Produce News for March 16, 2009

LEMONS (Monday, March 16): Ah, it’s a “no brainer.” You know, when you have good weather, you have great crops. When you have bad weather, you have bad prices. Oh, my goodness! And that is exactly what we’ve seen over the past two years when it comes to lemons. Remember the January freeze of 2007? So 2007…2008, man, we had to import lemons from anywhere that grew lemons – Spain, Mexico, Chile, anywhere. Well, this year finally for the first time we have seen great supplies from the desert regions of California and Arizona - back to normal. In fact, this year they were above normal, and now we’re moving into a new district – into the San Joaquin Valley and also the Santa Maria and Oxnard region of California. That’s just above Los Angeles. So, if you have forgotten to put lemons back onto your list, I would suggest put lemons back on your grocery list. Prices are great once again and the quality…whoo! Very good.

CABBAGE (Tuesday, March 17): Hey, today is St. Patty’s Day, so have you gotten your cabbage yet? Before you go out, let me tell you a couple things about cabbage. Now cabbage…there are many different varieties. Some grow flat. Some grow in a conical shape like this. But still, whenever you are picking out cabbage what I want you to look for is make sure you see a lot of green color. If you see a lot of white in there, that means that cabbage has been trimmed and trimmed and trimmed, and it tells you it’s old. Number two: What I do, I just peel back this leaf. Now if the leaf cracks like this one does, it doesn’t just roll back. If it just simply rolls back, that means it’s dehydrated. It’s been around a while. When it cracks, that means it’s fresh. Also, here, listen to this very carefully. (Rubs thumb on cabbage) Yeah, see how it squeaks. Just rub your thumb up against the cabbage and if it squeaks, that tells you it is very, very fresh, and that’s going to be a sweeter cabbage. By the way, that squeak is the squeak in “Bubbles and Squeak,” a very traditional St. Patty’s Day meal

LEEKS (Wednesday, March 18): All right. So you have some leftover potatoes from your cabbage and potatoes or corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes from yesterday’s St. Patty’s Day. What are you going to do with those potatoes? Well, may I suggest you put them in a leek potato soup? And leeks are beautiful this time of year. Now, remember, when you’re looking for your leeks, what you’re looking for is the white part. Don’t look at the green up here. They always look beautiful. Look at the white part. The most white part is what you’re looking for. See this over here? Very little white part. So that means you’re going to waste your money. Right here is what I would use. Now also remember that leeks grow in very, very sandy soil. Let me cut this in half. It grows in very sandy soil, and you can easily get a lot of sand right in between here, so what you need to do is get the running water in the sink going and then as the water is running down here, tip it up so the roots are higher and then just simply make sure the water is passing through every single layer. There is nothing worse than getting a little bit of grit in your leek potato soup.

ASPARAGUS (Thursday, March 19): Yeah, that’s right. Baseball is in full swing in their spring training, and speaking of spring, since we are now officially into spring this coming weekend, let me introduce to you one of the kings of spring – asparagus. Beautiful asparagus. Take a look at those spears! Oh, come back up here to these tips. Those tips are absolutely gorgeous. Look at those! You could…look how tight that tip is right there. I mean you could take that tip and dip it into some ink and write your name. That’s what a tip should look like on asparagus. Also come on down here and look at these leaves. These are actually called the leaves of the asparagus spear. Now, see how close together they are? That tells me that they grew in very cool conditions, and the cooler the growing conditions, of course they grow slower, but also sweeter asparagus. Now as soon as you get these home put them in a mug of water. Just cut off a little bit of the bottom and put them in a mug of water. Then refrigerate them. They will keep really well for you. By the way, use them up quickly. They’ll be sweeter that way.

RHUBARB (Friday, March 20): Hey, the 37th annual Iditarod dogsled races is ending this weekend up in Alaska, and there’s a vegetable grown in Alaska that actually Alaskans think is actually native to Alaska. It’s right here – beautiful rhubarb. And I hate to tell the Alaskans, it is not native to Alaska. What happened is Russian fur traders back in the late 1700s when they traveled from Russia to Alaska, North America, and down into Canada, they brought with them two Siberian vegetables, one of course was cabbage. The other was rhubarb. Now we’re just now getting into the spring crop of rhubarb. I want to break this and show you something. The rhubarb is one of those that you really need to peel because just like celery, it has these strings along here, so before you cook it, before you do anything with it, you need to peel it to get those strings off. Strawberry rhubarb pie. Oh, a rhubarb sauce and put that over your pork. Oh, man! That’s good too.