Produce News for April 12, 2010

ONIONS (Monday, April 12): Oh, man! It wasn’t as bad as a few years ago when we had a huge world-wide shortage of onions, and prices were at record highs for six months. Well, this winter prices have been a little bit high as well but not as bad as a few years ago. Still prices have been pretty high…especially on White Onions. At least prices are finally starting to come back down with Texas and now California in harvest. Even so, there are still some “old crop” Onions on the market, so I want you to check your Onions. You need to check the neck on the onion. You have the root end of the Onion. That’s easy to find. The other end…is the neck. You need to feel on the neck because if there’s going to be any decay whether it’s a yellow onion, white onion, red onion, that decay is first going to start at the neck. You also need to check for regrowth. It is springtime, everything starts to regrow this time of year. So check for regrowth. What you also can do is just you can peel away that top layer of onion right around the neck. That will tell you whether there’s any decay there. If there is decay or regrowth, find another onion.
TOMATOES (Tuesday, April 13): Hey, Thomas Jefferson was born this week 1743 so I thought I’d bring a vegetable that Thomas Jefferson really loved. In fact he loved this vegetable so much he would literally walk around the downtown streets of Philadelphia and Boston and New York and Washington City, and he would eat these just like you and I would eat an apple. And there was a reason. You know most people thought if you ate a tomato back then, that it was really foolhardy to do so. People thought they would make you sick. Well, Thomas Jefferson knew they wouldn’t make you sick so he’d walk around. Now tomato prices are finally starting to come down. These beautiful tomatoes - Roma tomatoes, the slicing tomatoes, we have had almost record high prices of tomatoes over the…well since January freeze that froze out all the tomatoes in Florida in January. Well, now finally those re-planted fields in Florida are coming back into production. That means the prices are starting to come down. Finally. And I’m ready for more Tomatoes on my salads and burgers. Aren’t you?
AVOCADOES (Wednesday, April 14): You know, if you get out the Webster’s dictionary and look up “smooth” and “creamy”, it would say Hass avocado. Oh, my goodness! There is nothing like a ripe Hass avocado. They are indeed smooth and creamy, but I wanted to show you something here. You know, Hass avocadoes are one of the few avocadoes that go from green to nice and ripe. And it takes a few days, but this time of year the oil content is gaining so much more so it goes from dead green to nice and ripe within a matter of a couple days. And when you finally cut this open, they are going to be so gorgeous! Hey, get out the shrimp cocktailIt is indeed rich and creamy, smooth, and so nice. And this oil content in here, this oil, it’s been gaining every day and that means flavor. So not only smooth and creamy but also full of flavor.
LETTUCE (Thursday, April 15): You know, on this very date 1955, McDonald’s opened their very first restaurant. McDonald’s and iceberg lettuce – they kind of go together. You know, you can’t have a Big Mac – “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.” Third ingredient there was what? Lettuce! And McDonald’s has like literally changed the produce industry, especially when it comes to lettuce, because you know, before then, before McDonald’s started, there was no such thing as shredded lettuce. That’s right. You couldn’t buy shredded lettuce. You couldn’t even buy fresh cut lettuce, so McDonald’s would have to take whole heads of lettuce like this and they’d have to shred it nice and thin for all their hamburgers. Well, since McDonald’s started needing shredded Lettuce, Holy Toledo! Have you noticed in the produce section there’s a whole wide world of fresh cut salads and all kinds of shredded carrots and everything, and guess what! McDonald’s started it! It has changed the produce department forever.
CANTALOUPE (Friday, April 16): Hey, this week Pope Benedict XVI turns 83 years old so I thought I’d bring something that’s actually related to the pope. Well, maybe not this pope. You know, some of the early popes, they would travel to a little town and a monastery just outside of Rome, Italy, just outside the Vatican up on the hillside surroundingRome, Italy. And in that little town was a little monastery, and that monastery had some really good gardeners. Now the gardeners knew that some of these early Popes loved one particular melon. This melon originated in Persia, and the Pope’s gardeners in this little town in this monastery were the very first to cultivate this melon. The name of the town where this melon was first cultivated…Cantalupo, Italy. That’s right. That’s where we get the name Cantaloupe. Now we’re just now starting to get some cantaloupe from northern Mexico. The desert region of California is just about ready to start too, so get out vanilla ice cream. Cantaloupe prices coming down and quality is going up.