Eat This Now for the Week of 08/23/10
2010
Best if Used By 08/30/10
Eat This Now for the week of August 23rd, 2010 features: Green Grapes, Plumcots, White Flesh Peaches, Celery, and Baby Greens.
1. Green Grapes
Just a little heads-up… Some of the best quality of the year is here on Green Seedless Grapes! The Princess and Thompson varieties are top notch from California – crisp and surprisingly sweet. Look for advertised and in-store specials the next few weeks.
I had the opportunity to visit some of Dulcich’s beautiful vineyards in Delano, CA this week. Wow – they have some the gorgeous fruit hanging on the vines. Shown here is the Princess variety Green Seedless Grape, known for it’s large berry size and oblong shape. When they are grown with the best cultural practices like the Dulcich family uses and allowed to fully ripen on the vine, this variety is also very sweet!
2. Plumcots/Pluots
Thanks to the generous hospitality of the Jackson family of Family Tree Farms in Reedley, CA I was able to study briefly this week at their Flavor Tech University, tour their orchards and taste-test fruit. Their Plumcots rock! Pluots and Plumcots are definitely worth a try right now – packed with natural sugary sweetness and intriguing flavor. I know you’ll love ‘em!
Interesting Stuff: As if keeping track of new fruit varieties isn’t hard enough… Did you know that Pluots are proprietary-branded hybrids of Plumcots? So: Kleenex is to Facial Tissue as Pluot is to Plumcot. Plumcots, are hybrids, not GMO’s, that have 2/3 Plum and 1/3 Apricot parentage. There are many colors, sizes and flavor profiles – keep trying new ones like the Fruit Punch or Dapple Dandy or Flavor Grenade since varieties come and go about every two weeks through late September. Oh, and that powdery coating you often find on the fruit is not spray residue or something else cryptic – it is called bloom, the natural protective wax on the skin of the fruit. That’s why they shine up so nice when you rub that bloom on the skin.
3. White Flesh Peaches
Beautiful red skin color and large sizing is what I saw, and tremendous sweet crunch is what I tasted on White Flesh Peaches this week at Family Tree Farms in CA.
Interesting stuff: White Flesh Peaches are highly prized in Southeast Asia, and the very biggest ones are hand-packed then air-shipped to Taiwan for a premium. The extra large and large fruit will stay in the US and Canada. White Flesh Peaches are picked ready to eat. Leaving them out at room temperature will soften them, but not sweeten them. Avoid the 39-50 degree range (aka your refrigerator) since the cell structure of Peaches begins to break down and the fruit loses favor and texture.
4. Celery
When’s the last time you had a low calorie snack that was crunchy, juicy and freshly delicious? I can tell you that nothing tastes quite like freshly harvested celery – a simple pleasure. Celery and Celery Hearts are high quality and plentiful right now – go for it!
Interesting Stuff: Hard-working harvesters hand-pick the entire Celery field in one sweep, separating each celery bunch by size and packing them into sleeves and cartons. The smallest bunches are taken to a Celery Heart machine that washes and trims the Celery into hearts-sizing right out in the field. At Dole in Salinas, CA, where I visited this week, I learned that they continue to improve their varieties to have a sweeter and less stringy stalk of Celery.
5. Baby Greens
Spring Mix, Mesclun or Baby Greens – no matter what you call these blends of miniature lettuce greens, one thing you have to call them is flavorful. Bold, spicy, tangy, nutty, earthy – there are flavors galore. Now is a great time to top your sandwich or start a salad with Organic or Conventional Baby Greens, plus they’re frequently on ad in bags or clamshell containers.
Interesting Stuff: Each type of green is grown in separate field plots since the varieties don’t have the same maturity rate, plus if there is a growing or pest issue with one type of green the others would not be affected. At my visit to Earthbound Farms in Salinas, CA I got to see the amazing harvester machine that cuts the greens with precision, vacuums them up, separates out any debris or dirt-covered greens and fills bins which are rushed off to the packing facility where they are cooled, washed, blended and packaged.
Forward this to a friend if you think they’ll like it – Here’s to fresh!
The Produce Geek,
Jonathan K. Steffy
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