Entries tagged with 'vegetables'
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Photograph: sling on Flickr As summer comes to a close and we kiss the warm, carefree days of summer goodbye, we can console ourselves with a whole new crop of early fall vegetables perfectly ripe and in season. One of those fall treasures is the bell pepper, which hit their peak during the months of August and September. Originating in South America in 5000 B.C., universally popular bell peppers are a member of the nightshade family, which also include potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants. The color bell pepper you choose will bring a unique taste to the table: the green and purple bell peppers have a somewhat bitter flavor, while the red, orange, and yellows are sweeter and almost fruity....
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Photograph from justinhenry on Flickr Has your CSA membership compromised your ridiculously wild social life? Do you find yourself staying indoors to make use of the okra piling up? Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out in New York can relate, but she's come up with some tips: Beets last a really long time. Kohlrabi is not going to turn in a week, either. If you find that you simply have too much stuff to eat in a week (as I do often), go for the most delicate leafy greens first. Save the big heads of cabbage, potatoes, green beans and carrots for another week, and don’t worry about them. She recommends eating the produce raw (pots and pans can...
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It's the time of year when it's fun to take visitors to the market. Friends who don't typically shop at farmers' markets will be overwhelmed by the amount of produce that we have available locally and in season, and will be sure to go home with a bag full of summertime delights. The market is bursting at the seams with color and flavor and scents, and it's an exercise in restraint to decide where to spend my budget. My strategy during this time of abundance is typically to find out what products are going to be around for a little while, and then to prioritize from there. Okra have just begun to show up in the market and as...
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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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Photograph from The Official White House Photostream on Flickr That White House garden isn't just for show—all sorts of veggies are feeding the First Family and friends, like these radishes and greens picked for the Congressional Spouses Luncheon. [via Flickr]...
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Word of Mouth The British supermarket chain Tesco started selling a special breed of non-soggy tomato on Tuesday—the result of a breeding program that began in 1986. The new tomato is supposedly just as juicy as a regular supermarket tomato but has an internal structure that holds onto the juices rather than letting them spill out on slicing. Susan Smillie of the Guardian's Word of Mouth blog grabs one and does a taste test with her colleagues: Overall, the Tesco tomato sandwich scored higher than the original canteen sandwich. While Tony, the chef, prepped up our sandwich, I noticed that Abdul, one of the guys who works alongside him, was reminiscing about eating tomatoes on a mountain in North...
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Photographs from Paris-Beijing Gallery Beijing-based artist Ju Duoqi uses vegetables to recreate famous pieces of art. Guardian.co.uk has a video showing the artist in action. View more of her artwork at Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery. Related Carl Warner's Worlds of Food Art Sausage Art in Russia Have a Set of Carving Knives? Time to Play with Your Food!...
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Photograph from whirledkid on Flickr Twenty-five California schools will participate in a federal program called the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program, the goal of which is to get kids to try spinach, cabbage, and other scary good-for-you stuff from the ground. For a school to be eligible, at least half the students must qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, according to the Los Angeles Times. The program first launched in 2002 with 25 schools in Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as a Zuni reservation in New Mexico. Said one 10-year old from a participating Santa Monica school: "Not to brag or anything, but I've always been pretty good about my fruits." Alice Waters's vision for the...
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I freaked my son out last week. For perhaps the first time ever, I opted for the broccoli instead of the fried shrimp at the mediocre Chinese restaurant where we were eating. Will was incredulous: "I'm not believing what I'm seeing. What is going on here? You're really serious about this diet stuff, aren't you, Dad?" I'm even freaking myself out with my fervent embrace of (gasp) vegetables. We're talking about way more than broccoli here. We're talking carrots and green beans and even bok choy. My appetite is a bok choy-seeking missile. Do you know what it's like to eat the bok choy and leave the pork alone? This is more than a sea change. It's an appetite transplant....
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Photograph by niznoz on Flickr. Carrots were probably one of the first vegetables I ate growing up, straight from a baby food jar. Luckily, over the years, my preference for the most vibrant of the root vegetables has matured, making way for slow roasting, puréeing with ginger, or simply washing and eating with a container of hummus. Not only are carrots at their most orange this time of year, they're also at their cheapest--and sweetest. That sounds like music to my ears. As the temperatures continue to decline, I'm craving carrot cake or a simple puréed carrot soup dolloped with some goat cheese. Get experimental with your creations if you can find any of the differently colored carrots at...
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