Best if Used By 09/06/10

Eat This Now for the week of August 30th, 2010 features: Early Apples, Prune Plums, Sweet Red Peppers, Broccoli, and Romaine Hearts.

1. Early Apples

Summer is still rollin’ along, but for those of you that need a preview taste of fall – you’re in luck! Early varieties of new crop apples are now available fresh off the tree from places like California, Washington, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. So, head to your local orchard, farmer market or supermarket and look for these primary kinds of Early Apples:

• Ginger Gold: Sweet and spicy, rich flavor for snacks and salads
• Paula Red: Tart and crisp, great for a fresh snack or baking and applesauce
• Gala: Familiar sweet and crisp snacking apple, at the supermarket make sure the PLU sticker says “USA” so you know you’re getting firm new crop fruit.
• Honeycrisp: Hottest variety around has people clamoring for them, sweet and a little tart with a juicy and crunchy texture that will rock your mouth! PA has a some now, as September progresses and the nights cool – Honeycrisps will get better and better!

2. Prune Plums

Seriously. A late summer treat – no, not dried prunes or prune juice, but juicy-sweet, fresh Prune Plums. Round Red & Black Plum varieties that you find in the produce department from California all summer are mostly of Japanese decent. Oblong Prune Plum varieties, which are peaking now in Washington state and local orchards of the Northeast, are of European heritage. Blue-purple skin color with yellow flesh and small sizing is common in Prune Plums.

Let the fruit set at room temperature until firm-ripe (a tiny bit of give), then enjoy in a compote or baked dessert, fresh as a sweet snack, or dehydrate them to make homemade dried prunes. Or you could do what the guy does who I give about half my tree harvest to – make Slivovitz – oh my…

3. Sweet Red Peppers

California Sweet Red Peppers (the elongated ones) are outstanding at this time. Watch for ad promotions the next couple weeks. And, yeah, they really are sweet!

4. Broccoli

Need some green veggies to make it back into your summer-fruit-heavy diet? Organic and Conventional Broccoli (with stalk) and Broccoli Crowns (without the long stem) are very affordable, plentiful and of high quality as we speak. Plus, California is not the only growing region, as eastern Canada, Maine and Pennsylvania are harvesting too for local markets.

5. Romaine Hearts

Grilled heart of romaine with Balsamic or Vinaigrette? Homemade Caesar salad? Fresh chicken salad in a Romaine Heart fillet? Go for it – because Romaine Hearts from the Salinas Valley of California are really nice right now. Here’s a picture from my visit (a little over a week ago) to the largest grower of Romaine Hearts in the country, D’Arrigo.

Interesting Stuff: Romaine Hearts are simply the center leaves of a normal head of Romaine Lettuce. In growing, the only difference between regular Romaine and Romaine Heart fields is that they plant the Romaine Heart rows with more heads across the width to make the heads grow tighter and less open leafed. At harvest, the outer dark green leaves are trimmed off to leave only the crisp heart.

Forward this to a friend if you think they’ll like it – Here’s to fresh!

The Produce Geek,

Jonathan K. Steffy