Produce News for the Week of August 23, 2010

PEACHES (Monday, August 23): Man, Williamsport, PA, they’ve got the Little League World Series going on. So the boys of summer may be on the diamond but the joys of summer, still right here in the produce department - these gorgeous…oh, my goodness! These gorgeous peaches and nectarines. This time of year we are in what we call the mid to late season variety, and most of these are now going to be….now let’s see if this is going to cooperate with me. Most of these are now what we call free stone. Yeah, they break free from the stone…including all of your nectarines will be this way. Also this time of year we start getting, oh, a lot of these flat peaches. Oh, my goodness! One of the things I love about these flat peaches. Take a look at this. It just goes right on around and then just twist it off. Look how easy that is. This is like one of those peaches you don’t need to roll up your sleeves because it is so nice and neat…nice little flat peach. It’s not going to get juice all over you so you might want to try one of these before summer’s over.
LITTLE BERRIES (Tuesday, August 24): Hey, Rachel Ray turns forty two years old this week so I thought I’d talk about one of her favorite fruits, berries. By the way, have you had your vitamin pill today? These are indeed some of the healthiest fruits grown on planet Earth today. These are indeed little tiny vitamin pills. You know for breakfast you can…I don’t know, get out your yogurt, your oatmeal - just sprinkle some of these on. For lunch just have a bowl full of these. For dinner you can just have these for dessert as well. I mean every single meal of the day you can be enjoying these tiny little berries. And this is, folks, peak of the season for all the little tiny berries - the black berries, the raspberries, of course we have lots of strawberries still. But if you haven’t had your vitamin pills today may I suggest you have your vitamin…by the way, do not wash these until just before you use them! I know you want to get home, get everything washed, but don’t do that with these tiny little berries. They will just melt before you eat them
SUMMER TOMATOES (Wednesday, August 25): It is the 65th annual tomato food fight in Bunol, Spain, going on right this very minute as we speak actually and the tomatoes that they use? These beautiful Roma tomatoes, Italian Roma tomatoes. Well they call them Spanish Roma tomatoes, but these beautiful tomatoes. Now this has been a very strange year for tomatoes. Tomato prices have been much higher during the summer months than I can recall for many, many years. You know we had a lot of heat throughout much of the country and then we had a lot of rain. California got a really late start so we have these multiple reasons for much higher prices. So do not have a food fight with your tomatoes because you’re going to want to save every one. They may do that in Bunol, Spain, but by the way this time of year from now probably through September, this is going to be the peak of the season. These are going to be the best prices for all tomatoes including these beautiful Roma tomatoes, all the slices including your heirloom tomatoes. So for the next six weeks enjoy your summer tomatoes.
STRAWBERRIES (Thursday, August 26): Alright, let me count them. Let me count them. Oh, yeah! They are getting smaller. So let’s see - two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen berries. Usually strawberries are, you know, these huge ones where we get like eight to twelve per basket and we just counted, what seventeen. This time of year the berries start getting a whole lot smaller just like that. You’re probably wondering, well, are the growers doing a bad job? No, the growers are not doing a bad job. Let me tell you what happens this time of year. The plants have been in the ground for what six, seven months? And it’s late summer and the plants start stressing. When the strawberry plant begins to stress, it puts out new runners. Well, you’ve all seen a strawberry plant putting out those new runners. Well, that means it’s putting food for the runners not food for the strawberries. So this time of year the growers have to actually go in and pinch off all the runners, but we end up with smaller berries this time of year; they’re still sweet.
FRESH HERBS (Friday, August 27): Oh, my goodness this weekend there’s a very special day. It’s called More Herbs Less Salt Day. What in the world does that mean? It means use more fresh herbs. Use less salt. You know, one of the very first things the Pilgrims did when they arrived to the New World, when the started their colonies, the very first things they planted were fresh herbs. Why is that? Because they wanted to flavor they’re food. Now what do you and I flavor our foods with? We go over to the cabinet and we pull out the salt shaker, the iodized salt shaker, we start sprinkling the salt all over everything to get more flavor on there. Well, you could do a whole lot better and that just raises your blood pressure. It’s not good for your heart, really not good for us at all. So one of the things you can do, start using more fresh herbs. One of the ones you can start with if you’ve never tried fresh herbs, just start with parsley. This is Italian flat leaf parsley so start with this. Chop is up, put it in some of your foods, feel and taste the flavor flow.