{"id":5323,"date":"2014-07-21T13:12:25","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T13:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5323"},"modified":"2016-04-08T13:13:43","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T13:13:43","slug":"a-note-from-chef-becky-july-21st","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-chef-becky-july-21st\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from chef Becky : July 21st"},"content":{"rendered":"Dear CSA Members,\r\n\r\nAs we still enjoy nectarines and we gear up for O\u2019Henry and Cal Red peaches, this\u00a0week the spot light is on the pluots. We\u2019ll be picking Flavor King and Dapple Dandy\u00a0pluots and they are both delicious this year. And next week, we should have Flavor\u00a0Heart pluots.\r\n\r\nAll varieties were created by 88-year-old Floyd Zaiger at his 140-acre farm on the\u00a0outskirts of Modesto. Fruit plant breeding is a laborious, slow process. Zaiger does it\u00a0the old fashioned way; no gene insertion, just the same 1960\u2019s era technique of taking\u00a0one plant that needs tweaking and another plant that's genetically compatible and has\u00a0desirable traits; alter one and pollinate it with the other, and hope the resulting fruit\u00a0offers the best of both. Zaiger is one of the most prolific and famous plant breeders in\u00a0the world. Not only has he bred plums that are better for shipping and altering plants\u00a0for better earlier maturity but his real genius and his passion is breeding plants for\u00a0good flavor. Lucky for us!\r\n\r\nIt just so happened that the Flavor King pluots grows especially well here on Frog\u00a0Hollow Farm. We hear repeatedly from pastry chefs who have tasted many other\u00a0growers\u2019 Flavor Kings that others don\u2019t have the intensity of flavor that ours do! Our Flavor Kings have been described as \u201cSanta Rosas on steroids\u201d and indeed they have the\u00a0sweet flesh of the Santa Rosa, although pleasantly firmer, yet without the bitter skin.\u00a0This is evidence of just how special the terroir of Brentwood really is!\r\n\r\nThe Dapple Dandy, also known as the \u201cdinosaur egg,\u201d called so because of its distinctive pale green to yellow skin with red mottling. Its flesh is creamy pink, it has a\u00a0slightly spicy and plum-apricot balanced flavor. These just seem to get better and better as the trees get more mature. They taste better to me than I can ever remember.\r\n\r\nThe Flavor Heart is aptly named, having dark ruby to almost black skin color and a\u00a0very pronounced heart-like shape. It\u2019s on the larger side and has a cream colored flesh.\u00a0According to the Dave Wilson Nursery website, \u201cit doesn\u2019t store well,\u201d but I think\u00a0after they\u2019ve been in cold storage the acid drops and the sugar becomes more pronounced with no compromise in texture.\r\n\r\nWhat\u2019s lovely about all these pluots is that they are so convenient to cook with; no\u00a0peeling, they\u2019re high in pectin so jam making is a breeze and they are delicious eaten\u00a0out of hand.\u00a0So enjoy these wonderful gifts from Floyd Zaiger via Frog Hollow Farm while they\u00a0last!\r\n<h4><em><strong>Chef Becky<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\r\n&nbsp;","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear CSA Members, As we still enjoy nectarines and we gear up for O\u2019Henry and Cal Red peaches, this\u00a0week the spot light is on the pluots. We\u2019ll be picking Flavor King and Dapple Dandy\u00a0pluots and they are both delicious this year. And next week, we should have Flavor\u00a0Heart pluots. All varieties were created by 88-year-old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1nR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5326,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5323\/revisions\/5326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}