Produce News for December 8, 2008

TOMATOES (Monday, December 8):  Hey, happy birthday.  Teri Hatcher turns 44 years old this week – Desperate Housewives.  And I get desperate questions from desperate viewers sometimes, and this is probably one of the most asked desperate questions I have.  “Why in the world do my tomatoes…I take them out of the refrigerator, and I go to slice them, and they’re all soft right in the middle.  Plus they have absolutely no flavor.  What in the world is going on there?  Well, it has nothing to do with the tomato.  You can buy the best tomato on the face of the planet.  It is a subtropical fruit, and if you put an unripe subtropical fruit in your refrigerator underneath 55 degrees, and is your refrigerator underneath 55?  Yes, it is.  It’s about 38 to 40 degrees.  You are going to cause what we call chill damage in this tomato.  You literally break down the molecular cell structure on the inside of that tomato causing it to go soft and lose flavor. 

FROZEN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES (Tuesday, December 9)  Hey, happy birthday, Clarence.  Actually Clarence was born this week, 1886.  You don’t know who Clarence?  Yes, you do.  We all can thank him because he’s the engineer who developed deep freezing, flash deep freezing, and that’s why we have…that’s right…frozen vegetables, and I love frozen vegetables.  In fact, I tell people, “Look, if you can’t get fresh and they’re expensive, go ahead and get frozen.”  In fact, you know, even in our home we will use beautiful frozen fruit in smoothies every day.  You can really cut your food cost if you get a lot of fresh and some frozen.  And look…to me, Your Produce Man, I’d love for you to buy fresh but if you can’t afford it and it’s too expensive, by all means please, the most important thing is to eat your fruits and vegetables.  Look, I don’t care whether it’s fresh, frozen, or in a can.  Just eat your fruits and vegetables, and make sure you teach your kids and grandkids to eat their fruits and vegetables too. 

PARSNIPS (Wednesday, December 10):  Hey, today Kenneth Branagh turns 48 – actor/director – and I was with him once on a set.  So obviously whenever I see an actor, actress, or famous person I say, “What is your favorite fruit and vegetable?”  It’s probably the weirdest questions they get from a reporter, right?  So here I am talking to actor Kenneth Branagh and he had just finished a Wild, Wild West movie, and I asked him, “Okay, what is your favorite fruit or vegetable?”  Guess what he said.  Yeah.  Parnsips.  Pity the poor parnsips.  Actually the parsnip used to be the potato.  Back in Western Europe in the 1700s/1600s before the potato came along, you know, parsnip is what you put next to your roast beaf.  One of the things about parsnips you need to know - when you cut these in half, there is a core right down the middle.  See this core right down the middle.  That core is like really too woody.  So what you need to do, you need to make sure you cut the core out before you roast these or put them with your mashed potatoes.  I guarantee you your kids will fall in love with parsnips if you put them in mashed potatoes. 

BRUSSELS SPROUTS (Thursday, December 11):  Hey, you know, they have the Nobel Prize awards this week in Oslo in Sweden and I thought it’d be fun…let’s talk…you know, I would give a Nobel Peace Prize to anyone who would get people just to try Brussels sprouts.  You know Brussels sprouts actually during the wintertime they are so sweet.  I know your grandma overcooked them or your mother overcooked them and like ran you out of the house with the smell and they were so mushy and awful, but look!  The new varieties of Brussels sprouts are so mild and so sweet.  They have a great flavor.  Now when you’re picking these out… actually when you have these home, what you need to do…you do need to cut off the little root end there.  See that.  You do need to cut off the root end.  My wife left the root end on once and the kids said, “What is that, Mom?”  She just left it on.  So you got to cut that off and cut them in half.  Find the smaller ones, those are the sweeter ones.  Those are the ones your family literally will love.  Them them.   

SWEET CORN (Friday, December 12):  Beautiful summer sweet corn.  It’s time to get out the butter.  No, this is not a repeat segment from July or June or August.  Okay?  This is actually summer sweet corn - beautiful summer sweet corn.  So where is it summer right now?  Where can we get some beautiful yellow sweet corn like this?  And I’ve even seen the white corn.  Well, actually Florida and Mexico this time of year are still growing…in fact they’re growing a lot of summer sweet corn. So how is this summer sweet corn?  Well, I’m just going to go ahead and take this and peel this back.  Actually what I’m seeing here is absolutely gorgeous.  The color is gorgeous.  The kernels are very plump.  I’m going to actually try this for you so that way when you go in the store you’ll say, “Hey, Michael Marks, Your Produce Man, tried it. So I’m not even going to have the butter.  I’m just going to eat it raw.  You ready?  One.  Two.  Three.  (Takes Bite)  Mmm.  Talk about summer sweet corn.  It’s like July 4th all over again.