#108: How to Select Fresh Fruits and Vegetables - Grocery Shopping Secrets

We're continuing our Book Club Breakdown of Grocery Shopping Secrets by Carol Ann Kates. This week we're diving into the sections on selecting fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs/spices at the grocery store!

These chapters have SO much information about produce including fun tidbits, how to select the best produce, how to store it to keep it fresh longest, and seasonal availability. There are tips for how to freeze and preserve produce as well with exact instructions, so you'll never question what to do!
 

Featured Recipes:

Riley's Tuscan Chicken
Roni's Chicken Tinga

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Transcript

[00:00:00] I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner. 

Riley: Hello and welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast. Uh, today we are gonna continue our book club, on grocery shopping secrets by Carol Ann Kate's. Um, and today we're gonna be discussing how to select and store fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, and herbs and spices. This chapter or these chapters, were chockfull of helpful information about literally any vegetable you could possibly think of, how to store it, how to keep it fresh longer, and how to freeze it, which is so helpful for me.

And like everyone who listens to this podcast. You guys know we talk about freezing food all the time, and this gives you the specific details on how to do it.

Roni: Yes, it does. There was a lot of information in here. We are [00:01:00] definitely not gonna cover all of it. We'd probably have an eight hour podcast of this meeting. We tried

Riley: And you'd love every minute of it.

Roni: so we're probably gonna go over just some high level things. What RI and I found interesting, what we learned and some tidbits that we think y'all might find interesting as well. I will say that the sections on freezing and preserving both fruits and vegetables was really super helpful. Even for somebody who, I feel like I use the freezer all the time, it was like a little bit of a validation to be like, okay, you've been doing it right.

Riley: Yes, a hundred percent. I thought the same thing. Or I've been doing that wrong and I probably should make some adjustments.

Roni: True.

Riley: Let's jump in and talk about Apples. 'cause that is the very first thing she talks about. Quickly. There are 2,500 varieties of apples grown in the United States and more than 7,500 grown worldwide. Did that blow your mind?

Roni: It really did. I mean, it did, but at the same time, I feel like apples are one of the fruits that I have heard the most about, I [00:02:00] guess as far as like, there's lots of hybrid versions of apples and we have this like old timey neighbor, old timey, whatever. He's an elderly man.

Riley: I like old timey. That's cute.

Roni: And so the area that I lived in, that I, the area that I live in used to be like all apple orchards I don't like in the thirties or something. And, Sorry, I just realized that like in a few years we're, we're not gonna really be able to say in the thirties anymore, because it'll be in the thirties.

Riley: bizarre. In the 1930s.

Roni: yeah. I'll have to define in the 1930s. In the 1930s, our area was orchards, and I actually have a apple tree in my backyard. We've definitely talked about that on the podcast before. And the type of apples that grow on our tree are most similar, I think to the, to like a Jonah Gold apple, which she mentions in here, but it's still, it's like the [00:03:00] more it heirloom version of that, like the type of apple that grows on the trees around here, you can't find in the grocery store anymore because the, the hybrid versions have taken over, essentially.

So I've had conversations about apples, I guess.

Riley: With your old timey neighbor.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: I, there are actually a lot of wild apple trees. I, I guess, do you call 'em wild at this point? If they used to be on in an orchard?

Roni: I dunno. That's a good, uh, that's a good question.

Riley: You can go down to the river pretty over here by my house. And, uh, just there's apple trees growing all along the edges of it, which is pretty fun.

My kids love to go down there and pick apples.

Roni: Yeah, that's really cool. so carolann notes here that there are four different categories of apples you have eating apples, cooking apples, crab apples and apples use for cider. So I thought this was interesting. I know like basic, I feel like I know the basics of this, you know, [00:04:00] whereas like people are like, oh, granny Smith apples are the best apples to make a pie out of and, you know, red Delicious or obviously snacking, eating apples.

But I didn't realize that so many of them have been. Hybridized, I guess is the word. To be both. To, to be like multifunctional, right? Like, well, it's good enough that you could eat it or you could put it into a pie or make jelly out of it. Like they're trying to make 'em really multipurpose here so that we don't have to buy four different types of apples to do different things.

Riley: I thought it was interesting 'cause I've never heard the break. I've never heard a breakdown. I just know there's apples that you like to eat and then there's apples that you don't like to eat, but they, but because they have a purpose, you know, like you wanna put something a little bit less sweet into a pie 'cause you're gonna add so much sugar, that kind of thing.

A little more tart. Yeah.

Roni: right.

Riley: What's your favorite kind of apple?

Roni: Okay. I highlighted the, my favorite apples because I thought that we [00:05:00] would ask about this. Um, I like the Pink Lady apples. Those ones, they're just so sweet, but also a little tart. I really love them. My husband loves a gala, gala, gala, apple,

Riley: I like

Roni: you say it.

Riley: So I really like Fuji and honey crisp apples. I like a really hard sweet apple. Like I don't like a soft apple.

Roni: Oh, me neither. No, it doesn't. mealiness in the apple. My dad loved Red Delicious apples. He a Red, delicious apple every day in his lunch, and it's my least favorite kind of apple because I think it's kind of mealy.

Riley: Yeah. I also really like, uh, granny Smith apple sometimes, just every once in a while. It's a very specific flavor. My husband and I were in Seattle when they launched, released. I'm not exactly sure what the right term is when they, I guess, released the Cosmic Crisp apple, which is definitely my top favorite Apple

Roni: I don't know if I've ever had one.

Riley: You need to have one. [00:06:00] They're so good. They, um, have this like beautiful dark red skin with like freckles, like I think they call 'em freckles, the little white spots, but it looks like a galaxy, like a constellation on the skin. I think that's why they call it a cosmic crisp. But, uh, we were in Seattle when this apple launched and it was such a big deal.

Like I had no idea what a big deal it was when an apple was released to consumers. But it's because it takes 20 to 30 years for a new Apple variety to make it to consumers 20 to 30 years. Yeah. And so we just happened to be there this week in November visiting my parents and it was all over the news.

It, everywhere you went in the farmer's market, there were people like cutting pieces for you to sample it. Like it was such a big deal. And so I think it had, I it is a very delicious apple. It, it's a cross between a honey crisp and an enterprise Apple. And I do really love a honey crisp, so I, so [00:07:00] I already like, thought I was gonna like it, but it is delicious.

I don't know what else to say about it, but they're so good. Go try it. It launched in 19,

Roni: It's,

Riley: it didn't launch in 19, it launched in 2019.

Roni: oh, okay.

Riley: Um, but we just happened to be there when it was like available. It was

Roni: they grow them in Washington state? Oh, okay. Okay.

Riley: Um, the breeding program for this Apple started at Washington State University in 1997.

Roni: Oh wow.

Riley: Yeah. So they do a lot of apples over there in Washington state. Yep.

Roni: Very interesting. Wouldn't it be interesting to have that be like your graduate study, you're like at Washington State University and you're like, my graduate degree is in apple breeding.

Riley: The, uh, the cosmic crisp variety. Yeah. It would be pretty wild, but ba I just went to my older brothers. PhD graduation and based on that graduate graduate school graduation, people study some [00:08:00] very specific, very smarty pants things in the world. Like I was, I just felt like my mind was just exploding with like what people studied for their PhDs.

So it doesn't surprise me that somebody does this at Washington State for apples.

Roni: Yeah, they probably do for onions too, right? Because I will, we might get to onions later, but 'cause Walla Walla onions are so popular in Washington state.

Riley: they must be, they must do that too. I don't know. I didn't do as much research on the app, the onion as I did the apple

Roni: Yeah. Well one thing, one last thing I wanted to mention about Apples, 'cause we don't need to spend our whole podcast talking about apples.

Riley: though, we could.

Roni: No, we probably could. Uh, I noticed, so after reading this section, I was at the grocery store this week and saw that at our King Soopers, which is a Kroger brand grocery store.

They have these new labels next to the apple prices that, that give you like a little bit [00:09:00] of info about the apple. And then it gives you its flavor meter. So it's just like, uh, leans either towards sweet or towards tart. And so I took a picture of it. I, I sent it to Riley and I was like, oh my gosh, this is really cool.

I've never noticed this before. So like I took a picture of the envy apple and it's a little description is incredibly sweet and crunchy firm and slow to brown when cut. So it's kind of cool that the grocery store is now helping you pick out what could be the apple that you actually want to eat or use for cooking or whatever instead of having to like memorize all of the information that Carol Ann gave us here.

'Cause it's great information, but. Definitely like I looked at this and was like, I'm only gonna able remember like two things about the apples when I'm actually in the grocery store.

Riley: For sure. And I also just gravitate towards the apples that I like. And so having that information kind of available to you when you're shopping is helpful because then maybe you can branch out if you're like me and you just like, like what you like and you always [00:10:00] buy that it'll help you branch out a little bit.

So I just wanna quickly stop on, um, apricots. How do you say that? How do you say that word?

Roni: I say apricot. I don't say apricot, I say apricot.

Riley: yes. Well, I grew up saying apricot and and ever since it was pointed out to me that I say apricot, I have to laugh because I. My, my husband's always like, oh, the monkey variety. Apricot, though monkeys and apes are different, but apricot.

So I have been working on my pronunciation of apricot 'cause Yeah. But I didn't grow up eating many of them, so it was not a common thing to even really discuss in my house in the south. However, my in-laws live in Utah now, and they have an apricot tree in their yard and they just, last week nailed us about four or five pounds of apricots.

It might be an exaggeration, maybe four, maybe three to four pounds of apricots. And they were delicious. Unfortunately, I didn't read the section until after the apricots had reached the end of their life. But I wish I had put them in the refrigerator [00:11:00] because that's what it said, like that says it's the best way to store them.

And we didn't do that. And so they went bad pretty quickly. But we did get to eat a tremendous amount of it before they went bad.

Roni: That's really cool. I don't know if I've ever had a, like a whole fresh one before. I feel like I've only ever had the dried kind.

Riley: Yeah. Same like if I ever had it growing up, it was a dried one. So they're very nice. It's just, just, it's a very, it's, they're kind of chewy, but plum like

Roni: Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

Riley: Yeah. Some kind of cross between a chewy plumb. They also have a pomegranate tree in their yard.

They live in southern Utah. It, I mean, it's like warm 90% of the year. So they have a lot of great, great growing season.

Roni: I love a pomegranate.

Riley: Yeah. They also mail us pomegranates when they're ready to, and that's pretty fun.

Roni: So I wanted to move on to just a little tidbit about grapefruit, because I thought it was interesting. There are two different.

Essentially two different kinds of grapefruit. And the climate that they're grown in is what [00:12:00] determines how they're gonna taste. And so there are some that are grown in Florida and some that are grown in Arizona. And it says the low humidity climate of Arizona will produce grapefruits with a thick peel, a blemish free skin, and more acidic flavor.

Whereas grapefruits grown in a tropical climate, like tropical climate, like Florida, will have a thin peel, slightly blemish, slightly blemish skin. Wow. This is really hard for me right now. And a sweeter taste. So I just thought that was interesting. 'cause I don't think I've ever, when I've bought, uh, grapefruit at the store, I don't think I've ever looked at the origin.

And even if I did, I wouldn't have known the difference.

Riley: Sure, sure. Do you like grapefruit?

Roni: I do.

Riley: So do I love them? A couple of things that stood out to me. A lot of the things that I highlighted were how to choose how to select the right fruit. And so a couple of those things, um, I actually already did, but I wasn't sure if it was right. You know, how you, you hear things in your life about how to select the right watermelon or how to select the right, [00:13:00] fill in the blank, the right avocado, whatever.

And then over time you meet somebody and they're like, oh, no, no, no. This is how you select the right one. And so then you get, your mind is full of all these like, options for like how to select the best one. But some of them are in conflict with one another. Like you want the watermelon to have the largest, widest flat spot.

It sat there the longest, or no, you wanna knock it in a sound hollow, or no, you don't want it to be yellow. You want it to be green all the way around, like so many different ways that people do it. So I feel like just having, I. This book say This is the best way, period is kind of nice. But it also validates me because some of the ways I select fruit is actually accurate.

So a couple of those, clementines ripe Clementines will have a lovely aroma. Like they will smell like they're ripe. Um, and I know some people he hesitate to get ones that smell because they think that they're over ripe or like, like they're gonna go bad fast. So pineapples, um, I smell the bottoms of the [00:14:00] pineapple to see if they smell like pineapple.

And I also pull the leaves. And if the leaves come out easy, then it's a ripe one. That's how I select pineapple and that is how Carol Ann suggests that we select a pineapple at the grocery store. So I felt very excited about that.

Roni: Yeah, I agree. It's really, it is really nice to have like a single source of truth, I guess

Riley: Yes. Yeah.

Roni: it, because it does feel almost like folklore of like, here's how you select the best watermelon. And you, like you said, you've heard like seven different things and you're like knocking on it and shaking it around and

Riley: Yes,

Roni: cradling it like baby, you know?

So yeah, it is really nice to be like, have the information and like you said, have it just like, here's how, how you do it, period. Let's move on to the next

Riley: yes. And just as a reminder, she is an expert at produce and an expert at the grocery store. So we're gonna, we're gonna trust her and go with her guidance. So cantaloupe, when they're ripe, they'll emit a slight cantaloupe fragrance, and they'll also yield the slight pressure on the blossom end, which is the [00:15:00] end opposite of the stem. I chose a cantaloupe yesterday at the grocery store based on this. And PS It is cantaloupe. It is melon season. The, I was at a grocery store in town the other day yesterday, and the kinds, uh, that are available right now, like I wanted to buy every single one. They're beautiful. There's this like one that looks, it's called a Picasso melon, and it has like.

Roni: Hmm.

Riley: Got like these, like beautiful, like splatter paint out. I don't know. It's beautiful. Apparently. Like, I like the cosmic crisp. It's got the freckles. I like the cos it's, it's my art degree kicking in.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Um, okay. But I picked my cantaloupe based on this and it is so good. So good. So good.

Roni: I love it. It's amazing. Like, it's like empowering to be like, I know how to do this now.

Riley: Yes. Well, and it's not a guessing game. It's not just like, oh, I'm gonna grab this and hope for the

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: So how Carol Ann suggests you pick a watermelon, you, it says her father taught me to thump, sorry. My father taught me [00:16:00] to thump a watermelon with my knuckle.

If it sounds hollow, it's ripe. Characteristics to look for are symmetrical, dull colored body with a slightly flat, yellowish, almost butter colored underbelly. If it's white, the watermelon will be under ripe, and if it's bright yellow, it'll be over ripe.

Roni: Hmm. Okay.

Riley: it. That's the rules.

Roni: I like it. this reminds me that, \ when I was reading this, I was thinking about how we, when we talked about eating seasonally for summer, you did a breakdown of how to pick a watermelon in that episode. And I remember we had like a little phrase that was like, heavy hollow and something, and so I

Riley: hollow and flat

Roni: maybe something, maybe something like that, but I just rem I, I highlighted the words heavy and hollow to be like, Riley already talked about this.

She was already telling us the truth over here.

Riley: I hope that what I said in that podcast isn't conflict because I'm just gonna with what she says now this is my new rules.[00:17:00]

Roni: Uh, one thing that I thought was interesting, just kind of as an overall is that there are some fruits in particular that are meant to be ripened when you take them home. they're picked and then they're brought to the grocery store, and they're probably not ripe when you get them at the grocery store.

Like, so, like she has mangoes as an option for one of those, is that like the mangoes at the grocery store are often not ready to be eaten yet, and you need to ripen them at home. So I really liked that because I feel like I have looked at, I've bought mangoes before that were like ripe at the grocery store, and then by the time I ate them, which was probably a couple days later, like they were a little too ripe, too mushy, almost like fermented, you know?

Um, and so this was really nice to know like, oh, it's okay to just buy the hard ones because I can figure out how to rip them, ripen them at home instead.

Riley: Yeah. I found that to be a really helpful piece in this section for this. Just just the how to [00:18:00] ripen it at home, like avocados, how to ripen them at home, what to do to get you to the point where you wanna eat them instead of just being bummed out that they were terrible. Or what happens to me sometimes is that they get over ripe.

'cause they weren't ripe. They weren't ripe. They weren't ripe, and then suddenly they're over ripe. There's like a sweet spot

Roni: it really is. And with an avocado it's like five minutes.

Riley: or five business days.

Roni: Okay. So I wanted to move on to peaches and nectarines because these, I peaches I think are the hardest thing for me to pick out at the grocery store. So I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but I feel really challenging to me.

I did wanna mention the thing that I learned is that there are different varieties of peaches. There's cling stone, free stone, and then semi free stone. And the cling stone have a flesh that's firmly attached to the pit on the inside. And they're a little bit sweeter and juicier than the free stones.

The free stone, it's exactly what the name says is that like the skin is more separated from the pit on the [00:19:00] inside. So if you were making like a peach. Pie or a cobbler or something that would be an easier variety to choose is a Freestone variety. Because then when you cut it open, the pit comes that way easier.

Riley: From the flesh, not the skin.

Roni: Oh yeah.

Riley: From the fruit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Roni: from the inside flesh. Yeah. Not the skin. You're right. One of the things that she said is that when you're choosing peaches, they should have a well-defined crease, which I thought was interesting 'cause I have never thought about that. I didn't even know to think about that.

And a sweet fra a sweet fragrance and be soft to the touch, but not mushy. You don't wanna buy ones that have what she calls green shoulders, um, 'cause they're too premature. And you obviously don't want ones that have like bruises or flat spots on them.

Riley: I agree with you that picking peaches is very difficult. I feel like I'm just hoping for the best with that every

Roni: Yeah, I know.

Riley: Yes.

Roni: Because when you get, when you get the perfectly right peach, [00:20:00] it is such a beautiful experience. It is like what I wait for every like August, you know? It's to just get that peach that is just like juice running down your chin and it's so flavorful. That's like my favorite food of all time, I

Riley: Yeah. Well we, you know how there's that phrase like, lucky to live Hawaii. Have you heard

Roni: Oh yeah, yeah.

Riley: I feel like I was about to say like, we're lucky to live in Colorado, but there's also Georgia Peaches with the same, so there's like, if you live close to these peaches, there's not a lot of things that are better.

Roni: Yeah. I agree.

Riley: We have a bag of frozen ones in our freezer from last summer because I couldn't let them go bad 'cause they were just too good. And every time my daughter sees them, she's like, mom, we've gotta eat these. I'm like, we'll, we're gonna make peach ice cream. Don't worry, we're getting there. But yeah.

I love a good, I love a good peach and I'm so glad to know how to choose them now because when you go to the farm stands here when the peaches are ripe at the end of the summer. Yeah, I just don't wanna wing it. I just wanna get the good ones. I don't, yeah.

Roni: Yeah, and they can be really [00:21:00] expensive, so it stinks when you spend, you know, a bunch of money and then they're all kind of lackluster.

Riley: Yes. Yeah. Because they're expensive.

But while we're on, on topic of peaches, if you want to ripen your peaches at home, you can place them in a cool place with their stem end down. Uh, and then if they start to, if they give slightly when pressed and become more fragrant, they're ready to eat. So a tip.

Roni: Good tip. So I just have a, you mentioned pomegranate tree earlier. I just wanted to mention something I thought was super interesting about pomegranates and how to tell if they're ripe and she says to, she has these phrases of like, shop with your eyes, shop with your ears, shop with your nose. Which is really cute.

And so she says, with pomegranates, you should shop with your ears because if you tap the fruit, it should make a metallic sound. Which I was like, I'm not gonna be able to try that until like November, but I'm really interested to try it.

Riley: Yeah, just hold that little, I hold that in your mind for later. So I don't know [00:22:00] if you have any other tips that you wanna go through, but just to give you an idea of what, of what we are working with with this book. Plums, pomelo, pomegranates, raspberry star fruit, strawberries, tangibles, tangerines, uh, like it goes on and on and on.

Like if there is a fruit that you love, it's gonna be in this book.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: And if you want tips about how to select it, um, yeah, go, go run and buy this book.

Roni: I would say in general, if you go to the grocery store and you feel really lost in the produce section as far as like, you know, you have your grocery list, you know what things you're supposed to buy, but you really struggle to pick out specific produce, you definitely need this book and it's gonna give you a lot of information.

I'm like tempted to bring it to the grocery store with me the next time I.

Riley: uh, that, that the method I took was, okay, I'm gonna go buy a cantaloupe, and I like logged away. They, how do I pick it? And I went in and I looked at all of them. I did the [00:23:00] things I was supposed to do and got the one. But you're right, like you, they're so now I wanna go buy everything and just try all of her methods.

You know, as someone who does grocery pickup pretty often, um, this book has made me wanna stop doing that

Roni: Mm.

Riley: because I just wanna go look at everything and just pick based on how to actually select correct produce. I know that that's a big reason why people don't do grocery pickup big or grocery delivery because it was selected for you.

And I think there's a season for everything and a lot of the time the season that I'm in is grocery pickup. But yeah, this makes me wanna go in and just like, just to shop for the produce.

Roni: Well, maybe when your kids are a little bit older, then it's like a learning experience for them where you're like, look, here are the things we're looking for with this watermelon. Help me find one.

Riley: Yes, I've definitely made my kids sniff the bottoms of pineapples, which sounds, that sounds terrible, but I also feel like a crazy person when I do that in the grocery store. 'cause you pick 'em up by their, you pick [00:24:00] 'em up and you, you sniff the bottom and you put it back down, pull on the leaves. And I, I, I'll pick up 15 before I buy one.

And so yeah, it can feel a little ridiculous. But the payoff's worth it.

Roni: I agree. So she says that most fruits can be frozen. But you know, their texture might vary once you take them outta the freezer. So that's always something to consider when you're freezing fruits or vegetables is that the texture is most likely not gonna be the same when it comes outta the freezer.

It could get mosier when they're thawed. A lot of fruit is just better to, you know, having like a smoothie or, I mean, I freeze a lot of things and then I use it in like a cobbler or something later in the season. So she gives literally all of the fruits that she talks about. She also then lists exactly how you should prepare them to put them into the freezer.

So another extensive list of information. She talks about two different ways to freeze, which I thought was, really interesting. I had, I actually hadn't heard about the second way of freezing. It's definitely not a method I've ever [00:25:00] used. But the first one is dry pack, which is where you like wash and prep all of your fruit.

And then you put them, you try, you dry them, and you put them in like in a single layer on a sheet pan. And then you put it in the freezer until everything is hard and frozen, and then you transfer it into whatever container you're gonna freeze it in. So that way everything's not just like stuck together in a one pound clump of strawberries, you know?

Riley: Is literally where my mind went to the many times. I have just tossed the strawberries in the freezer. S cleaned, but just tossed them in because I thought these are going bad. Just put 'em in the freezer and then, you know, one pound block of strawberries makes a great pie, but doesn't do a lot of other things.

Roni: No.

Riley: You can chisel 'em apart for a smoothie, but

Roni: so the other method is called a syrup pack. And so you basically make a simple syrup with sugar and water, and then you use, you put that liquid around your fruit and freeze it that way. And I did a [00:26:00] little bit of Googling to figure out why you would choose that method. And the general internet told me that it helps retain the moisture of your fruit.

It prevents browning and just in general, it preserves the flavor and the color and the shape of the fruit that you're freezing. And in general, this would be a good option, particularly if you're planning on using something for a dessert. Since then, it already has like, has extra sugar in the mixture.

Riley: so just to give you a general idea of how she suggests to freeze things. Mostly it's peel, remove the seed slice, freeze. There are a few things she suggests. Freezing whole, grapes, but remove the stems, cranberries, raspberries, obviously you don't really need to do much to a raspberry. so she gets, she has great, really great suggestions, kumquats, she thinks that are best a best in syrup, the syrup method.

but mostly freeze. I, I was actually really glad to read this section because, um, like the peaches [00:27:00] I was mentioning, like those are sliced, pitted and frozen. Now they are in a one pound block. So I should have done it differently. But, uh, yeah, mostly it's just helpful tips and it's really helpful if you use a lot of your own fruit for smoothies instead of buying pre frozen fruit.

Um, this is a really helpful section and also just like it's to, helps you prevent waste when you just freeze it. Because even if like, like those peaches, like I haven't used them since August. It's time, it's time to use them. But I didn't wanna throw them away. I, I, we couldn't have eaten 'em either. We had kind of peached ourselves out, like we are, we're max on the peaches.

But, just it's really helpful. Prevents waste, helps you use it in the future. And also kind of a, a lot of the time it helps you have fresh fruit in the winter if you aren't someone who does much canning, which I'm not sure anyone does much canning these days.

Roni: Unless it's like your, unless you really have a goal to do it. I don't think that mo canning iss not a super casual thing. You know, it takes, it does take some effort. So I think like [00:28:00] I, when we have a year where we have apples on our tree, you know, like I can a bunch of applesauce and apple butter. But that's because we will literally, one tree gives us thousands of apples.

And so like, you just have to set aside a weekend and be like, we're just making it and we're, and we're canning it, you know, we're putting it away. But like, we also have a huge strawberry patch in our backyard and I just freeze the strawberries because getting enough strawberries at one time to then make strawberry jam, it's like a little too much.

'cause they're not all ripe at the same time. You know, it's like every three days we get another batch of strawberries. So

Riley: yeah, yeah. I, I'm just kind of laughing to myself because your yard is like prolific with strawberries and apples. Like, it doesn't do those halfway

Roni: I know it's so true, and we just bought some raspberry plants, so get ready for some mixed berry jam up in here.

Riley: Awesome. Love it. I love to be your yard's friend.

Roni: Yeah. Uh, [00:29:00] one thing that I wanted to mention that she, she actually says this in freezing vegetables, but it applies to fruit as well, so I just wanna throw it out there, is that she reminds us to think about how you'll use the produce once it's thawed. And like, you should basically just prepare it like that before you freeze it.

So if you, uh, the, your peaches are a great example. If you wouldn't necessarily freeze your whole peach, because then when it thaws, then you have to go through the process of preparing it to go in your cobbler or your ice cream or whatever. Whereas if you just already go through the process of like, cutting it into the slices that you'll use it in later.

It's just, it's like a time saving thing. Then, you know, like for vegetables, obviously, like you wouldn't necessarily freeze a whole carrot because then you have to slice up a kind of mushy carrot once it thaws.

Riley: That's a good segue. I was actually really surprised that she said to do that. Um, in particular. Heal it, prepare it how you're going to use it. Now it does [00:30:00] make sense because like the frozen steam bags of vegetables are prepared this way, right? Like you never go to the freezer section and find like whole frozen carrots.

So I get like, it makes sense, but I do not freeze a lot of vegetables. And so, um, it's just not something I've had a lot of practice in to think through, like how will, how do I need to freeze this to use it later? Um, and so I thought that was really helpful information. It does make so much sense though.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. I freeze. Like tomatoes last year we had tomatillo plants and we had tons of tomatillos, so I froze tomatillos, but. I mean, whatever, we're just gonna dig right in. Um, because she recommends freezing tomatillos, you can just freeze them whole. Whereas I like, what's the word? I like broiled mine in the oven before I did first.

So they were kind of like, uh, charred before I put 'em in. And that's because I was, I knew I was probably gonna make like salsa or like an enchilada sauces or something with them. And I liked the flavor of that. So I guess I was also doing the thing that she recommended, which was [00:31:00] preparing them the way that I wanted them before I froze 'em.

But

Riley: Yeah. I imagine it might be strange to broil them after they've been frozen, so I think you probably would. It made smart, smart sense.

Roni: smartSense. Yeah. Okay. I, before we go into specific vegetables though, she talks about fruits versus veggies and why there are so many ve uh, fruits that are considered vegetables, you know, technicality, technically wise, they are fruits. And so I just wanna read her thing here to clear this up, to clear the air a little bit. From a culinary standpoint, foods that are sweet or sour are considered fruits. While foods with a mild savory flavor are vegetables. Technically the avocado, tomato, cucumber, pepper, eggplant, olive, pumpkin, peas, zucchini, other squash, okra, and beans are fruits. They're classified as vegetables because of their flavor profile and how they're used in the kitchen.

So I really liked [00:32:00] this definition for it because I've definitely, I think everybody has come across the person who's like, you know, an avocado's actually a fruit, right?

Riley: Yes, yes. We all have come across that person. I feel like that information gets thrown around when somebody just, um, like it feel like a dad joke.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: like, did you know? Did you know? 

Roni: So true.

Riley: yes. I love that. I actually found this to be very interesting information. So I'm gonna back up just a bit and read the paragraph ahead.

Botanically. Fruits come from the flower of the plant and contain seeds or pits, and if the plant produces any other edible part, like root leaves, stems, bulbs, those are considered vegetables. I definitely didn't know that pumpkin, zucchini, squash, okra and beans are fruits or like technically fruits.

I didn't know that.

Roni: I think I knew it technically because I knew about the seeds part of it, I don't think I [00:33:00] really made the like light bulb connection.

Riley: Like pumpkin puree is fruit soup.

Roni: Wow, that's so true.

Riley: Yeah. But like, I know you don't, I mean, they are, you know, we eat them as vegetables, classified as vegetables, but

Roni: Yeah. That's

Riley: it's just interesting information.

Roni: I guess also then like gazpacho, like a tomato soup is also a fruit soup.

Riley: Yeah. I just, it's the kind of information that like you, it's like a party trick. Like, well, did you know it comes from the flower of the plant?

Roni: Okay. One of the things, one of the, one of the a's that I wanna talk about is asparagus. so for each of the fruits and vegetables, I don't think we said this earlier, she gives like a rundown of potentially different varieties, maybe like a, interesting fact about that piece of produce.

And then she gives you tips on selecting in the grocery store, storing, and she tells you the availability of that. In the, in, in the United States, I think is where her avail availability is usually located and then in some of them she has like little tips for [00:34:00] like, here's how I would prep this.

little known facts maybe about how to prepare things. And so in her tips for preparing asparagus, she says that she uses a vegetable peeler to remove the rough outer flesh on the lower part of asparagus, which I thought was really interesting. 'cause I just snap off the bottoms of my asparagus.

Like that's how my mom taught me to prepare asparagus. So that's just always how I've done it is like the woody part at the bottom. I just snap it off and then I cook the rest of it. Maybe I'm doing it the lazy way.

Riley: I always bend it and like where it breaks.

Roni: that's what my mom told me was like, where it breaks is is the, that's the part you shouldn't eat is like, you don't want the part that breaks off.

Riley: Like, it's too difficult to eat that

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. 'cause it's too woody. So that's interesting.

Riley: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting too.

Earlier we touched on avocados. Um, but they are listed in the vegetable section because technically they're a vegetable. We eat them as a vegetable because of the flavor profile, like we talked about just a few minutes ago. So, but we talked about how [00:35:00] either five minutes or five business days is how long it takes to ripen them.

So to speed up the ripening process, place them in a paper bag with an apple.

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Riley: So that's the way. Um, as far as selecting goes, I feel like this is one that is a really hard one in the grocery store sometimes. So I'm gonna mention how she suggests to select them. If you wanna use it immediately, uh, one that gives to gentle pressure when you squeeze it.

If you're shopping ahead, pick one that's just firm to the touch. Don't get any that are bright green or rock hard. They're very difficult to ripen. Okay, that's it.

Roni: The more you know, one thing that I thought was interesting that for pretty much every single vegetable that she has listed here, the storing instructions basically include to store it in a bag, whether it's on your counter, in your refrigerator. She says basically everything should be stored inside of a bag.

She says in a reusable paper or plastic bag, sometimes she says a perforated [00:36:00] bag. And the perforated bag is for the ethylene gases that some fruits and vegetables give off, which I think the ethylene gas can cause. The thing if you trap the ethylene gas, it causes it to ripen too fast. But then there's also some produce, like apples and bananas are good examples of this that give a lot, gi give off a lot of ethylene gas and so they can ripen other things around them faster just like they do with the avocado.

Um, so this was really interesting. I don't store anything in a bag unless it's like the carrots that come in the back.

Riley: Yeah. I found this to be very interesting information. And also I've gotta kind of rethink the way that I store my fruits and vegetables if this is the better way. Because, well, I do keep my fruits and vegetables separate. They're not in the same 

place in my 

Roni: Yeah, I do too. 

Riley: it's fascinating like why a refrigerator would even have a fruit and vegetable se like separate drawers for those things.

Sometimes they're together.

Roni: Mine has, my drawers have like a little slider at the top with like a, like air holes for the [00:37:00] fruit. And then the vegetables is no air 

Riley: And

this is why. 

Roni: so it's like the, the fruit can like breathe and the vegetables are 

Riley: No air, no breathing.

Roni: basically. No breathing.

Riley: So carrots in particular, um, will turn bitter if they're exposed to that ethylene gas. And so I mean, it's the more you know,

the more you know, I 

Roni: really is all these little, it's like all these little tidbits similar to salt, fat, acid, heat, where it's just like, it's the little things that can actually make a dramatic 

Riley: Yeah. I, I mean I, I feel a little uneducated, like as we read this book. 'cause I'm like, how did I not know that that's why you kept your fruits and vegetables separate. But, you know, nobody taught me that. That's why you keep 'em separate. So just like the why, why the fridge even has that little slider, or why you have two separate drawers and why it's important to like, follow that.

You know, it's not just like, because the refrigerator company is like, oh, we're cute and we've got a vegetable drawer and a fruit drawer, you know? But if your carrots turned bitter and then you cook them and then the recipe that you made with them is [00:38:00] gross because your carrots were bad, if you just don't do that one thing, then your carrots will continue to have their sweet, delicious flavor instead of tasting bitter.

And then your recipe will be better. It just, it ultimately, all, all roads lead to being a better cook.

Roni: Speaking of things that you don't wanna store together, she says, do not store onions and potatoes together because potatoes give off a lot of moisture and it can cause your onions to go bad faster.

So that's interesting because I think a lot of people, well, this is probably, ancestral kind of a knowledge of like people who used to use food sellers and stuff.

'cause like root vegetables, like both potatoes and onions they're very hardy and so you could keep them in like a cool, you know, vegetable cellar. But I bet people knew like you don't keep 'em in the same corner, right? You put the potatoes over here and the onions go over here because when we put 'em next to each other, they go bad.

Riley: This is another one of those sections where every single [00:39:00] vegetable you could ever think of. Potentially anywhere in the world is listed in this section. The only thing she says that she doesn't have much experience with, is wasabi root and one other. I just have to go

find it. 

Roni: It's like Ora or

Riley: because she Just couldn't find them in her area.

So if you, if there's a vegetable that you eat is listed here.

Roni: Yeah. So she goes through all the different types of peppers. She goes through both a whole list of hot peppers and sweet peppers. I wanted to mention on the hot peppers, I don't know about any other pepper other than jalapeno as far as this is concerned, but I found an article on all recipes.

I actually found this article a long time ago because I was like, why are, why do, sometimes I get jalapenos on, they're so spicy and other times get jalapenos and they're not spicy at all. Because sometimes you want, sometimes you want a spicy jalapeno for whatever you're making, and then other times you're like, this is too much.

'cause this recipe calls for like three jalapenos, and if they're all super hot, [00:40:00] we're gonna be dying. So here's my tidbit about how to pick for spiciness on a jalapeno. The easiest way to tell if the peppers in your grocery store are from younger or mature plants is to look for the telltale stretch marks.

The more white lines and marks you see, the hotter the pepper will likely be the smoother and shinier the pepper, the younger and therefore milder. It will likely taste. So basically if you go into the grocery store and look at jalapenos, you'll see some of them have these like vertical lines on them.

And like she said, they kinda look like stretch marks. And then you, so you, if you're wanting spicy, go for those ones because those are more mature and the maturity of the pepper determines how hot it's gonna be, at least as far as a jalapeno is concerned. And if you want a younger, delicate, very immature, very mild and sweet jalapeno, go for the ones that are shiny and don't have any stretch marks 

Riley: That's super, super [00:41:00] helpful information. I, I found the whole Scoville Scoville scale to be interesting. Which is, In the US the hotness of a pepper is rated on a Scoville Scoville scale, which can go from zero, uh, up to like 200 to 350,000. So things,

Roni: I think over a million. Actually, one of the ones in here, she said was like 

Riley: which one was that?

Roni: The ghost pepper, it ranges from 800,000 to over 1 million.

Riley: Okay. Yeah. So I had

an incorrect cap. 

Roni: Oh, the Carolina Reaper actually, which is the cross between the Ghost Pepper and the Red Haro hottest Guinness Book or World Records Hottest Pepper.

It ranks 1.6 million to 2.2 million in the Scoville scale.

Riley: Yeah. Yikes.

Roni: Did that, have you ever watched the YouTube channel Hot Ones? Is that, is that, that's what this made me think of. 'cause they do their hot sauce based off of Scoville. I.

Riley: I haven't watched that, but I, my husband's a fireman and they often will try to find the hottest [00:42:00] hot sauce and put it on everything. Or like, guys will bring in like the world's hottest chocolate and it's got like ghost pepper in it, or Carolina Reaper in it, and then they like all taste it to for fun. Um, now I, I think I have a pretty high tolerance for hot peppers. I do really like them. I, I like my peppers to be spicy, 

but I know a lot of people can't handle it. So this, it lists every single pepper and it tells you where it lands. So if you like the flavor of peppers, but you just are, have kind of no idea which one is gonna be the one for you or which one's not the one for you.

This helps because it, it gives the scoville scale for every single pepper.

Roni: Yeah. Or if you have a recipe that calls for a Serrano pepper and you don't know that a serrano pepper is technically hotter than a jalapeno pepper, right? Like it's an area where you could make a substitution. If you don't like a lot of spice, you could be like, okay, well I'll look for the, I'll get a jalapeno instead, because they're similar size, [00:43:00] similar texture. So like an area for

Riley: yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Roni: Okay. And then she moves on to bell peppers, so sweet bell peppers, which are not on the scoville scale because they're just sweet. And this blew my mind. Okay, the number of lobes on a bell pepper determines what you should buy it for. Right. Like we all, like they have, I don't know what else to call 'em other than lobes, right?

Like they have the, what do we call 'em on peaches, indentation, 

Riley: the fold. 

Roni: a crease. I was thinking of the word, I was thinking of the word crease. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know they have like the creases in them, which define the different lobes of the bell pepper. And she says bell peppers that have four or more are better for eating raw. And peppers that have three are better for roasting, sauteing, and grilling.

So I'm guessing the more lobes that has probably the sweeter it is. She doesn't define that specifically, but that's kind of what I would infer from this. Who the heck ever knew to count the number of [00:44:00] lobes on a bell pepper? I did not. I was this many days old when I learned this.

Riley: Today, years.

Roni: Oh, that's, that's, is that, 

Riley: the 

phrase is, I was today 

years 

Roni: phrase wrong. 

Riley: Okay. I gotta get it together.

Roni: All right. We've recover. Okay. So the last, vegetable that I wanted to talk about is zucchini and summer squash, because if you've ever planted a zucchini plant, you know that one plant is too many because we, you know, like you just, one plant gives you like seven zucchini every day. And there's like this joke.

So my, extended family is from Kansas. There's like this joke it's probably in other places too, but I know it from my family from Kansas that they're like. Once July comes around, don't park your car and leave the windows down. 'cause people will just be putting zucchini in your front 

Riley: I have [00:45:00] literally. I've been given a lot of zucchini, but I've never heard that before.

Roni: It's probably like a more specific phrase, but clearly I'm not good at phrases today. But yeah, so like the idea is that just like when you plant zucchini in your garden, you get overwhelmed with zucchini, right? Like, this is why we have to figure out how to make zucchini bread and muffins and all of the things people are trying to be like, here's a chocolate cake that has zucchini in it and you don't even know.

I just wanted to give some ideas for how you could use your zucchini. So, you could obviously boil or steam it. That sounds kind of boring to me, I'm not gonna lie. You can roast your zucchini, saute your zucchini, grill it, you can bake it into. Sweet treats. Um, you can make casserole, you can put it in casserole, you can make zucchini noodles.

So those are just some ideas if you're looking to use up your zucchini this year my husband disliked zucchini, so I didn't plant [00:46:00] any this

year. Okay. That's a lie. I planted a zucchini plant and then something ate it when it was like an inch tall and my husband said, thank goodness I hate zucchini and I don't want any of it this year.

So we're not eating, we're not having zucchini this year. I bought some other stuff instead.

Riley: I'm racking my brain over here because my daughter ca like, loves zucchini bread, but she always calls it the wrong vegetable. So she'll like, I can't think of what it is, like carrot bread or 

Cucumber bread. I don't remember, but I wish I could think of it because it's the way she will consume it.

Roni: Oh yeah.

Riley: now granted, I don't know that you can call it a zucchini or a vegetable after it gets baked with chocolate in the oven.

Just like a carrot cake. It's no longer a vegetable, but. I always like, I'll at least roast or like pan fry, saute some of the zucchini that I'm given every [00:47:00] year.

And then usually I'll make at least one zucchini chocolate cake.

Roni: Yeah. I love zucchini. Honestly, my favorite way, this is the way that my mom made it growing up, which is just sauteing it in a pan with butter and then put Chinese 

Riley: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Roni: It's so good. Like the, like warm flavors of the Chinese five spice is just so good with the 

Riley: yeah. I like to do it with, butter, onions, and Greek seasoning.

Roni: Ooh. Yeah.

Riley: But you gotta fry it like long enough so that it gets a little bit, it's like soft but crispy.

Roni: I tried to make zucchini fries one time. Granted, this was before I had an air fryer. It was way too much work. Way too much work for like mediocre fries.

Riley: Yeah, a quick note on zoodles or like zucchini noodles. They have like pretty high moisture content. Um, and so making sure you dry them just like you would dry it before, you made bread. Like you, you know, you're gonna like grade it on your grater or you're gonna doodle it with your oodle or, um, you just wanna like, make sure that you like, absorb a lot of that water or your [00:48:00] sauce that you're putting it with.

It'll just be very water.

Roni: I think the best tip that I have for that is to, once you have graded it or turned it into noodles, uh, sprinkle salt on it. Let it sit, like put it on paper towels or like a cheesecloth or something and let it sit for. Like 10, 15 minutes with the salt on it. And then the salt helps bring out more of the moisture and then you can like squeeze it and get a lot of that moisture 

Riley: I usually always do the squeeze, and it's shocking how much water is in a

zucchini because when you cut it, you don't necessarily see that. You know, it doesn't, yeah. But when but longer it sits. It just, it's amazing.

So for freezing vegetables, you can do this in a multiple ways. Um, but like Roni already mentioned, preparing your vegetable the way you're going to want to eat it is the first step. She also suggests blanching most vegetables before freezing them, um, which is an added step, but again, you're not wasting it and you know you're gonna use it later.

And I always [00:49:00] love when my past self did so much work for me, but it does help preserve the vegetable better in the freezer.

Roni: Yeah, that was something that I don't do that. This is the thing that I learned from this book. I don't normally blanch vegetables unless it's like a to, I'll blanch my tomatoes to get the skin off of them before I freeze them, but I never would've thought to do that for other vegetables. 

Riley: I thought it was pretty helpful information too,

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. So then she goes through all sorts of ti the timing that you would use for blanching, different things. Like she, she doesn't skimp on information.

Riley: not at all. And just like we mentioned that every vegetable is listed and every fruit is listed. She also goes back through every single vegetable and how to freeze it. And so specifically, I'm like looking at asparagus, remove the woody ends, cut them into spears, blanch them if they're thin for two minutes, medium for three minutes, large for four minutes.

Like the most specific, this is a kitchen handbook.

Roni: yeah, it really is. So [00:50:00] then she does have some vegetables that don't require blanching. One of them is avocados. So you can freeze avocados if you di if you weren't freezing your avocados already, now you know you could freeze them. So when they have gone ripe after five minutes or five business days, you can freeze them, and you can freeze them whole in halves, sliced or mashed.

But again, she mentions that it's gonna alter the texture, so it's best to be like, use them in a guacamole or something afterwards. You're not gonna just put 'em on your avocado toast probably.

Riley: I also found it very interesting that she would freeze a cucumber. 

Roni: I thought that was interesting 

Riley: But she says you can do that, peel it or leave the peel on, uh, slice it, place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment and freeze until firm.

Fascinating. 

Roni: I was trying to figure out what you would, how you would use it after the fact. 'cause the texture's definitely gonna be different when they come out because they have 

Riley: Yeah, she definitely says Don't freeze lettuces. I think there's a whole list of things not to freeze. Let me find that really quick.

Escarole 

Lettuce, microgreens, [00:51:00] radicchio, sprouts and watercress. And I would've put cucumber here. Um, I do think though that like if you're a person who juices. Potentially, or I mean, honestly, like I've put cucumber in a smoothie before and it does give it like a brightness and um, like a freshness to it.

So I could see using it in a smoothie, though I would never have thought to fro to freeze it,

Roni: no, me neither. But I do like this. I, I did plant a lot of cucumbers this year, and so this is nice to know that I could freeze them. 'cause like, usually what I'll do, you know, once our strawberries are popping off and our kale is popping off, you know, like I'll freeze things in individual, like smoothie packs together.

And so it's nice to know like, oh yeah, I could put a cucumber in there too, as part of the 

Riley: Absolutely. It's perfect.

Roni: All right, so final section of today's podcast is much shorter. This is herbs and spices. And one thing to note is [00:52:00] that, the dried herbs, also known as spices, are a more concentrated flavor than the fresh version, which makes sense, right? Because like if you're looking at the density of something, like one tablespoon of something that's dried is like a lot more dense than one tablespoon of something that's just like diced or chopped up.

But that's something to consider if you're like, well, I don't have time to chop up a, like five cloves of garlic. This happens to me all the time. And I'm like, I'm just gonna put in powdered garlic instead and it'll be fine.

And so it's just good to realize like, okay, so if it calls for a specific number of cloves of garlic, you don't necessarily wanna be like, well, that's probably like a whole tablespoon of garlic. Like, you'll be keeping the vampires away at that point.

Riley: I typically measure garlic with my heart,

Roni: but fresh garlic I think is different than garlic powder. 

Riley: Yeah, I'm a little stingy with garlic 

powder. I very rarely use it. I almost always use fresh

garlic. 

Roni: [00:53:00] Mm-hmm.

Riley: I would like to talk about bay leaves because we have talked about this on the podcast before and how, what did, what was the phrase, well, how did we talk about them last time? Like that there are people who think that bay leaves are just like a, like a mind game. Like, I'm gonna put a bay leaf in, but it adds no flavor.

And I actually didn't think that was true because I always have, I make this chicken soup, and like white chicken chili and it calls for a bay leaf and it tastes so much better when there's a bay leaf in it, or four.

Roni: yeah. I think you even cited like a article where they did this, where they tried different things with the bay leaf.

Riley: yeah. Well, I'm gonna read this to you. Bay leaves are a combination, the flavor combination of eucalyptus, mint, lemon, and fresh cut grass. And there are two varieties. Turkish and Californian. Turkish variety has more subtle flavor. Bay leaves are always available, dried. The fresh leaves can sometimes be found in the produce department, and they're used to flavor soups, stews, [00:54:00] vegetables, and meats.

Roni: Okay, so this is, the flavor profile is interesting because I specifically remember in that podcast you were like, have you ever tried a Bay Leaf before? And I was like, no. Why would I have done that? And you were like, I did it. 'cause I wanted to know what is the flavor that this is giving my thing? And you described it like a pine needle.

You were like, it kinda has like a piney flavor, which I think is in line with these, with like how you would describe some of these other 

Riley: Yeah. Like if 

eucalyptus and fresh cut grass had a baby, it would taste like a pine.

Roni: I love it.

Riley: I don't know. I just feel validated in that bay leaves are useful and that they do add flavor and it's not a mind game. And they, I mean, they have a very particular flavor.

Roni: yeah, they do.

Riley: I love seasonings. I'm a high spice and seasoning person. Like we use them frequently and not in small amounts.

Roni: Yeah. I don't think that she necessarily mentioned this in here, but one thing that I [00:55:00] do wanna mention is that if you're buying ground spices at the grocery store, which I think pretty much everybody is, it is important to trade them out for fresh ones. Every now and again, I feel like there are things like nutmeg or cloves that you maybe only use when the holidays come around.

You really don't wanna use the like 5-year-old. Bottle of nutmeg when it comes to like making your Christmas cookies or something, because they do tend to lose their flavor and lose their potency. She does say that in here, that things lose their flavor. Right? I think, I think like the general rule of thumb is like six months, maybe a year.

I know at our grocery store there is a section where they have like really small containers of specific spices, and so like if there's something that you only use once a year, I would just try to find the smallest possible serving of it. So that way it's, it's gonna taste the best in the things that you have and you're not gonna be like, I don't even think we added nutmeg in here.

Like [00:56:00] there's no flavor to this, you know?

Riley: Yeah. Another suggestion for buying smaller amounts, um, is to go to your, like a local spice shop. I know that we, we have a local spice shop that's incredible. And so, like, I know that not everyone has that. But you can buy smaller portions, teeny ounce bags of things versus larger amounts

Roni: and then at the spice shop, they're like a little fresher too, 

Riley: Yeah. Uh, and I would imagine that they rotate them out pretty quickly. Like they have, like they have a very set, this is when these go. You can also, another great option for our spice shop is that you can buy the refillable jar and then the next time you go back in there, all you have to do is buy the bag to refill the jar.

Um, which I really like.

So, because I hate throwing away all those little glass bottles when you're done with them. So I love the idea of just like, refilling.

Oh, I was just gonna say that pepper is the world's most popular spice, which I found very interesting. And saffron is the world's most expensive spice.

Depends on where you are in the world though. My niece just [00:57:00] traveled to, oh, where was she? Uh, like Croatia

area. 

Where was she? I can't remember the specific place she was, but she brought me back Saffron from there. And it was shocking the price difference for how, where she bought 

it in that part of the world. Yeah, it was amazing. And I've been using it. It's so fun to have fresh saffron.

Roni: Oh yeah. I like that.

Riley: One other thing that I found really interesting that I didn't know is that the vanilla bean is a pod from an orchid flour.

Roni: I didn't know that either, which is interesting 'cause I have bought a brand of vanilla before that has like the flower, you know, like a picture of a flower. And I did not make the connection that, that that was the flower where the vanilla came from. I just thought like, I have a pretty design.

Riley: Yeah, it's a very labor intensive, expensive process. Cured. There's cured for several months before they're sold, and so, I mean, it makes sense why vanilla extract costs so much. I had no, I didn't know that, and I [00:58:00] feel silly that I didn't know that, but I, I love this information though.

Roni: All right. I think we are gonna wrap things up today. This is a little bit longer episode. So we're not gonna include any dinner dilemmas today. Uh, I think we will release a shorter dinner dilemma episode maybe next week as just a fun little extra episode for the month. Before we go though, ri, do you want to talk about a recent recipe that you've had that you loved?

Riley: Okay. So we have had, we had some family in town and our grill, which I had based nearly every meal, meal around, needed a new part. And so I had to call an audible on one of our meals, before my husband could fix the smoker grill situation. So I ended up making this like.

I put chicken breasts into a pan. I, I don't love baked chicken. I actually don't love cooking chicken on the stove top either. It makes such a big mess. But this was a really great kind of option when you don't have an outside option, like the grill or smoker. And I, I. It's like a sauce that you make with, [00:59:00] half and half or heavy cream, depending on what you have.

Chicken broth, roasted or, uh, sun dried tomatoes, um, spinach, Parmesan. Um, I think there's paprika in it. Garlic, uh, you mix it all together and you put the chicken into that sauce, put it in the oven for about an hour and so good. And it has been like, and I've been temping it, so the chicken's coming out right when it's done.

It's not overcooked or dry or anything like that, but it cooks in that sauce and it comes together really beautifully and it was really good. And it was a good kind of calling an audible for when I couldn't use the smoker.

Roni: It does sound really good. I'm gonna have to find that recipe.

Riley: It's in my Plan to Eat account. What about you? Yeah.

Roni: We haven't eaten ours yet. It's what we'll have for dinner tonight. It's, uh, chicken tinga and we're gonna have it in tacos. I think I've made this for you before

Riley: Have

Roni: So I'm doing something different today though. I'm just cooking a whole chicken. So I make the chicken tinga and a crockpot.

Usually it's just either chicken breasts or chicken thighs, but. With the price of groceries right now it's like we're just gonna buy the whole [01:00:00] chicken because I can buy a whole chicken for $8 and chicken breasts for like $12, you know? So I'm actually feeling kind of nervous about it, which is a little, which is like a little silly, but because usually when I make a recipe like this, it's like there's no bones, there's no skin.

So like when it's ready, you just shred it up and all of the sauce and everything is already cooked in with it. And so it's really simple and so. Now, like I put all of the things in the crockpot for the sauce and I also put the whole chicken in there. And so at some point the thing that I'm nervous about is I don't know at what point I do this process of like, I have to take the whole chicken out and I have to take the skin off and I have to debone it and put the meat back in.

So I'm just like, I just, I'm not sure exactly what this is gonna look like 'cause I've never done it with a whole chicken before.

Riley: Do you have a meat thermometer?

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: Okay, so temp it in multiple places and I wouldn't it. I wouldn't shred it or skin do any of those processes until it's all totally done.

Roni: Well, sure. I just wasn't sure if I should wait [01:01:00] until it's like literally falling off the bone or if I should do it when it's like just cooked and then, and then do it at that point, and then let everything still continue to like mingle in the pot, get to know each other in the pot.

Riley: Who says that? Somebody says that.

Roni: off at the office,

Riley: Oh, yeah. Somebody says that. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, that's a good question. I think I might let it go till it's falling apart, until it kind of like come like till you can kind of shred it off, uh, off of the bone already, but I think it's gonna be better than normal because I bet all those extra flavors and juices and things like that are gonna give it a lot of extra flavor.

Roni: I hope so. I mean, it's almost like making like meat stock the, with the tinga sauce. So I think I, I'm hoping it's gonna be really

Riley: Yeah. Sounds great.

Roni: Alrightyy, well thank you for joining us for another book Cub Breakdown episode of Grocery Shopping Secrets. We are gonna have our dinner Dilemmas episode [01:02:00] come out next week, and we will be talking about the book again in two weeks.

So we'll see you then.