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Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 79: What's Your Favorite Seasonal Snack?

"I have been feasting with impunity on fruits that are being grown responsibly 3,000 miles from my home." When you're a serious eater and a serious dieter you look for treats or snacks that you can eat with impunity at different times of the year. Yes, all you Michael Pollan and Alice Waters acolytes, I am talking about seasonal snacks that I can eat without worrying about my weight. Bananas have become a staple of my serious diet, but they are neither local nor seasonal unless you happen to live in a sub-tropical area. (I did have some killer baby bananas in Vieques, Puerto Rico, last December that tasted like they had been crossed with limes--banimas or limnanas, anyone?) Summer...

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17 Comments | Posted by Ed Levine, August 7, 2009 at 8:45 AM
Tagged: Ed Levine's Serious Diet, farmers' markets, fruits, health, pluots, snacks, weight

Market Scene: Boysenberries, Figs, and Pluots the Cure to L.A.'s June Gloom

Ranier cherries. It's normal for a muted, Pacific Northwest–like grayness to blanket Los Angeles in the morning this time of year, but it usually burns off around noon, leaving the remainder of the day a lovely sunny 72 degrees. Over the last two weeks, however, the June gloom just wouldn't lift, creating a contagious case of sun-deprived crankiness that spread among Angelenos like swine flu. Fortunately, hints of blue sky cracked the cloud cover early yesterday morning that, combined with the early summer bounty at the Hollywood Farmers' Market (map), was therapeutic. Last month, Brooks cherries kicked off stone-fruit season with their tangy-crisp sweetness. Now the crimson-hued Bing and Ranier cherries (above), with their Fuji-apple-like shadings, dominate the market...

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3 Comments | Posted by Leah Greenstein, June 15, 2009 at 11:00 AM
Tagged: boysenberries, California, farmers' markets, figs, fruit, Hollywood, Hollywood Farmers' Market, Los Angeles, Market Scene, pluots, vegetables

Market Scene: Pluots, Plumcots & Apriums

Because a majority of my food comes from the farmers market, I am often tied to the schedule of farmers markets around the Bay Area. I missed my home market twice in a row due to scheduling conflicts in recent weeks, but I made up for it by visiting the brand-new Divisadero Farmers Market and the Napa Farmers Market. I was in Napa for the unbelievably great Taste3 Conference and snuck out between speakers to visit the small, but extremely friendly and adequate, downtown market. Cruising the markets, I noticed a proliferation of plum and apricot-like stone fruits: pluots, plumcots, apriums, plums, and apricots. It wasn't until I came home and perused the Internet that I figured out the...

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1 Comment | Posted by Jen Maiser, July 21, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Tagged: apriums, California, farmers' markets, Market Scene, Napa, plumcots, plums, pluots, San Francisco, stone-fruit, summer