Produce News for May 24, 2010

SPRING SWEET ONIONS (Monday, May 24): Hey, the National Geographic Finals are this week in Washington, D.C., so I thought it’d be a little fun – let’s have a geography lesson. Let’s see - What doesWalla Walla, Vidalia, Maui, and Imperial Valley all have in common? They all grow onions. They all grow spring sweet onions. In fact, this is spring sweet onion time and we’re starting to see some beautiful Vidalia onions, Texas 1015Y and Imperial Sweets. Maui Onions are generally available year-round. Walla Walla Onions usually start showing up in late June. There are two things you need to remember about sweet onions. First of all, you can refrigerate them. That’s very cool. Helps them keep longer. Usually, Spring Sweet Onions will decay faster because of their higher sugar content. Also, they have a much larger cell structure. Because they have a larger cell structure and more water content in them, they will bruise very easily. So please treat them very, very gently.
FENNEL (Tuesday, May 25): All right. 1977 this very date one of the biggest movies ever opened in theaters. What was it? Star Wars! There’s only one vegetable ever seen in the movie Star Wars. Now George Lucas who wrote the movie wrote this scene and he actually called the scene “Beru’s Stew”. You know, Luke lived with an aunt and an uncle, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Early in the movie, remember Luke left early in the morning to look for R2D2 and C3PO? The scene moves down to the kitchen of their home. There is Uncle Owen asking Aunt Beru, “Have you seen Luke today?” “No, I have not.” And there she was, in this big aluminum pot she was putting in…Fennel, also known as sweet anis. Oh, my goodness. Whatever you do with celery, you can do with fennel. Whatever you do with onions, you can do with fennel. Use the bulb and stalks finely chopped and added into your best pasta Tomato sauce. Use the fern tops, finely chopped, into your best Clam Chowder. One of the best and easiest things if you’ve never done fennel before is just bake it and roast it.
JICAMA (Wednesday, May 26): The word is Jicama – a tuber grown in desert regions of the world. Jicama. Hey, the Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals start today and they run through tomorrow inWashington, D.C. So I thought it’d be fun – do you know how to spell jicama? Jicama is probably one of those produce items you have looked at in the produce department and said, “What in the world is that?” And you probably looked up and looked at the name and tried to pronounce it – jicama. Well, it’s actually pronounced jicama – J I C A M A. And this is jicama. It is grown in the desert regions of the world. In fact, this tuber takes about 250 days of very, very hot temperatures in order to properly grow and properly cure in the desert. That’s why I also call jicama nature’s thirst quencher. Oh, my goodness! You bite into this, it’s like biting into a water balloon.
FOOD REVOLUTION (Thursday, May 27): Hey, Jamie Oliver turns 35 years old today so I thought I’d talk a little bit about the food revolution Jamie Oliver started in England, the United Kingdom. Jamie started getting schools in the United Kingdom to serve healthier food, and he’s doing that again here in the United States. He calls it a food revolution. But you know, every revolution starts in one place - your home, the family. Okay. So make sure this food revolution starts in your home. And moms, and dads, and grandparents, you can start it by simply having a lot of different varieties of fruits and vegetable available to your kids and grandkids. And make sure you have all kinds of different colors and not just a lot of fruit. Make sure you have some vegetables. For example, here is a secret for you. Red Bell Peppers, I tell my kids this is the candy of the vegetable world. It tastes as sweet as candy. So get your kids. Go to the grocery store. Go to the produce department. Go to the farmer’s market. Try some new fruits and vegetables. Try some things they’ve never tried before. Have your own food revolution.
FAST GROWING VEGETABLES (Friday, May 28): Okay, the Indy 500 is this weekend. Oh, man! Those cars…they are fast, aren’t they! So I thought it’d be fun – let’s talk about fast in the produce department. What produce items really grow fast? Pineapples don’t grow very fast. It takes about a year and a half for a Pineapple plant to produce one Pineapple. Well, bananas don’t grow fast either. It takes them about nine months, almost a year to grow. How about a Granny Smith Apple? From blossom to harvest, 180 days. Iceberg lettuce – 60 to 90 days. So that’s pretty fast. Strawberries, from the time you see a white blossom to the time you pick a red berry – 45 days. So we’re getting faster. The two fastest growing produce items? Mushrooms. Mushrooms double in size…every single day. Now that’s pretty fast. But that is not the fastest growing produce item. The fastest growing produce item? Asparagus. These tender spears of Asparagus can grow as fast as an inch…every single hour. Whoa! Now that’s fast!