Produce News for January 12, 2009

MIREPOIX (Monday, January 12):  You see these three items right here? You’ve got celery. You’ve got carrots. You’ve got onions. This right here, ladies and gentlemen, the holy trinity of winter soups and stews. You cannot start a soup or a stew without these three items, and when you cut them all up, it turns into a pile of what’s called mirepoix. That’s a fancy French word for the holy trinity of soups and stews. Now actually all I’ve done here, I’ve put a little bit of olive oil in here. You can use a little bit of butter. What you’re going to do, you’re going to sweat it. You’re not going to sauté it. You’re just going to sweat it. See how most of those are turning it a little bit translucent. You don’t want to sauté them. You want to turn them translucent. Now, when I get to this stage, you’re going to add some chicken stock, some vegetable stock, add all the other soups and stew stuff, but look – it all starts right here with the holy trinity of soups and stews. Oooh. I’m Michael Marks…Your Produce Man.  

CILANTRO WITH MACARONI AND CHEESE (Tuesday, January 13)  Hey, the Sundance Film Festival begins this week up in Idaho. They’re always looking for the newest thing, the newest actor, the newest actress, the newest film. Well, I’ve got a new twist on comfort food – macaroni and cheese. You all know mac and cheese. You get the blue box or the green box, whatever box. I know some of you make your own, and I wish you would make your own, but right here – the secret ingredient to the best macaroni and cheese on the face of the planet. You get your cheese, and I like to throw in all kinds of cheeses. I will use jack cheese, pepper jack cheese, parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese, and I may even throw in some fancy gouda in there, and you get all these cheeses and cream, nice cream sauce, and right at the end I will chop up some cilantro. Nice, finely chopped on the cilantro. Put that into the cheese sauce and over on the other side of the stove you’re boiling your pasta, and then when you mix the two…I guarantee you, your family is going to say, “Whoa! That tastes great!” Secret ingredient right here. I’m Michael Marks…Your Produce Man 

GRAPEFRUIT (Wednesday, January 14):  It was the original fad diet. I remember this back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was the grapefruit diet. Do you remember that too? Man, I was working in a grocery store and you could not keep grapefruit around. I mean, it was the biggest deal. Now here at the start of a new year, I would suggest the grapefruit diet is not a fad. It’s actually still very, very good for you. Now, grapefruit…who grows the most grapefruit? Of course, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California. They grow the most grapefruit for us. Oh, in fact Texas and Florida, a lot of times you will find a lot of scarring on their fruit. That is very, very typical for fruit grown in Texas and in Florida. That’s because they have higher humidty in the growing regions. The higher humidty makes the skin very tender on the grapefruit, so as it blows around it gets a few scars, but the growers also say, the higher humidity also makes for…oh, ho! Man, look at that…a much sweeter grapefruit. So if you’re looking for a diet, it doesn’t’ have to be a fad diet. Hey, just start including one or two grapefruit a day into your diet. 

CELERY (Thursday, January 15):  Have you ever wondered why the celery was the original diet food? Why celery? What’s up with celery? Well, it all has to do with what goes in and what goes out. Right? It has to do with calories in/calories out. Did you know that celery is the only fruit or vegetable where it actually takes your body more energy to digest than you’re actually getting. So, what does that mean? You’re getting fewer calories into your body, but your body is using more calories. That’s the energy. That’s how they measure it. Calories. It expends more energy to digest celery. So may I suggest start using a lot more celery? Oh, here’s something I just wanted to show you. Celery grows in very, very fine dirt. You can always see that at the very bottom, so it’s really important that you wash and rinse your celery very, very carefully before you start chopping it up in and put it in soups or stews or before you put any peanut butter right in there. 



SATSUMA MANDARINS (Friday, January 16):  Man, when I see a carton like this I get really excited. Take a look at this. Come really close and take a look at this. These are Satsuma mandarins with the stems and leaves still attached. Know what that tells me? That tells me that these were harvested in what we call natural color and natural ripening. That means the color has naturally colored up on the tree. That means we’ve had cold temperatures. You know what that means? The bottom line, the fruit is sweeter. Now one of the things I love to do is get kids involved, right, in the produce department. And one of the things you can do is have a peel off with your kids. Now, the trick…ssh, don’t tell anybody. The trick to a peel off with Satsuma mandarins…you find the ugliest one. The ugliest Satsuma mandarin will be the easiest to peel. Now this one right here is all wrinkled. It feels puffy. Are you ready for this? I bet I can peel this in five seconds or less. One. Two. Three. Four. And five. Look at that! Oh, my goodness! The uglier the better.