Produce at Chico Natural Foods

Conventional California growers are tearing up and burning/chipping/shredding 1000’s of acres of stonefruit orchards this year.  There are more profitable ways to use the land, says they, and frankly, they have too many dang plums.  So I says, For Shame!  Maybe if they knew about this jam, things would be different:

For Five Cups of Jam:

Take out stems and seeds of 1dz jalapeños.  Juice them!  Save a teaspoon of the best looking seeds.  Set all this jalapeño business aside for the moment.

Peel and pit 4-ish cups of plums/pluots.  I used Cassleman plums, black plums, and dapple dandy pluots.  I would have used the honey plums but they are so delicious that I ate the three I had in the process.  If the fruit is hard, either blend it or simmer for five minutes then mash it.

I then added the juice of one lemon and the jalapeño juice.

I used Pomona’s Universal Pectin for the first time.  It’s great!  It’s a citrus based pectin, activated by calcium, not sugar.  You mix a calcium powder (included) with water and add this to the fruit.  Then you mix the pectin with whatever amount of whatever kind of sweetener you want to use.  I used under a cup of unprocessed sugar for just over 4 cups of mashed fruit and my jam came out very sweet.  Once the plums, lemon juice, jalapeño juice and calcium mixture are simmering, add the sugar/honey/stevia/etc with pectin and stir for two minutes.  (Turns out this mixing with the sugar and “stirring vigorously” right away is important, otherwise you get pectin globs.  I am an amateur, I admit it.)

Stir in jalapeño seeds for added flavor and as a warning to sensitive palates.

That’s it!  Ladle into boiled jars, wipe the rims and put on the lids.  Satisfying “pliunks” as they seal in less than an hour.  Keep a spoon and some almond butter handy for cleaning out the pot.

Enjoy!

PS We have amazing concord grapes from Larry Dion.  Here is a link for Concord Grape Jelly by another Pomona enthusiast.

A man called a few days ago in search of the elusive white-skinned rhubarb.  I made some calls.  A lot of calls.  Finally, Rob Montgomery of Rob’s Natural Produce informed me I was on a wild Rhub chase, as Butte County was just too dang hot for the almost-vegetable.  Hmm.  The vegetable plot thickened, as a store employee informed me that she had rhubarb growing in her yard.  Just the red stuff.  Blast!  Just what was this rare, white-skinned rhubarb all about?  A very helpful employee from our largest distributor of non-local organic produce, who I also put on the case, just emailed me this:

“Sub: White Rubarb—there is such a thing; it is a spring veggie from the Washington/Oregon areas. Unfortunately, we don’t have it. Thanks for calling us about it though”

Blast again!  Well, almost another satisfied customer…We’ll call New Season’s Market about it in the morning.

My point is this: If you want something we don’t have, ask!  We will do everything we can to find it for you.  We recently paired a customer with a first year crop of Italian “empress” prune-plums from a local farmer that we would never have normally ordered.  We also managed to find a local supplier for cayenne peppers for another customer inerested in making some honest-to-goodness Louisiana hot-sauce.  Another customer was able to meet the celeriac of her dreams.  What do they all have in common?  They asked! Of course, you have to ask the right people, but if you’re reading this, you know who they are.

Several months ago, a local journalist asked me whether I thought it was more important that food be local or that food be organic.  If you shop at the store, you know that we take pride in all the work we do to make both organic AND local produce available.

Currently, everything but the young Thai coconuts are certified organic or grown by local uncertified farmers without the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers or genetically engineered seeds, and often to a higher standard than the USDA requires in regards to soil management and distribution.  The amount of our produce department from local sources has been hovering around 40% during these abundant summer months.

Answering which aspect of our department was more important was a difficult task.  I ended up saying ‘organic,’ since when it comes down to it, I don’t want to put something in my body that contains even trace amounts of damaging chemicals or strips soil of vital microorganisms; or that was bleached (common for chemically-dependent mushrooms) or fertilized with sewage (common in much of modern agriculture).  This is just a personal preference.

I thought a lot about the question and my answer.  I thought about the vagueness of certification and the heavy identity politics of food and economic class in the United States.  I came up with a sort of half-baked philosophy that I should be as intimate with my community’s processes as possible, even if that means eating its chemicals.  And of course I thought about the fact that my reasoning didn’t really stack up, since there are definitely situations where I AM happily willing to put damaging chemicals into my body (for instance varnishing furniture or riding my bike in the city behind thousands of exhaust pipes). I decided that a better answer to the question is this:

Once I’ve educated myself to a level I feel satisfied with about the most fundamental and important parts of my life (in my case, eating is one of them) I think it’s best to do what makes me feel happy.  That’s what I recommend to anyone looking to improve their health.  And that’s it.

Just wanted to put that on the record.

This question has been asked many times during the last couple weeks.  Maybe there is a rush for end of summer dinner parties.  Maybe it’s because this is peak season for scallions in California, the largest producer of green onions in the country, and word is getting out.  Maybe something else.  In any case, I already gave it away.  A scallion IS a green onion.  Here’s what wiki has to say about it.

I’d like to note here that we take it as a great compliment and source of pride when you bring your questions to us folks in the aprons before you take them to google.  I’m not sure why, because more than likely I’ll go the internet myself to do research.  Just one of those tics.  We hope not to disappoint.

There are some types of green onions that are not scallions.  Scallions are distinct for their subtle flavor and diminutive bulb. Any variety of onion harvested immaturely is considered a green onion.  In many other countries, scallions are synonymous with shallots, whereas in the United States, we are more familiar with the bulbs of shallots when they’re more mature.  We also expect a heftier bulb on anything sold as a ‘spring onion.’  But if you’re at Chico Natural Foods shopping for Something to Add to Your Abundant Zucchini, or for Scallion Potato Pancake and Smoked Salmon Sandwiches (had something almost identical at a farmhouse in Simonstown, South Africa recently; amazing!), or even for fresh chips with scallions and blue cheese (p.40 and 41 of the link), now you know that the scallions are called “green onions” and that they’re at the peak of their California season.  Enjoy!