Cucumbers are cool!

CUCUMBERS (Monday, June 2): Carbon dating of seeds shows cucumbers were cultivated as long ago as 7750 B.C. near the Thailand-Burma border, where the member of the gourd family probably originated. General Ulysses S. Grant was said to have been extremely fond of cucumbers. General Horace Porter remarked in an article, ‘Campaigning with Grant’, the General "often made his entire meal upon a sliced cucumber and a cup of coffee." Cucumbers are one of the oldest cultivated vegetables, having been cultivated since about 8,000 B.C. Anyone allergic to pollen or aspirin should avoid eating cucumbers. They can cause an unpleasant mouth itch. Cucumbers were brought to the Americas by Columbus. Cucumbers are about 95% water, and have very little nutritional value. Bitterness in cucumbers can be caused by any stress on the plant such as high temperature, low moisture, low soil nutrients, etc. Bitterness is also associated with fruit harvested late in the season from poor yielding, unhealthy plants. Most of those bitter compounds can be found in the stem end, in the peel and just below the peel. So, to get rid of most of that bitterness, cut off the stem end and peel your cuke. By the way, the inside of a cucumber can actually be up to 20 degrees F cooler than the outside temperature. Although a staggering quantity of cucumbers-600 million pounds-is grown annually in California, Florida, and Texas, the United States imports 300 million pounds a year from Mexico. In his description of Eugene Gant's raiding the refrigerator in Of Time and the River, literary genius Thomas Wolfe writes of a man who can't wait to sink his teeth into "a speared forkful of those thin-sliced cucumbers-ah! what a delicate and toothsome pickle they do make; what sorcerer invented them..." If Wolfe can write so well about cucumbers, there must be something to them. One of the oldest cultivated plants, cucumbers were discovered in Asia by the Romans, who brought them home and successfully transplanted them. However, when they attempted to extract some flavor from their purloined produce, they realized that their work had just begun. Records describe Roman cooks seasoning cucumbers with everything from sun-made wine and pennyroyal to "a little sylphium," an expensive and highly esteemed flavoring. They boiled the bland vegetable with precooked brains (presumably animal brains) and added honey and cumin at serving time. Something must have worked because we know that Emperor Tiberius liked cucumbers so much, he had them grown in carts that could be wheeled out for a daily sit in the sun to help them thrive, even off-season. In fact, the first hothouses were created by the cooks of Tiberius, so they could supply cucumbers to the Emperor every day of the year. Tiberius wasn't the only cucumber lover, according to the ancient Sumerian legend of Gilgamesh, which describes people eating wild cucumbers, among other things too squirmy to mention. Columbus brought cucumber seeds to Haiti, possibly in an attempt to get rid of them once and for all. As luck would have it, the seeds thrived and spread over North America, where Native Americans, especially the Pueblo Indians, became the cucumber's biggest fans to date. Early American cooks seemed no less determined than their Roman antecedents to enjoy cucumbers and began developing recipes for frying, stewing, battering, creaming, pickling, steaming, and stuffing the vegetable. In the late 1700s the Shaker religious communities included in their Manifesto the proclamation that cucumbers "can be dressed in more palatable and suitable ways than most any other vegetable except tomatoes." True cucumber fanatics may wish to revive the once-popular three-week cucumber diet, which promised various cures and nice skin to boot. Current scientific analysis has lent support to some of these claims, showing that the vegetable is exceptionally high in vitamin E. More than just slicing into salads, the Cucumber can actually be used in many recipes.

The long, thin English Cucumber.

ENGLISH CUCUMBERS (Tuesday, June 3): Queen Elizabeth celebrates her 50th anniversary of her crowing today. I’m sure there will be plenty of those tiny little sandwiches, filled with thin slices of Cucumbers. Which type of Cucumber? Well, an English Cucumber, of course. English Cucumber, also known as the European Cucumber, Hothouse Cucumber, Burpless Cucumber. Usually, regular slicing cucumbers are about 1/3 to 1/4 of the price of Hothouse Cucumbers. Not so right now. Regular slicing cucumbers are running about double the price of normal for this time of year. English Cucumbers are a very good value right now. Where do you store your English Cucumbers? Do you know where your English Cucumber is right now?

The hanging gardens of Babylon, had cucumbers.

The leader in North American English Cucumbers.

Cucumbers hate the cold. In fact, have you ever cut a cucumber in half, only to find a translucent appearance to the inside flesh? Well, that is called "chill damage." Cucumbers should be stored at around 50 degrees. Most refrigerators are much colder than that. Simply keep your English Cucumbers out on your counter. And because there are no natural "oils" on the skin of the English Cucumber, that's why you find the plastic wrap on them. Just keep that wrap on. No need to peel this cucumber. The skin is very thin. And seedless? Well, not really, but just like the "seedless" grape of the "seedless" watermelon, the "seedless" cucumber has "immature seeds." By the way, it is the seed of the cucumber that makes you "burp." That's why the English Cuke is "burpless."

Red onion prices will be red hot.

Get your red onions here.

RED ONIONS (Wednesday, June 4): Usually, red onion prices are higher than yellow onions, but you can start crying now. Red onion prices will be much higher than normal, and most likely will stay that way for quite some time. There are two things that affect produce prices: Mother Nature and demand. By far, mother nature is the “great determinator” of what we buy and how much we’ll pay for it. But every once in a while, demand lifts up it’s head of influence. If growers around the country don’t adjust to this new demand, then expect to see higher than normal prices for red onions, for quite some time to come. The demand comes from one place, Subway, the sandwich shop king. They began in May, making the switch from yellow onions to red onions. They determined that red onions looked better on sandwiches, were sweeter and tasted better. With 18,000 stores now using sweet red onions, that means about 20% of this year’s red onion crop will be going to Subway. That increase demand will increase prices of red onions on the fresh market. It already has. Some growers have already responded by increasing growing acreage, but until this new acreage comes into harvest, prices will remain higher. Oh, one more thing. When supplies become more limited, then quality may suffer. Subway, with their newfound red onion clout, will no doubt demand the best quality, leaving lesser quality available for the fresh market. If you’re hungry for a red onion, might as well head to Subway. Order extra red onions on your hot pastrami.

NECTARINES (Thursday, June 5): My wife’s favorite fruit, the Nectarine. The new crop is just starting from California, mostly from the southern desert-growing region. In just a few weeks, harvest will start shifting to more northern growing regions in the southern San Joaquin Valley. By the first day of June, harvest should be in full swing in the main growing region around Fresno, California. In a 15-mile radius around Reedley, just south of Fresno, about 95% of the Nectarines produced in the United States, are grown. The rest mainly comes from Washington, which generally begins their harvest in early July. These desert Nectarines tend to be on the smaller side, but as each week passes, and new varieties come into harvest, the sizing…and sugar…will improve. Look at the background color…the color behind the red blush. If there is more green than yellow, that Nectarine will be too immature to ripen. There needs to be more yellow than green. Put your unripe Nectarines in brown paper bag. Roll it up and set it on the counter. They’ll be ripe in a few days, ready to eat or use in summer recipes.

Buy greener fruit.

BANANAS (Friday, June 6): There is a special way of buying and handling bananas during the hotter summer weather. Buy bananas a little more on the greener side. Don’t refrigerate them, but do keep them in the coolest part of your house. Do not break the fingers off the hand of bananas to buy them. By keeping the fingers on the hand, the fruit will ripen better. If you get too many over ripe bananas, not to worry. Peel them and place them single file in a zip-lock plastic bag. Then freeze them. Once frozen, you can bring them out, dip them in chocolate or use them in a fruit smoothie.