Where multi-story apartment buildings are now being constructed once stood the Butcher family orchard. The farm had been in the family since 1881, when Rolla and Emma Butcher bought 160 acres of land. After Rolla's early death, Emma ran the farm by herself, planting fruit trees while raising her young children.
In the late 1990s, the California Prune Board set out on a quixotic mission to amend this sales-flattening reputation. It would attempt to rechristen this ancient fruit in the hopes the prune could one day be as unencumbered as an apricot, a raisin, or a fig.
Every morning I join a group of friends for coffee and conversation at a cafe in my neighborhood. We call ourselves the "coffee klatch." This time of year, one of the key klatchers, Michael Soriano, often comes bearing a bag of Meyer lemons, picked from his tree. Last year he even did a drive-by in front of my apartment, delivering a bag of those fragrant golden orbs just for me. Such luxury! And free. It felt like a heist.
A delicious choice of simple sandwich filling, heirloom tomatoes are a type of tomato for which the seeds have been passed down through generations, hence the name. Unlike hybrid tomatoes, the seeds for heirloom varieties are open-pollinated and not engineered for an extensive life. As such, they are quite special, boasting a unique appearance and taste. Heirloom tomato season typically spans between later summer and early fall, meaning this specific sandwich selection will be dependent on the time of year.
Late winter is when keen gardeners can get a little restless. The weather is still cold, and spring still feels far away. Thankfully, you don't need to wait until the weather warms to start your growing season. There are plenty of fruits and vegetables that can be started in the late winter, ready for a bountiful harvest in the coming months. Each of these plants needs unique care in order to thrive, but thankfully, I can guide you through exactly the right steps.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture published the Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which breaks the country into 13 zones that help determine the best time of year to get started on various fruits and vegetables, such as peppers. Each zone varies by 10 degrees, and each subzone varies by five degrees, even if a single state can technically be broken into several zones.
We've become accustomed to fruit-flavored foods tasting nothing like their fruity counterparts, from artificial banana essence to cherry-flavored things tasting more like medicine than fruit, but what specifically makes artificial watermelon taste so off-base from its authentic fruity muse? Well, it's simply because we don't yet have the capabilities to synthesize watermelon's complex flavor, which includes compounds like (Z)-3-hexenol, citrulline, and amino acids.
It's 9:30 p.m. Snack time. A sacred fourth meal, when I pull out my handwash-only kobachi and drop in a small handful of Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds. I've been eating them for more years than I care to admit, appreciating the mix of natural (high protein and fiber) almonds with a splash of addictive processing (mmm, hickory smoke flavor and maltodextrin) to keep them feeling dangerous.