Get intimate with your produce!
Melissa Mayer
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Posts by Melissa Mayer
FARMERS MARKET REPORT: WEEK OF MAY 2, 2010
SUZIE’S FARM!
Local, organic, sustainable real people growing really good real food just out our backdoor. Owners and operators, Robin Taylor and Lucila De Alejandro are passionate risk-taking farmers on a mission to provide an abundance of beautiful produce in harmony with the land and Mother Nature. They seek out unique varieties of well, just about everything. Currently they have 13,000 tomato plants in the ground, several varieties of shelling beans, radishes, spinach, sweet and hot peppers, summer squash varieties, peas, lettuces, red okra and so much more! The current harvest includes:
Pungent, lively, earthyt and peppery, Rustic Arugula is a thinner, wilder arugula featuring fine, deeply-indented dark green leaves which resist bolting in heat. You can also get arugula flowers right now too!
Camarosa Strawberries Firm wedge-shaped fruit that has deep red color, intense vibrant flavor with a balance of acid and sweetness.
An Italian heirloom variety that is pink on the outside with candy stripes circulating throughout the inside. The beet’s flavor is sweet and earthy.
Gold Beets A beautiful pale orange exterior encases a golden-orange, juicy-crisp flesh. Its smooth skinned (up to 4″) globes are topped with light green leaves.
Fennel You think all fennel tastes the same? This variety of fennel has a milder licorice flavor than most. When raw it has a crispy crunch and once cooked it offers a mild, sweet (almost caramel-like) smooth taste.
Black Radishes! A hardy Spanish variety with an off-black thin skin and a crisp peppery transclucent white flesh.
Macho Squash Blossoms These monster blossoms come from the heirloom Romanesco Summer Squash variety; they have hearty stems which allows them a greater shelf-life than most varieties.
Also harvesting:
Red Frill Mustard, Mustard Flowers, Lecano Kale, Swiss Chard, Red Leaf and red Romain Lettuce, Mixed Colored Radishes, Spring Onions, Savoyed Spinach, Heirloom Romanesco Zucchini, Broccoli Flowers and beautiful Watermelon Radishes:
A radish with a wow effect: white round roots up to 4″ in diamerter with pale green highlighted skin reveal an incredible rose red variegated interior. Sweet and mild radish flavor.
FARMERS MARKET REPORT: WEEK OF APRIL 25, 2010
CITRUS ABUNDANCE
Cara Cara Oranges – J.J.’s Lone Daughter Ranch
Seasons/Availability
These particular Cara Cara’s are peaking right now!!!
Description/Taste
The Cara Cara is a type of navel orange with a deep pink almost red flesh offering a sweet hybrid of sweet tangerine and subtle grapefruit flavors. The fruit varies in size from small, medium, and large.
Ethnic/Cultural Info
An old variety, the Brazilian type of navel orange is properly called “Bahia.” The name orange actually refers to the fruit’s scent, not its color. The word comes from the Sanskrit word “naranga”, which comes from the Tamil word “naru”, meaning fragrant.
Current Facts
Cara Cara Oranges contain lycopene, the same antioxidant found in tomatoes that is the most powerful carotenoid quencher of singlet oxygen.
Grower
Polito Family Farms
Seasons/Availability
Peak season is early Spring through June.
Description/Taste
Oro Blanco grapefruit is characteristically thick skinned and white-fleshed. A popular nearly seedless grapefruit hybrid with white flesh is produced from huge fragrant blossoms and large glossy-green foliage. As with many white fruits, the Oro Blanco’s flesh is sweet and lacks any of the typical bitterness of a grapefruit.
Geography/History
A cross between a Duncan white grapefruit and a pummelo, the Oro Blanco was developed by the University of California in Riverside, California. This great grapefruit variety is very sweet even when grown in coastal areas having low summer heat. Specifically developed to be produced in a colder climate, grapefruits were typically only cultivated in warm regions. Oro Blanco grapefruits are also known as Sweetie, which are the grapefruits imported from Israel. Naming its grapefruits “Doublesweet”, Polito Family Farms in California makes certain its grapefruits fully mature on the tree to assure a sweeter flavor.
Grower
Garcia Organic Farms
Description/Taste
Prized for its beautiful deep red color and exceptional flavor, the nearly smooth skin of the Star Ruby grapefruit has a characteristic dark pink pretty blush. Containing few seeds, inside is an intensely deep rich red flesh that delivers a delicious sweet-tart flavor. The redder the flesh, the sweeter the taste.
Ethnic/Cultural Info
The grapefruit is believed to have been first discovered in Barbados during the 1750′s as a mutation of the pummelo. Evidence has confirmed that grapefruit is a hybrid of a pummelo and the sweet orange. In the 1800′s, a Jamaican farmer called the fruit “grapefruit” for the grapelike cluster in which it grows on the tree.
Blood Oranges
Lee, Honey Sweet and Clementine Mandarins, Oro Blanco Grapefruits, Meyer Lemons, Sorrento Lemons, and Nagami Kumquats!
