Posts Tagged: fruits and vegetables
Keeping produce at its best
But have you ever wondered what to look for when selecting fruits and vegetables? Why does your refrigerator have separate bins for fruits and vegetables? Should fresh tomatoes be stored in the refrigerator or on the counter? And how do you keep fresh basil fresh until you're ready to use it?
These and many more questions are answered in the colorful handbook: From the Farm to Your Table: A Consumer's Guide to Fresh Fruits and Vegetables available at anrcatalog.ucanr.edu
And now through July 31 the publication is 40 percent off if you order through our online catalog. So you can grab a copy for under $5.
This guide is brimming with tips from the pros at the Postharvest Technology Center at UC Davis. You'll find information on storage and handling for quality and safety as well as handy tables explaining which fruits and vegetables should be stored in the refrigerator and which should be stored on the counter. You'll also learn what to look for when selecting popular produce items for best quality.
And if you've ever wondered the steps your produce takes to get from the field to your market, the journey is explained here.
Oh, and the answers to those questions?
Your refrigerator has separate bins so you can keep keep ethylene gas-producing fruits such as apples, peaches, and pears away from vegetables. The naturally occurring gas can hasten spoilage of vegetables.
Un-cut tomatoes should be stored on the counter, not in the refrigerator.
And keep your basil fresh by treating it as you would cut flowers; place the stems in a glass of water on the counter until you're ready to use it.
Wishon Elementary Preschool
Preschoolers in Andrea Wall's classes learn how to write and sort using, my personal favorite,...
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Hot days, cool rooms, tasty vegetables
I'll admit that one of my favorite things to do on a hot day is to walk into an air-conditioned room. That burst of cool air in those first moments can be so refreshing.
It turns out I'm not alone — fruits and vegetables like to be cool on hot days too.
Controlling temperature helps regulate the aging process of a fruit, along with its water loss and microorganism growth. Storing fruits and vegetables at their lowest safe temperatures means they taste better and last longer.
To help us know the best ways to store fresh produce at home, the UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center offers a free PDF poster Storing Fresh Fruits and Vegetables for Better Taste, which includes tips for different fruits and vegetables, from avocado to watermelon.
Knowing the right temperature is only part of the battle for farmers, who are responsible for the first links in the cold chain. Getting produce out of the sun and cool for storage can be a big challenge — and an expensive one.
But a farmer in New York, Ron Khosla, answered this challenge with a tool that can help make cooling produce less expensive for small-scale farmers. He created the CoolBot, a micro-controller that turns a well-insulated room with a regular air conditioner into a commercial cool room for storing fruits and vegetables.
Just as small-scale American farmers struggle with affordable cooling, so do smallholder farmers elsewhere in the world. Researchers with the Horticulture Collaborative Research Support Program (Horticulture CRSP) decided to test the CoolBot device, first at the UC Davis Student Farm and then with farmers in India, Honduras and Uganda.
Indeed, the CoolBot-equipped rooms worked, and the program is building more in Bangladesh right now. But there is a catch: Farmers must have access to reliable grid electricity for a cool room like this to work. To address this problem, the CoolBot in Uganda was powered with solar photovoltaic cells, but that led to another set of challenges — expensive equipment and fear of theft.
So how do you effectively cool vegetables, hot from a field, without grid electricity? A solution that is low-cost, effective and off-grid has not been found yet. In an effort to uncover such a solution, Horticulture CRSP will soon be launching a technology design competition that asks that very question. Can you answer this challenge?
Ericson Preschool's favorite fruits and veggies!
Mrs. Moua's class at Ericson Preschool loves MyPlate! To highlight fruits and vegetables, students...
UC Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center celebrates National Nutrition Month
March is National Nutrition Month. To celebrate what healthy food is and where it comes from, the...