Tag Archives: food

The Best Smoothie I Ever Made

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Here’s the recipe.

I hate dieting, but I love an excuse to make smoothies. If done properly, they’re very healthful and low in calories. They’re also very filling, making a good meal substitute.

I have a basic smoothie recipe I’ve been following, using whatever appropriate fruit is handy. But today’s was the best.

Ingredients
1/2 cup plain, fat-free yogurt
1/2 cup orange juice (I use Tropicana Premium because it’s not from concentrate)
1/2 cup fresh strawberries, halved
1/2 cup frozen mango (I buy frozen because I’m too lazy to peel and cut them)
1 whole banana, broken into pieces

Instructions
Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Any combination of berries or stone fruit usually works, but today’s was the best I’ve tasted. There’s no added sugar, but it’s plenty sweet. The frozen mango chills down the mixture, making it almost frosty. I’ve used frozen berries in the past, but I really think it’s the fresh strawberries that made the smoothie so good today.

Total calorie count comes in just under 300; you can read the rest of the nutritional information here. If you give it a try — or make your own version — let me know what you think.

And if you like smoothies, don’t fall for those mixes you’ll find in the supermarket. They usually full of added sugar and other crap. You’ll get a healthier treat if you make it yourself using simple ingredients.

Why I Go On and On about the Cherries

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I’m awed.

Cherries on a Tree

Cherries in their natural state.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’re probably sick of me tweeting about two things: cherries and the weather. I’ve explained, in detail, why the weather is so important to me this time of year. Let me take a moment to explain why I keep tweeting about cherries.

It’s In My Face

For the past month, cherries have been an integral part of my life. I’m living across the street from a very large cherry orchard. My helicopter is actually parked in the orchard. I drive or walk into the orchard nearly every day. I’ve also spent literally hours flying over the orchard’s trees, low-level. I feel that I have a first-hand knowledge of the orchard surpassed only by its owners, managers, and workers.

Even before I moved to my temporary home across the street, I visited the orchard. The first time was in June. Back then, the cherries were bunches of small pink dots, clustered on the branches. A few weeks later and there hadn’t been any serious change. It seemed like they’d never get ripe.

Hydrocooler in Action

The hydrocooler with its water chiller and accompanying generator in action during the peak of picking time.

Then I moved here and started to observe the activity at the orchard. Watering every morning and night. Spraying for pests many afternoons. Bringing in hundreds (if not thousands) or red wooden cherry bins. Bringing in the portable toilets and ladders for the pickers. Cleaning out the shed. Moving in heavy equipment, like the hydrocooler and its water chiller with massive diesel generator. Preparing the tractors and bin trailers and forklifts. Distributing the bins among the rows of trees.

The cherries took their own time to ripen and the growers couldn’t rush them. When the packing plant had a high demand for fruit, some picking began tentatively, pulling the scant ripe cherries from the trees. Then quiet again as they waited.

I did my part, blowing rainwater off the trees four times, protecting the vulnerable fruit from water damage.

Picking for One

Washed Cherries

Not the best photo, I know; I snapped it with my cell phone to show off how beautiful the cherries were. I hope I don’t seem too demented.

I asked for and got permission to pick cherries for my own consumption. Two or three times a week, I’d head out into the orchard and find some trees with dark red, ripe fruit. I’d fill a small colander, then head back to my trailer with my prizes. I used my RV’s small sink to wash off whatever they’d been spraying on the fruit with cold water baths and rinses. Once clean, the fruit looked beautiful. So beautiful that I couldn’t help by take photos to share on Twitter and in my blog.

I think what I like most about the cherries I pick is the way they’re so unlike store bought cherries. They haven’t been processed. Don’t misunderstand me — processing doesn’t hurt the cherries. It cleans them, probably better than I do. But it also cuts the stems to separate the bunches of cherries and sorts them by size. In my plastic cherry bin, the cherries are still bunched together in twos, threes, and fours — just the way I picked them. Some of them even have small leaves attached. And although most of the cherries I pick are quite large, I’ve also picked the small ones that never make it into stores. That somehow makes my cherries seem more natural. More real.

Even if they’re so perfect looking that they seem fake in photos.

There’s So Much To It

There’s something about being part of the farming process that really makes you appreciate your food. People see cherries in a bag at the supermarket, but do they ever think about what went into getting them there?

This orchard is on the side of a hill that is, in some places, very steep. Someone had to clear the land of scattered pine trees, sage bushes, tall grass, and big rocks. They had to plant rows of young trees and protect them from deer and other grazing animals with tall fences. They had to put in irrigation systems that would deliver fresh water, on demand, to the bases of the trees from a system of reservoirs stair-stepping down the hillside. They had to prune the trees, spray them for pests, fertilize them. They had to protect them during harsh winters and late spring frosts.

They did this for years, nurturing the trees as they began to bear fruit and grow, always adding more trees and irrigation to expand the orchard. Now, this orchard is 86 acres, but I can see the newest, youngest trees, just planted this year, on a hillside not far away. With a few years of care, they’ll be bearing fruit, too.

It isn’t always easy. The orchard’s reservoir is filled by turning a valve that brings water down from another reservoir at the top of the hill. The other day, someone left the valve open too long. The reservoir overflowed and flooded out the overflow area. Two small dams were on the verge of breaking; one of them would have released enough water to take out a road the pickers needed to get to a far orchard block. It was fortunate that a large backhoe was available nearby. The grower was able to dig out a channel to direct the water to a nearby stream. While it must have hurt to release valuable water he’d paid for, it was better than having a road rebuilt or possibly losing access to 15 acres of trees.

Picking

Picking began in earnest about two weeks ago, then stopped suddenly for five days. It started again yesterday. This grower picks for color — they’ll go through the same trees more than once to pick only the best, ripest fruit. They’re probably about halfway done; trees I picked fruit from only a week ago are now picked clean.

I’ve already documented the picking process in my “Cherries: From Tree to Truck” video. What I’ve learned is that every orchard does things a little differently. The process here is similar, but not quite the same.

Pondside Parking

Yesterday, the pickers were parked uncomfortably close to my helicopter.

It’s going on as I type this. From my office window, I can see the pickers moving ladders. I can see their cars parked out in the orchard. I can hear the refrigerated tractor trailer truck pulling up for another load of 30,000+ pounds to take away to the packing plant. The tractors pull in with full cherry bins, the water truck sprays down the roads to keep the dust down, the forklifts shuffle the cherry bins around.

It’s a good day for picking: very cool, partly cloudy. They might work until 2 PM today — a full day, considering they started at first light.

It’s an amazing thing to be part of. Can’t help it if it makes me want to talk about cherries.

Farm Stand Fruit Isn’t Always the Best

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Look before you buy.

When I was a kid, when the harvest months rolled around in northern New Jersey and Upstate New York, my family would take Sunday drives to farm stands and apple orchards. The drive was the activity, the destination was the excuse. The destination also had the rewards: fresh-picked apples, fresh local corn, fresh-made donuts, cider, soft-serve ice cream. The smell of apples and cinnamon and donuts brings back memories of those days.

Just a Memory

A regular destination was Tice Farm, which was founded in 1808. It was torn down in the late 1980s so a mall could be built in its place. This article on NorthJersey.com offers a look back at two of the farms we visited when I was a kid.

It’s this fond memory of farm stands that has always remained with me. It’s no wonder I began visiting a handful of farm stands in Washington State where I spent much of the summer. But I soon realized that today’s farm stands cannot be compared to the ones we visited 30+ years ago.

Today’s farm stands are mostly tourist attractions. Sure, they have some produce (more on that in a moment), but they also seem to sell an awful lot of non-food items that can’t easily be connected with a farm. Things like candles and scarves and t-shirts. Things like made-in-China “crafts.” Stocking and selling these items must be more satisfactory for the farm stand owner. After all, they’re cheap to buy, don’t need to be refrigerated, and don’t spoil. Sure, they’re usually the same kind of crap you can buy in any mall — even Tice’s Corner Mall — and probably even in a local Walmart. But tourists don’t care. They come, they buy, the farm stand owners keep them stocked.

Reject Fruit?

It’s the produce that upsets me, though. I visited a farm stand in Quincy, WA several times early this summer, attracted by its handmade signs for whatever “fresh” produce was currently available. What I found was often produce that was bruised or otherwise damaged, days old and, surprisingly, often not local.

I bought my first cherries of the season there and was disappointed to find that nearly half the bag’s contents had to be discarded because of splits and bird pecks. This is the fruit that the packing companies reject.

I suspect that the cherries I’d bought were from orchards in Mattawa that had lost 60% or more of their crop in heavy rains early in the season. (That’s what the helicopters are for, folks — to keep those cherries dry so they don’t split.) When the grower decides not to pick and take a loss for the season, the pickers will sometimes go into business for themselves, picking fruit and selling it directly to farm stands.

Rainier Cherries

These organic Rainier cherries, although ripe and tasty, were flawed for two reasons: they’re slightly bruised by the wind and there’s not enough red on them.

I saw this first hand at one of my client’s orchards this season. He had several acres of Rainier cherries that didn’t get enough color. (50% of a Rainier cherry needs to be red to meet standards.) The fruit was good — I picked at least 15 pounds for my own consumption and they lasted two weeks in my fridge — but the packing companies wouldn’t take it. The grower didn’t pick but the pickers descended on the orchard anyway, taking away a lot more fruit than I did. Was it a coincidence that local Rainier cherries appeared in the supermarket for 99¢ a pound that week? I don’t think so. I’m sure that farm stand got their share, too.

Fresh, Quality, Local Produce? Not Always

And that’s the point: the farm stands don’t always get quality produce. It’s not always local. It’s not always fresh. It’s whatever they can get cheap and sell at premium prices. The tourists don’t know any better. They see farm stands and they think fresh, local, organic. They don’t realize that they’re often buying the produce that the packing houses don’t want.

Is all this produce bad? No. The cherries pictured above were sub-standard for the packing houses, but they were perfectly good to eat. (And it’s good to see that someone was picking them and making them available for consumption — I picked so much primarily because the idea of all those cherries going to waste was very upsetting to me.) Still, a farm stand might charge a premium for them just because they’re Rainiers and just because they’re at a farm stand. It’s the sucker tourist who doesn’t know any better who is paying a premium price at the farm stand when they might get better fruit at the local supermarket.

As for local…well, I’ve never seen an orange grove in Washington State. Lemons, limes, kiwis — these are all produce you might find at a farm stand. If you’re looking for local produce, think of what you’re buying and ask if it really is local.

And fresh? Here’s a secret: apples are picked in the late summer and early autumn. If you buy an apple anywhere in the U.S. in May, it’s either not fresh or it not local. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t buy apples off season — apples are one of the few fruits that we’re able to preserve for up to a year and maintain in near-fresh condition. I’m just using apples as an example, since apples appear at nearly every farm stand you might visit.

Look before You Buy

My point: don’t automatically think that the best produce can be found at a farm stand. Not all farm stands are created equally. Look before you buy. Ask questions. Don’t buy pre-bagged items — remember my bag of bad cherries? Make sure you get what you’re paying for.

And support the good farm stands — the ones really delivering produce right from the local farms — by visiting them often.

Cherry Chutney

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A twist on my Mango Chutney recipe.

I love chutney as a condiment with grilled pork and roast turkey (instead of cranberries). There’s always a batch of mango chutney in my fridge at home. Unfortunately, when I left with my RV for the summer, I forgot to bring some along. But since I’m currently surrounded by cherry trees with ripe fruit, I figured I’d try making cherry chutney for a change.

Cherry ChutneyI found a recipe for cherry chutney online and made a batch of it. It had some major differences from my mango chutney recipe — for example the inclusion of onion, spices, and mustard seed — and I had mixed feelings about the result.

Yesterday, I decided to try again by simply substituting cherries for mango in my mango chutney recipe. The result was quite tasty. Here’s the recipe as I made it.

Ingredients:

  • 1-1/2 pounds cherries, pitted and cut in half or quarters. I’d picked the cherries the night before, choosing small fruit from the tree since I knew my client wouldn’t pick and sell it. (Shame to see it go to waste.) The small fruit fit well in my cherry pitter and most cherries didn’t need to be quartered; halved was enough. If cherries aren’t in season, you could probably use frozen. Do not use cherry pie filling.
  • 1 cup golden raisins. You can use the regular kind if you can’t find golden.
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar. This is an excellent recipe for using up brown sugar that has solidified in an improperly closed bag. But fresh brown sugar won’t hurt it.
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup vinegar. I usually use white vinegar, but the only vinegar I had available was apple cider vinegar (from the other recipe). Didn’t hurt this recipe at all.
  • 1 jar (2-7/8 ounces) crystallized ginger, finely chopped. I don’t know what kind of jarred ginger my source recipe is talking about. This time, I found crystalized ginger in a 6-oz bag and used half of it.
  • 1 clove garlic, chopped. I cheated this time and used about a teaspoon of jarred chopped garlic.
  • 1 teaspoon salt. This time around, I skipped the salt.

Instructions:

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan and heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about an hour or until slightly thickened. Remove from heat, cool. Place in a sealed container — a canning jar works well for this; I avoid plastic for anything I want to keep long term — and store in refrigerator. It will stay fresh and edible for quite some time. Serve with pork or roast turkey (as discussed above) or Indian curry dishes.

Yield: Approximately 4-5 cups.

Warning: It does not smell good while cooking.

Cherries: From Tree to Truck

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A mini-documentary.

I need to start off by saying that I didn’t do a mini-documentary about the cherry harvest process because I felt the world had a need for such information. I did it as an exercise, as practice using my video camera and Final Cut Pro. I wanted to see if I had the ability to put together a documentary. This 5-minute video is the result.

This was my second summer experiencing the harvest process at one of the orchards I dry. The Schroeders are great people, friendly and a pleasure to work with. I dried their orchard four times this year. Being present for part of the harvest gave me an opportunity to see whether the work I’d done made a difference. It did.

The Schroeders were kind enough to let me walk the orchard and packing shed area with my Sony Handycam for a total of about 8 hours over two days. I also stopped in around sunset one evening to take some of the establishing shots with the soft “golden hour” light. They and their workers explained the process to me. I shot a total of about an hour of video footage. That that was barely enough. I still wish I’d gotten better shots of some parts of the process.

I found the cherry harvest fascinating — and I think you might, too. We’re all spoiled — we go into the supermarket in the summertime and find cherries waiting in the produce section, already bagged and ready to take home. But how many of us consider how the cherries get from the tree to the supermarket? It’s a complex process that requires hundreds of people and specialized equipment. This video shows part of the story, following the cherries from the trees in one orchard as they’re picked, gathered, chilled, and packed into a refrigerator truck. Take a moment to see for yourself:

Done? Not bad for a first serious effort.

From this point, the cherries go to the processing plant in Wenatchee, WA. They’re run through more cold water and lots of custom equipment before they’re picked through by several lines of people who toss out the bad ones. Then they’re sorted by size, run through more clean water, and eventually bagged and boxed up by even more people for shipment. I was fortunate enough to get a tour of that facility (and five more pounds of fresh cherries) a few days after I shot the video for this one. I may do a video of that facility and its process next year.

The amazing part of all this: the cherries are normally ready to ship to stores the same day they are picked.

More amazing stuff: the cherries I saw at the packing facility were headed for Korea and would be there within 18 hours of my tour. Whoa.

The point of all this is that there’s a lot that goes into getting fresh food into stores. Cherries are unlike many fruits — they have a very short shelf life. With proper care, they might last a week. That’s why everything is rushed and why so much effort is put into keeping them cool as soon as they’re picked.

I hope you enjoyed this. Comments are welcome.