our groceries. That matters a great deal to me. Don't get me started on the pesticides in imported cut flowers!

Strawberries remain one of the crops with the worst residue record, even those grown in this country. I never use imported strawberries or out of season strawberries. Any on my table will be organically and locally grown.