Taste From Our Childhood Found Again In Albania

It's not rare to hear my parents and grandparents comment that fruits and vegetables are tasteless now compared to when they were young.

After tasting the fruits and vegetables in Albania, the memory of how food used to taste from Charlie and my childhood floods back.

The texture of the tomato's skin; it's soft to the touch, hand-feel; always ripe to the verge of starting to rot brought back memories from the wet market in Hong Kong. It's not just organic or not. It is just different. You can feel it as soon as you cut into it. The tomatoes are more "sandy" in texture, which makes them more flavourful.

The oranges! They are chewier. When you bite into them, they are sweet but mixed with a tint of sour. Even the seed is different. They are rougher, with edges like how it used to be, and you want to spit them out right away. I used to always peel every bit of the white pith before I eat the orange because it was much chewier before! I don't do that anymore with oranges we bought from supermarkets.

Grapes are slender yet plump, unlike the round-shaped grapes we see in supermarkets nowadays. They gather as a bunch, just dangle formidably in the shape of the bunch, without the overbearing sweetness that sometimes irritates your throat. Their skin also does not have the waxy look. It's matte-looking, like how it used to be at my grandma's fruit stall.

The watermelons are juicy, sandy-textured, with lots and lots of seeds.

Taste memory is a weird thing. It brings you right back to your memory much more vividly than anything else - immerses you in the sensations bringing you back in time.

Refreshing watermelon full of seeds and juices.