Produce News for Week of July 30, 2012

 MUSHROOMS (Monday, July 30): All this week we are getting you ready for a summer grilling party. And at our parties, at the Marks' residence, I put out a buffet. That's right. I get all kinds of ingredients, and ‑‑ so people can do their own kabobs. It's kind of like a kabob buffet, and people can do their own kabobs. I give them the little skewers and they can make their kabobs any way they want. A little olive oil, salt and pepper, go on the grill, a few minutes later you've got summer kabobs. So we're going to start, actually, right here with mushrooms, and if you notice, I just have a little brush here, and I'm just brushing these mushrooms because I don't want to really get them wet. You know, these grow in compost, so all you're really doing is getting a little bit of dust off them. So as part of our little buffet, we're just getting them set here, and then people can come through and skewer them themselves. So what is next on our buffet? Well, that's for tomorrow.

PEPPERS (Tuesday, July 31): Hey, the Marks' family, we've been outside, and we've been listening to the Summer Olympics, and what fun, we've been out grilling. So, all this week I thought it would be fun to get you ready for the grill, and, actually, we're doing some kabobs. That's right. And one of the fun things I love to do with kabobs is make a buffet out of it. So we started with mushrooms ‑‑ I cleaned off some mushrooms, and now we've got to put on some peppers, and I love to use all the different colors of the peppers. So here I'm just doing some beautiful gold ‑‑ and we're going to cut these into nice thick chunks just like this. Because when this goes on to the skewer, just like so ‑‑ yeah, you can put several of these. So don't just do one color, of course, you want some green up there. I prefer to get all of the colors, just like the Olympics or all of the Nations ‑‑ get all of the colors of the bell peppers ‑‑ so you got gold and you got red and, of course, you've got orange and green, so get them out there and cube them up and that's going to be part of our grilling buffet.

SQUASH (Wednesday, August 1): Hey, you know all this week we're getting you ready for the grill. You like grilling, but have you ever done a kabob buffet? Well, that's what we're doing here. So what we're doing, we're getting nice thick chunks of all kinds of fruits and vegetables ‑‑ we're on to squash now. Look at that, big thick chunks of this beautiful sunburst squash. Let's get some chunks of ‑‑ and one of the things I love to do with the zucchini, I love to do an oblique cut, and this is an oblique cut. It's a cross cut like this then you turn the squash 45 degrees and a cross cut like this. So now you end up with these nice chunks like this that go perfect on to your skewer. So you can do any other cut you want, but I really like the oblique cut. You know, squash, a lot of moisture in it, so they actually cook up very, very simple. So we're going to add our squash to our little buffet here. What's on for tomorrow? Well, how about some cherry tomatoes. You've got to have a little red in there.

ONIONS (Thursday, August 2): All right, we've been getting you ready for kabobs. That's right. We're watching the Olympic Games and we're getting you ready for kabobs. And I love to do a kabob buffet and grilling kabob buffet. And we started with mushrooms and then we had some peppers and then, of course, squash, and now we're going to get some nice thick cubes of onions. You've got to have onions. Now, one of the other things I love to do is I love, absolutely ‑‑ cipollini onions on this. So see how that's a really nice thick cube on there? So we're going to add this right on over here to our buffet. And then, of course, what do you need? Tomatoes. I mean, this is, like, the easiest thing right here these Cherub tomatoes. They have, like, twice the sugar content of regular tomatoes. One of the other things I love about these, you don't have to cut them or anything. Just add them to your buffet here and you just put these right on to your skewer, so no cutting or anything.

PINEAPPLE (Friday, August 3): Well, if you are at the Marks' residence and we're doing some grilling and we're doing kabobs, you are going to get some pineapple on that kabob. So I just simply cubed up some pineapple here. So now we have our buffet ‑‑ take a look at our buffet. Check this out. So you can add anything else. You can add some meats if you want, but I've got, of course, mushrooms and bell pepper and squash ‑‑ so let's go ahead and start our little kabob. Oh, here's what I want to show you. This is really cool. You can do, actually, these beautiful rosemary kabobs. So we're going to take the rosemary and we're going to puncture in through everything. That just goes all the way back, and then we're going to do some pepper, and again do the different colors of pepper. Then we're going to do some squash, beautiful squash. See how easy that goes on there? And then we're going to do some beautiful onions as they say, and then this goes right on the grill ‑‑ a little olive oil, a little salt and pepper, and oh, my goodness. So do a grilling buffet of kabobs.