For the love of Produce...

From the OP:

acpgee wrote: »

@AnnPT77
I forgot to mention I grill the pineapple and red onion on a cast iron griddle pan. I also skewer the thick red onion slices using bamboo satay prickers, so that the slices stay intact on the grill, making them easier to flip. After peeling, prick through the onion in the latitudinal direction every 3/4 inch or so, then slice into disks between the satay sticks.

With respect to modern apple varieties, do you find Pink Lady too sweet? I like their crispness.

I do buy Pink Lady sometimes. For me, it's sweeter than I'd prefer, but I like it better than some of the other modern varieties. Thank you!

BTW I discovered making tonight's salad that easy peel mandarins a b**ch to segment and remove pith from. If you are cooking with citrus, stick to varieties where the outer membrane doesn't separate too easily from the skin, and where the segments don't fall apart once the peel is removed.

@AnnPT77

Slaw. I'm not a mayo guy. There's a place on the coast that makes a slaw that is really good. It's more of a vinegar slaw than a mayo slaw; plus one there. The secret though is they use fennel. Oh my it's so good. A little purple cabbage for color, too. Love it.

There's another place twenty miles farther down the coast that uses apples in their slaw, and it's a mayo slaw. I don't like it at all.

And a funny story about why I don't go to the second place so much. Well, there's more, but this one takes the cake. They make clam chowder in-house. They have New England style and Manhattan style. I don't like the sickly thick cream style soup, and it's often hard to find a good Manhattan chowder. Well, one time my ex and I were at this place and ordered the chowder. The server said they would have to make some more because they were out. We said we don't mind waiting; we're on vacation. We were friendly as always. Eventually the chowder came out.

My ex said, "I don't think there's any clams in this." I thought maybe she was right. We asked the server. She said, "We have two kinds of chowder, clam chowder and Manhattan chowder, and there's no clams in Manhattan chowder." Ummm... OK. Well I grabbed a menu from the next table over. Right smack in the middle of the menu is an area outlined by a thick red border that clearly says "Homemade clam chowder" and lists New England Style and Manhattan Style. The server clearly saw me looking at the menu and came up and said, "I know it says clam chowder on the menu, but there's no clams in Manhattan chowder." I said there always was in the past. She stuck to her guns. It would have been so easy for her to apologize and comp the soup for us. Nope. My only regret is that I left her a nice tip.

I have never been back.

They were always slow with service. I can abide that. They make a few good dishes. The slaw isn't one of them. I can abide slow service. But when my dad and I were visiting one time and were seated, we sat for quite a while. Another couple was seated. They got menus and had their order taken before we even got menus. I asked my dad if it would be OK if we left and went somewhere else. He said yeah. That was before the chowder incident. And I'll never go back there. There's too many other good options.

I have something else to say about chowder in general, and while chowder always has potatoes and Manhattan chowder has tomatoes, it's probably too far removed from produce to write about here. Maybe I'll start another post somewhere about chowder.

acpgee wrote: »

Regarding granny smith in slaws. I typically substitute hard to find green papaya or green mango for a combination of spiralized carrots and granny smith in SE Asian salads such as Som Tam. A combination of grated celeriac and granny smith would work too, I think.

I'd like those variations - the relatives would balk at it, because I think they'd *see* it. So weird, to me!

The young-adult nephew was offended when he learned that the chocolate chip cookies he'd liked on tasting - had bananas! 🤣

I don't mind pushing their perceptions generally . . . less on holidays, though.

Holidays are hug time. They keep me in their circle - the widowed relative - on sufferance. I appreciate that deeply, want to please them.

I eat an insane amount of veggies starting with breakfast. Roasted/cast iron/steamed, you name it. Sometimes I'll get em all cooked up and zap em in the Vitamix for a nice soup. I also grow Ponderosa lemons. Baby those giant tart girls like a momma bear till just perfect for harvest!

Ugli fruit is my winter love sooo hard to find. Its always a conundrum for the produce manager.

I think you get more crunchy bang for your buck if you can find tree-ripened apples directly at the farm. I was lucky to nab a huge box of tree-ripened apples and the taste/crunch/sweetness couldn't be rivaled by any 6-10 month storage-bin apple!

I don't normally cook squashes besides courgette as they are generally too big for our household of two. We were supposed host a friend for dinner who cancelled at the last minute and I prepared the planned roast dinner anyway. What do you do with two thirds of of a leftover roast butternut squash? It is not sweetened really, as I sprinkled the tiniest pinch of brown sugar on top. We have a couple of leftover roast new potatoes and a little roast cherry tomato, both skin on too.

Was considering a soup made by sauteeing some onion, adding scooped out leftover squash and peeled leftover potato and skin on tomatoes. Blitzing that with the immersion blender and maybe adding a handful of split red lentils. Maybe stir in the leftover bit of Philly light cream cheese languishing in the fridge just before serving?

Ideas on what to do with the squash and other roast veg welcome.

@acpgee

If you make the soup, and if "fishy" fish is something you eat, add a can of mackerel right before you serve the soup. I ate a lot of winter squash soup with mackerel when I was in grad school. Makes me nostalgic. Maybe I'll make some. I bet it would be good with salmon, too.