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Produce
Coming Soon: Apples That Don't Rot?
Can you imagine leaving a piece of fruit in the crisper and being able to take a bite out of it after four months? That's the idea behind a new variety of apple that's being tweaked by researchers at Queensland Primary Industries. The RS103-130, as it's called, can stay fresh for at least 14 days without refrigeration, and keep in a refrigerator for four months.
In Season: Figs
Fig season is like pre-Fall in the fashion world, a tasty little teaser that helps bridge the gap between Summer and Autumn. Perhaps it's partly because the season is so fleeting that this fruit tastes so sweet, but when figs are just right, they taste downright sinful. When people tell me they don't like figs, I say, they just haven't had a good one yet.
Healthy Eating Tip: Join a CSA
With local and organic food having such a high price tag, it can be hard to eat in a sustainable way. One way I've gotten around the high costs is by joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). The idea of a CSA is pretty simple — consumers pay farmers directly for a portion of their crop.
VeggieTrader Turns Lemons Into . . . Carrots?
Home gardens are all the rage, and if you have friends who grow their own produce, you probably end up eating a lot of it too. One downside to getting down and dirty in the garden is that you often have way too much of one thing (kale, anyone?) and not enough of another. Enter VeggieTrader, a new website that wants to help gardeners swap their surplus fruits and veggies for crops that might not have come up so well.
Is It a Tomato or Squash?
In terms of produce, the end of September is a time that straddles Summer and Fall. Late-season heirloom tomatoes are juicy and plump, while early-season butternut squash are way too tempting. To celebrate the plethora of produce that can be found in markets, I've put together this fun quiz.
Produce Cleaners?
At the grocery store, I noticed a bottle of fruit and veggie wash. If you've seen it too, I bet you've wondered if it's necessary to use in order to clean produce effectively?
While it's very important to wash your produce since you don't know how many hands have touched your tomatoes or manhandled your melons, there's no need for a special cleaner.
Hybrid Produce: Love It or Hate It?
After returning from the farmers market with pluots and apriums aplenty, Party, another coworker, and I got into a debate over hybrid fruits and vegetables. Personally, I love pluots, especially juicy, green Flavor Queens that possess none of the tartness of a typical plum. But Party begged to differ.
Northeastern Tomato Blight Caused by Home Gardening
A fast-spreading fungus has ravaged tomato crops across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, wiping out this year's crop and causing the price of heirloom tomatoes to skyrocket by 20 percent. But the cause of the pandemic is something that's much more innocent than you might think.
In a recent New York Times column, renowned farm-to-table chef Dan Barber discusses the aggressive disease, known as late blight, that has wiped out 70 percent of this year's heirloom tomato crop.
Definition: Sea Beans
Mysterious green plants known as sea beans have becoming increasingly prominent at farmers markets and restaurants. Although their scientific name is salicornia, they are frequently referred to by many names, including pickleweed, glasswort, drift seeds, sea asparagus, sea pickles, and marsh samphire.
Their vivid green stalks, which grow on salt marshes and beaches, have a crunchy texture and a briny flavor with a vegetal aftertaste that's been likened to asparagus.
Best Conventional Food Bets
In a perfect world, everything we eat would be free of genetic modifications, hormones, or synthetic pesticides: In addition to surpassing their conventional counterparts in nutritional value, organic foods produce less waste and improve ecosystem sustainability. But organic food comes at a steep price, literally — one that can be 10 to 40 percent higher than conventionally produced products. So if you have to skimp on some organic products when shopping at the market, what items are safe bets to purchase conventionally?
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