Produce News for December 29, 2008

SUGAR SNAP PEA (Monday, December 29):  Hey, you’re going to have a New Year’s Eve party or just getting ready for the New Year?  Can I interest you in a new vegetable?   It’s not new.  I actually had this vegetable when I got married 16 years ago, and I was the very first to introduce this vegetable.  These are not any old pea.  These are stringless sugar snap peas.  Now you’ve heard of sugar peas.  You’ve heard of snap peas.  They crossed the two of them and they also took the string.  Look, no string.  Man this is so good!  That’s why they call them stringless sugar snap peas.  Now these are what we call edible pea pods.  There are two types of peas in the world.  There are pea pods where you have to shell get the peas – you know, get the sweet peas out.  And then there are the edible pea pods which these are.  Now what I try to do at my home – I will always have a package of these in the refrigerator at all times and open because if these are open, your kids will eat them.  You know why they call these sugar snap peas?  Because, man, it tastes like there’s sugar in there. 



JICAMA (Tuesday, December 30)  Hey, “Let’s Make a Deal” (1963) started on TV this week so I thought it would be fun…okay, I’ll make a deal with you.   I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you have in your purse…if you have a jicama.  Do you have a jicama in your purse?   No?  Well here, I’ll give you one.  These are jicamas.  You probably walked by them a thousand times in the produce department and wondered what is this big, brown, ugly thing.  Well, this is a jicama.  It’s grown in the desert regions of Mexico, and because it’s grown in the desert it sucks up…literally, in here the root just…it sucks up literally all of the water that may be in the desert which makes this very, very juicy.  And let me tell you something, folks, if you love hiking or biking, one of the things I love to do…I take a little package and I will julienne cut some jicama sticks and I’ll take them with me.  Instead of carrying a real heavy water bottle, which we carry some water, I just munch on a few jicama sticks.  It’s nature’s thirst quencher. 

NAVEL ORANGES (Wednesday, December 31):  Another new year begins manana.  And you know it’s tradition in many cultures actually to present oranges, and this time of year, of course, navel oranges.  It is a sign of happiness for the new year.  So if you want your family to be happy, you would present all the kids with some oranges.  Let me tell you a secret, because, you know, of Christmas last week, after Christmas is usually when the navel oranges tend to be at some of their sweetest of the entire year.  Colder night temperatures in California, which is where most of the navel oranges are coming from, cold night temperatures trigger sugar production.  Oh man, you can just smell it in there.  You can smell the sugar – and so sweet!  Hey, where you gonna get all your vitamin C to ward off all the colds this winter and the new year, right?  Come on, get your navel oranges right now and give them as a gift this time of year.  You want people to be happy for the New Year. 

SATSUMA MANDARINS (Thursday, January 1):  Hey, Happy Hew Year!  I hope 2009 is going to be a wonderful year for you.  I hope you’re going to eat your 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables in 2009.  Why don’t you start today?  A lot of bowl games are going on today – college football games.  I love those.  Sugar Bowl.  Cotton Bowl.  All those bowls.  May I suggest you also get your own bowl?  Get a bowl of Satsuma mandarins hanging around.  And just get that bowl and put the Satsuma mandarins…and if nobody’s eating them, here’s what I want you to do.  Go up to one and just put your thumb in the stem end and go ahead and peel one.  And, you know, pretty soon everybody in the room is going to say, “Hey, boy that smells good.  What is it?”  And you just say, “Hey, it’s a Satsuma mandarin.   Here.  You want one?”  And then you take another one and you start peeling the other one as well.  By the way, loaded with vitamin C.  And these are perfect for kids of all ages because like there’s no seeds in them and you saw how easy it was to peel.  So get some Satsuma mandarins.  Make them part of your diet in 2009.



FRESH CUT FRUITS AND VEGETABLES (Friday, January 2):  You know, almost half of all the food we buy gets thrown away!  What a waste of money and a waste of great nutrition!  One of the things I’d like you to try just as we start 2009 here, what I want you to do is make sure there’s a lot more fresh cut fruits and vegetables in your refrigerator.  So you some nice totally edible snap pea pods, have fresh cut salads, of course some carrots, some celery.  And get some fruit.  And the first thing I do when I get home today is I’m going to take this watermelon, and I’m going to cut it up and put it in a Tupperware.  And that way, see when the kids are hungry…they come home after school, the kids or grandkids come home after school and the say, “I want a snack.  I want something to eat.”  Well, you know, there’s a rule at our house – you never ever have to ask permission in order to have any fruit or vegetable.  So they go over to the refrigerator and it’s filled up with all kinds of already cut up fresh fruits and vegetables, and I guarantee you, you will eat more fresh fruits and vegetables if you cut them up ahead of time.