Produce

About Green Potatoes
Green = vegetables = good, right? Not when it comes to potatoes. Here's an important piece of information that my mother taught me years ago, but fewer and fewer people these days seem to know about. Green in potatoes indicates...
Apples!
"If you would only eat an apple a day, we would use these up," my mother exclaimed today, as she has every day for the last month. Yeah, right. What about the other thousand apples still on the trees, mom...
Apricots!
Is there anything so wonderful as a fresh apricot, picked right from the tree, so ripe that it literally bruises in your fingers if you don't hold it with the lightest touch? You can't buy apricots like this; they are...
Blood Oranges
Those of you who love blood oranges don't need to be told how exquisitely wonderful they are. In the kingdom of citrus, blood oranges are royalty. You know that every bite is an explosion of sweet, deep orange flavor, with...
Blueberries!
It was one hot summer day in Washington, D.C., when I first had a fresh blueberry, at age 20. Growing up in the 60s and 70s in Los Angeles and Sacramento I had never seen a basket of blueberries; we...
Cranberries!
Blustery days, fallen leaves, foggy mornings, chilly nights, where-did-our-daylight-go, clear skies, rainy skies, the first good rain since May, persimmons, pumpkins, pomegranates, pecans, walnuts, and those belles of the Thanksgiving ball, garnet red cranberries. Fall is indeed here. My father...
Figs!
September is fig season here in Northern California and at Casa Simply Recipes. In fact, we are in the midst of our annual "what to do with all these figs?" problem. My mother has a fig tree that my father...
Fuyu Persimmons
It's November and persimmons abound. One can see them hanging like Christmas tree ornaments from trees here and there around our neighborhood. There are two varieties; pictured here are Fuyu persimmons - short and squat, shaped very much like tomatoes...
How to Cook and Eat an Artichoke
I can imagine, that if you didn't grow up eating artichokes and if you were encountering them for the first time, they might seem a little intimidating. How one cooks and eats an artichoke is not obvious from its appearance...
How to Cut a Mango
Mangos, delicious in smoothies, luscious in salsa, can be a slimy, slippery challenge to cut. The best way to go about it is to start first with a ripe, but still firm fruit. If the mango is too ripe, it...
How to Cut and De-Seed a Pomegranate
Late October, early November is the season for pomegranates, pinkish red orbs filled with crunchy, juicy seeds, bursting with flavor. You can get them at most supermarkets, but if you live anywhere near where they are grown, it's best to...
How to Cut and Prepare Prickly Pears
Please welcome Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic as he shows us how to cut up a prickly pear. ~Elise Known to few, the fruit of the nopales cactus (cacti with beaver tail-like paddles), are actually quite edible. Called prickly pears...
Kohlrabi
Have you ever eaten a kohlrabi? These little sputnik-shaped vegetables come in green or purple, can be eaten raw or cooked, and taste a lot like broccoli stems. The word kohlrabi is German for cabbage turnip (kohl as in cole-slaw...
Plums!
Santa Rosa plums are in season now and our trees are filled with ripe plums. Over the last several days we have been experimenting with several batches of plum preserves - some with more success than others. Today I made...
Pomegranates
One of my earliest memories is that of using money my grandmother had given me to buy candy to buy a pomegranate instead. Oh, I loved them. I loved the fact that we kids had to dress up special in...
Pumpkins
It's pumpkin season! Although the jack-o-lantern pumpkins aren't the best for cooking, sugar pumpkins and Japanese Kabocha pumpkins cook up beautifully and should be available in markets for the next few months. Here are some ideas from Simply Recipes and...
Quince
Have you ever eaten a quince? The first time I had quince jelly I couldn't believe how such a peculiar looking hard yellow fruit (like a slightly squashed pear) could yield such a fragrant, delicate, pink jelly. Quinces cannot be...
Summer Squash and Zucchini
What to do with all that zucchini? This time of year people who have gardens and who have planted squash in said gardens usually have zucchinis coming out of their ears. My parents gave up growing squash years ago (something...
Tomatoes!
Labor Day weekend and it's still tomato season here in Northern California. Heck, it's in the 90s outside (the AC has been running solid for a week); who says summer is over? Our local Whole Foods and Raleys have been...