Tag: produce

Kitchen Confidant

Don’t just veg out; veg UP your meals with Kitchen Pantry.

The only thing better than having a personal chef is having a personal sous chef. When someone else handles the arduous, repetitive, and time-consuming prep work, you’re free to simply create whenever inspiration (or hunger) strikes. That’s where Kitchen Pantry comes in, doing all the shopping, chopping, slicing, and dicing for you. Order raw, fresh ingredients that are ready to cook or eat right away, without any of the typical hassle. Pick from a rainbow of fruits and vegetables, sweet and savory, plus some kitchen staples and fully cooked snacks to satisfy the most urgent cravings.

Sometimes the ease of using such conveniences is the difference between eating a healthy dinner or resorting to a bag of potato chips. It’s one thing to buy four pounds of onions to make French onion soup, and another thing entirely to actually break them down, through tired, tear-filled eyes. There’s no shame in doing what it takes to get healthy food on the table.

It’s also a boon to those who have disabilities that would otherwise prevent them from cooking. Being able to nourish yourself should be a right, not a privilege. Having more options allows greater accessibility for everyone.

Let’s not forget how it helps prevent food waste, too! Cooking for one can be a barrier to investing in fresh produce. Buying a jumbo head of broccoli can be a daunting commitment when you only want a few florets. When you buy only what you need, you get exactly that, and nothing that you don’t. Plus, with all the prep work done for you, there are no unwanted peels, cores, stems, or seeds to contend with.

Make home cooking faster than ordering takeout by starting with perfectly diced mirepoix that’s ready when you are. No measuring needed for those who prefer to rely on instinct rather than written recipes, without any risk of going too far astray.

If you’re more of an all-day grazer, you’ve got lots of crudites and snackable options at your disposal, too. If you want more than immaculate cuts of carrots or cucumbers for dipping into your favorite creamy hummus, here’s another quick fix: Take two seconds to toss together a package of diced tomatoes and tri-color bell peppers, plus a spoonful of minced serranos and garlic. Top with scallions, and just like that, you’ve got instant salsa fresca, fresher and more flavorful that anything you’d find at the grocery store.

Don’t think that the snack selection ends with fresh produce. Kitchen Pantry really strives to fill your whole kitchen with quick, healthy, universally appealing options. Featuring local brands and their less common flavors that may not be widely available, this carefully curated selection is a great way to discover more small businesses. From gourmet popcorn to award-winning olive oil, small-batch tea blends to cocktail mixers, you can easily cut down trips to the store thanks to this expansive assortment.

Unlike other meal delivery solutions, there are no hidden fees and no subscription required for Kitchen Pantry. Additionally, the packaging is fully recyclable, with plans of switching to compostable materials with future funding. What you see is truly what you get: Produce is kept fresh by removing excess oxygen and overnight shipping, not with preservatives or any additives (like salt, acids, or chemicals.)

Kitchen Pantry partners with UPS to reach most of Texas, with plans to drastically expand distribution in response to growing demand. If you’re within range, jump in and start building your cart now. No one has ever regretted getting more fresh, healthy food in their lives.

This post was made possible as a collaboration with Kitchen Pantry. My opinions can not be bought and all content is original. This page may contain affiliate links; thank you for supporting my blog!

Hannah (BitterSweet)3 Comments

Embracing Imperfection

Rarely do New Year’s resolutions resonate with me. Striving to improve one’s health, wealth, or general shortcomings are admirable goals, but the annual effort always feels so contrived. The calendar shouldn’t be the push for these efforts; as is proven year after year, that reminder typically affects change for a month, at best.

2017, however, already seems different. High on my list of personal ambitions is to let go of the perfection fallacy and embrace the beauty in all that is conventionally deemed “ugly.” Beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, and I’ve found a whole lot to love in the trend towards buying otherwise unloved, ugly produce. Lemons with blemishes; apples that are too small to meet a buyer’s standards; gnarled carrots that refuse to stand up straight. Otherwise delicious fruits and vegetables are discarded in favor of their immaculate, but often tasteless, brethren.

Imperfect Produce is making big waves in the supply chain to change all that. Delivering boxes on demand directly to consumers’ doors across the bay area, they’ve only been in operation for a little over a year and have already rescued well over 750,000 pounds of otherwise wasted food. Those numbers are no small potatoes (although they have plenty of those to share, too) and promise continue growing at a rapid pace, as they’ve recently announced plans to expand into Los Angeles.

This is where I need to go off script and say that this is not a sponsored post and I did not receive anything for free. I was simply inspired by the mission of this once-small startup, and am beyond thrilled to spread the Imperfect Produce appreciation. When I realized that their warehouse was just a short walk away, I high-tailed it out there to see where all the ugly goodness comes from, and I was welcomed with open arms.

Browsing through the line of workers busily packing food into their designated compostable boxes, the real tragedy is that among the immense stacks of produce, I could hardly pick out any truly unsightly specimen within. Perhaps it’s a case of excess supply or insufficient demand, but some of these were truly stunning edible gems, deemed unfit for sale for reasons no ethical eater could comfortably stomach.

Resolve to do more for the local community, your diet, and your bank account by simply eating uglier. You’ll spend a fraction of the cost that these fruits and vegetables would otherwise command at conventional grocery stores, and better yet, you’ll skip the lines at checkout. If that’s still not enough to convince you, go ahead and take 50% off your first box with the code “SPOON” at checkout. Pick exactly what you want from the current seasonal offerings and trust that no matter what it looks like, it will always be brilliantly fresh and delicious.

The delivery range is limited to us lucky Californians at the moment, but I think the overall message is one we can all get behind for the coming year. Celebrate all of life’s imperfections, no matter what form they may take.

Hannah (BitterSweet)20 Comments

Grab the Melon by Its Horns

Sharply spiked, thorny, and clad in an arresting hue of traffic cone orange, it was clear that this alien fruit was coming home with me from the moment we first met. It was just too bizarre to put back down, despite its pointed protests.

The kiwano, otherwise known as a horned melon, is truly a sight to behold. It becomes even more alluring once cracked open, revealing downright monstrous innards of large seeds suspended in a jelly-like green morass. Best described as an African cucumber, the flavor is quite similar to this familiar vegetable. Some claim to taste notes of banana and lemon as well, suggesting that it would be well suited for both sweet and savory applications. Unfortunately, the truth is considerably more bitter: The gooey mess is impossible to eat out of hand, watery at best but entirely bland at worst, and overall, quite disappointing.

Talk about misjudging a book by its cover!

That said, it has its charm as an exotic garnish, based entirely on its unnerving, almost unnaturally neon hue. Shock and amaze your friends this Halloween by presenting them with a ghastly glass of rice pudding, topped by this exotic produce pick.

You can’t beat it for shock value, but truth be told… You wouldn’t be losing anything in the flavor department if you left out the kiwano. No recipe needed here, as any rice pudding formula will do the trick. However, consider this your warning: While the kiwano does have horns, it certainly won’t bite back.

Hannah (BitterSweet)12 Comments

Spring Produce Spotlight: Green Almonds

Standing tall and pert in rows a dozen deep, forests of asparagus cover the tables at farmers markets as far as the eye can see. Classic harbingers of spring, their appearance signals a definitive end to winter, as though the slender green stalks had slain the seasonal demon themselves. Deep green, royal purple, ghostly white; all colors were represented on this early April day, each bundling growing more enticing, glowing more vibrantly in the rising morning sun than the last. With a heavy bag straining under the weight of this spring plunder, it would be easy to call it a day, feeling quite content with a delicious, albeit rather predictable haul. Don’t make that mistake. Delve further into the booths, interrogate the farmers if you need to, and seek out rarer treasures. For a window of about three to four weeks, green almonds may be hiding in plain sight at your local markets, amassed in humble little piles or collected in small baskets, just behind the more popular fare. Off-putting fuzzy exteriors belie a firm, crunchy texture, wholly edible and entirely delicious from the outside shell to kernel. Their short window of availability is dictated by the maturation of the almond, transforming the fresh fruit into the crunchy nut we all know and love. Leading with a pleasantly bitter taste, the overriding flavor is that of lemons and cucumbers, sometimes with a hint of tart grape in the background. Juicy yet crisp, they’re impossibly addictive when eaten with just a light pinch of salt. Sure, you could chop them up and add them to salads, use them for garnishes on chilled soups, or otherwise toss them into any raw or cooked preparation you see fit, but they’re best when allowed to shine solo. At most, go ahead and cure them in a lightly sweet and sour brine, and you’ll have the stuff of pickle plate dreams. One would never mistake them for the roasted almonds they may one day become, which is part of the appeal. You may think you know the common nuts, but catch them on the unripe side and you’ll have a whole new snacking sensation in store.

Hannah (BitterSweet)15 Comments

Behind the Scenes at Miyoko’s Cheese Factory

Never underestimate the power of one industrious nut… And all of the cashews that she employs, too! All jokes aside, vegan author, entrepreneur, and luminary Miyoko Schinner has a genuinely tenacious work ethic, working tirelessly to bring her creative visions to life. There are plenty of dreamers with bold ideas that never see the light of day, but Ms. Schinner wouldn’t back down in the face of impossible odds, launching the only cheese factory of its kind in the San Francisco bay area. Nut cheeses of all colors and stripes are now emerging on the market, but I can’t find a single competitor that painstakingly ages their offerings for weeks, or even months, after inoculating them with genuine cheese-making strains of bacteria. One could no doubt take this opportunity to tout the nutritional benefits sure to come from those healthy microorganisms, but for the connoisseur, these ingredients are simply the key to authentic funky flavors that are found nowhere else.

Luck (and Miyoko’s unending good graces and generosity) were on my side one cool fall afternoon, when I happened to find myself in town for a flash-in-the-pan photo shoot. With only a day’s notice, I found myself with the rare chance to peek behind the curtain in Miyoko’s Kitchen to see the cashews in action.

If you’ve ever made nut cheese at home, you already know how much raw material it takes to churn out one creamy wheel; multiply that by about 10,000, and you might have some idea of the scale of this operation. Huge, 25-pound bags of cashews are soaked and chewed up every day of production. To put it in perspective these things are the size and weight of a typical adult Beagle, requiring nearly as much love and attention, to boot. Unlike the options in her ground-breaking cookbook, these young rounds are not set with agar to expedite the process. After churning through an industrial-sized turbine of a blender and cooling down, the average cheese is aged for four weeks, tucked away on cozy refrigerated trays until the batch is fully ripened.

Initially struggling to keep up with demand, each prized wheel was as rare and rigorously guarded as solid bricks of gold. Spreading the wealth near and far, Miyoko’s cheeses are now readily available in most bay area Whole Foods and specialty markets, expanding outward across the country at a rapid pace. Roughly 5,000 pounds of glorious cashew cheese leave those factory doors every month, so it shouldn’t be long before they hit store shelves near you. In the meantime, you can order directly from the source, and yes, Miyoko can ship these creamy beauties all the way to Australia, too! For orders abroad, I would suggest you contact the cheese maven herself to secure personalized shipping info.

To be continued in Part Two. Next up is the good stuff, what you’ve no doubt been waiting for… The tasting notes, plus a perfectly cheesy recipe. Stay tuned!

Hannah (BitterSweet)13 Comments