Winter - and missing fresh fruit

Ahh...mid-February. The time of year when I start going stir-crazy waiting for the end of winter. I'm sick of all this snow (especially this year!), wearing practical-but-decidedly-not-pretty boots and chunky sweaters as I trudge from my car to the office in a slushy parking lot, and I'm so used to cold and dreary weather that I'm thrilled to see the sunset when I leave the office for the day, and a day of 32 degree temperatures is exciting.

Ugh.

To top it off, this is the time of year when I yearn for good fresh fruit. Because let's be honest, there really isn't any.

We get spoiled in the Fall up here, with delicious apples everywhere we think of looking (including my own backyard), cider, and all the other apple-related products. Not only do we have apples upon apples upon apples, but we also have blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and pears. Then December and January hit and we start trucking delicious Florida oranges and grapefruits up from Florida and other places. Unfortunately, just yesterday I ate my first tasteless orange from Price Chopper. Which means... the end of fresh fruit season until the Spring. (Don't get me started on the fact that it was one of those 5/5 oranges too).

According to Pride of NY we won't have any seasonal fruits until June or so (not counting things like apples which, let's face it, just aren't as good as they were in the fall) but realistically we'll start getting decent produce from other places starting around April.

(OK, OK, I saw unbelievable cherries at Price Chopper a couple of weeks ago, but I'm just not willing to spend $10 a bag... at least yet. Ask me in two weeks).

So what do we do until then???

There's always canned fruit, but there's so much sugar, and it's just not that great. Applesauce (I prefer the unsweetened variety) is good, but again, just not as good as the fresh apples we had in the fall - and I was dumb and didn't do any canning, which I definitely will do this coming season! I think I'm going to try out some frozen fruit to tide me over this month.

What do you do without good, local fresh fruit this time of year?