Snack du jour: Can you name this item?

I have very little affinity for Southern food, even though I was raised around a lot of it.  To me, it is just too greasy, too salty, too overcooked and because of the overcooking and lack of herbs, there is little flavor.  One thing I do like about Southern food is simple and fresh veggies and fruits.  Nothing can match a vine-ripened fresh tomato or a tree-ripened peach.

Today I ran into this in Publix market:   So the question is, who knows what this is?  Any comments?  Any ideas?  Nothing?  ::::crickets:::::::

Ok.  These are muscadines.  Muscadines are a thick-skinned fruit that grows very much like concord grapes, except they are larger and have a wholly different flavor.  And I LOVE these things!  I have to watch myself, though.

If I sit down with a small dish of muscadines, I’ll rip right through them all and then by this evening, they’ll be ripping right through ME!

Luckily for my digestive tract, they are a rarity here in South Florida and I generally can’t find them for very long.  When Waterfront Market was open, Buco Pantelis ALWAYS had both Muscadines and Scuppernongs (the white / green version of the above) for as long as he could get them.

Now both varieties are grown commercially in Georgia and in Alabama but originally scuppernongs were a bronze-green wild variety that grew in the trees in the woodlands in northern Alabama and Georgia and up through North Carolina.

And occasionally, for a week or two towards the end of the summer, we can find them at Publix.  Sadly, they are picked rather ‘green’ because of the inevitable shipping, so they never really develop as they would on the vine, but I’ll take them any way I can get them!