- Author: Myriam Grajales-Hall
California residents not only enjoy an enviable climate and diverse regions, but also a wide selection of fresh produce year around.
As consumers, we want to stretch our food budget and provide a nutritious diet to our families; but we are not always sure about how to select the best fruits and vegetables, how to store them when we get home, new ways to serve them, and the nutrition benefits they offer.
Placer-Nevada Cooperative Extension has come to the rescue! As part of the Nutrition Best program, UCCE nutrition educators have prepared "Reasons for the...
- Author: Mary E. Reed
As you returned home from the market and unloaded your sack of produce, have you ever simply admired the satisfying bounty? Enjoyed the color, texture, and aroma as cantaloupe, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, cherries, apricots, avocado, strawberries and more passed through your hands? But now, what to do with each item … how best to keep it fresh and tasty until you’re ready to eat it?
The Postharvest Technology Center offers free copies of an 8.5” x 11” full color poster that shows which produce items should go in your refrigerator, which items should never go in the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The sub-tropical fruit lychee could be a new crop for farmers along California's coast, according to Mark Gaskell, the UC Cooperative Extension advisor to small-scale farmers in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
A ping-pong-ball-sized tree fruit with white, jelly-like flesh, the red-skinned lychee is popular among Asian consumers. They appear to be adapted to roughly the same conditions as avocados, Gaskell said. Since the fruit is well accepted in areas where it is available, the potential market acceptability of lychees is high. And, demand for fresh lychees already exists in Asian markets that carry whole, frozen, unshelled...
- Author: Pamela M. Geisel
Blackberries and boysenberries are amazing fruits. The fleeting fruit bearing nature of these productive plants are to be truly appreciated by pie and jam connoisseurs alike. Berries are a very low glycemic index foods (low in sugar) and a great treat for nutritionally conscious eaters.
Every gardener can enjoy and/or hate a productive berry plant. The fruit production is confined to a very short season but the plant can take on enormous proportions if left unchecked. One must be ever diligent to keep the berry plants confined to the planting row and kept trellised to avoid the “overgrown” berry heap in the backyard. Nonetheless, if a person has a place in the sun for a four-foot-wide row of berries, the rewards are...
- Author: John Stumbos
Healthy eating has gotten complicated. Fresh fruits and vegetables pack the produce aisle as never before. And new food products with added health benefits are being introduced all the time. Yet the food supply, and the agricultural system that supports it, has become increasingly criticized for its impact on the waistlines of millions of people in the United States.
“Agriculture and conventional food systems have provided the basis for long and healthy lives, and much of that improvement can be traced to healthier diets,” says UC Davis plant sciences professor Alan Bennett. “At the same time, we are faced with a growing critique that conventional food...