- Author: Pamela M. Geisel
What do Santa Rosa Weeping flowering plum, persimmon, variegated lemon and Tiger figs all have in common? They are all fantastic ornamental plants that produce wonderful edible fruit. There are a variety of fruits and vegetables that can be incorporated into your landscape that produce food for you, your family and your neighborhood. Every landscape should have edibles in it, particularly in light of our goals to produce food closer to home, to conserve water and make the water we do use count for more than irrigating a lawn that nobody ever plays on. Growing your own food feels good and is good for you and your community!
Some simple ideas for incorporating edibles into your landscape are to include fruit as part of your...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Paul Willems, who co-owns Berry Lady Farms in Kingsburg with his wife Gayle, said berry season is a happy time for him and his family. He attributes their sunny disposition to all the blueberries in their diets.
“I feel better when I eat lots of blueberries,” Willems said. “They make you feel happier. I wish I had them all year long.”
Gayle Willems said the fruit may stimulate serotonin in the brain, providing a calming effect. But, she added, the good feelings may not be just the blueberries. "It makes us feel better anytime we eat healthy, right?"
The Willems may also be particularly happy during blueberry season because of the success of their 100-acre farm....
- Author: Hazel White
The U-pick strawberry fields at Swanton Berry Farm near Davenport on the coast are formally opening on May 28, but if you drive out there now, you’ll get a chance to pick without a crowd. Talking to Barrett Boaen, the U-pick manager, I got to the bottom of just why their berries, also sold at local Whole Foods stores, look and taste so good.
Partly it’s the ‘Chandler’ variety, chosen for its old-fashioned sweetness and flavor although it yields only about two-thirds as well as some varieties. It’s also about not pumping up production with too much nitrogen or irrigation (more details here). Mostly,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
It's important to teach children from a very early age, starting at about 9 months, to eat a wide variety of foods, but this takes time and patience, says the nutrition, family and consumer sciences advisor for UC Cooperative Extension in Tulare County, Cathi Lamp.
Lamp says children learn to like new foods by exploring them, so parents shouldn’t be concerned if youngsters make a mess touching their food, playing with it and trying to put it in their mouths. These are all forms of learning.
“The child feels a natural sense of fear in trying new foods and for that reason it is important to permit them to become familiar with them from an early age,”...
- Author: Mary E. Reed
Perhaps you, like me, have found yourself amused and bemused as you have made your way through the refrigerator and frozen food sections of the local grocery store, and observed the proliferation of pre-made food options. Items such as already hard-boiled eggs, breakfast burritos, frozen chunks of cooked chicken meat, vacuum sealed marinated tri-tip, and mini-hamburgers nestled in buns all vie for attention in freezer and refrigerator spaces. Pancakes stacked up in neat little towers were my favorite “you must be joking” moment, to be swiftly followed by a bit of melancholy that so many of us don't take the time to cook much any more.
As we all know, the benefits of preparing fresh food at home are myriad. Alas, the time savings...