- Author: Brenda Dawson
Question: What exotic fruit has been named as a flavor in Starburst candy, Ice Breakers gum, SoBe beverages, Vitamin Water drinks, Bacardi rum and even Axe body spray?
Answer: Dragon fruit. (Hylocereus spp.)
So while many of us may have tasted products that flaunt its name, have you ever sunk your teeth into a fresh dragon fruit?
If you want to try one, you may be in luck because now is the peak harvest season in Southern California for this subtropical cactus fruit with the fire-breathing name — also known as pitahaya. And it just so happens that growing and eating fresh dragon fruit is what Ramiro...
- Author: Penny Leff
Last Sunday morning, I drove about 10 minutes out of Sacramento to visit one of my favorite farms and pick some peas. (beans actually, but who cares...) R. Kelley Farm, on state Highway 160 just south of Freeport, is an international gathering-place for lovers of fresh black eye peas, crowder peas, other peas, beans and the fresh vegetables that go well with them. Picking your own gives you the best prices, but ready-picked bins of eggplant, tomatoes, melons, peppers and, of course, beans, fill the airy farm stand. When I arrived, the parking lot was full and the place was jumping.
By 11 o'clock in the morning, Susila Prasab and her family had already picked about a hundred pounds of fresh crowder peas. They climbed off the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
UC Cooperative Extension has found a health and fitness formula that works. Combining fun exercise and nutrition classes for kids with special sessions for parents melts away pounds and inches.
The concept was proven successful at a day camp offered by the City of Fresno Parks and Recreation and Fresno County UC Cooperative Extension this summer. About 90 overweight or obese children were recruited to participate in the six-week program at Ted C. Wills Community Center and Holmes Playground. Their parents attended two mandatory evening meetings a week.
In all, the campers lost 241 pounds. More significantly, a combined 253 centimeters was erased from the children’s waistlines. The number of pounds lost is skewed...
- Author: Hazel White
“Pistachio is a funny kind of nut,” says UC pomologist Louise Ferguson. With other nuts, the shell grows and hardens as the kernel develops, whereas pistachio grows its shell first, hardens it, and then plumps up a kernel inside. As early perhaps as Labor Day, when growers are always hopeful the harvest can begin, it will be seen whether the nuts in the millions of trees in California orchards have formed well.
Tension is rising. In these last hot days of August, as the nuts reach maturity, the shells must split. If too many of them don’t, the harvest will be much less profitable, because it’s hard to make a natural-looking split in a pistachio...
- Author: Pamela M. Geisel
So you may have heard of ”farm to fork” or “farm to table”? Well, I like to think even more locally than that. I think in terms of “backyard to belly” . . . food so fresh you can eat it while standing in the garden without cooking it or with a little more effort, carrying a basket of fresh tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, eggplants, peaches, corn and beans into the kitchen to create wonderful meals for your family.
I have a few tips on getting quality food from your harvest. So often we lose a lot of our homegrown produce because we don’t harvest at the right time. It is important to harvest at the peak of perfection - not before and not after. My worst food experiences from my garden have come from waiting too long to harvest. The...