What to Eat While Waiting for the Tomatoes

by 
Jean MacKenzie, Weavers Way Mt. Airy Produce Manager

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

From The Food Network’s “Great American Pie Cook-Off.” (Filling only — you’re on your own for the crust.)

  • 2 1/2 cups chopped fresh red rhubarb 
  • 2 1/2 cups strawberries, washed, destemmed and cut in large pieces
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar 
  • 2 tbls. Minute tapioca 
  • 1 tbls. all-purpose flour 
  • 1/2 tsp. lemon zest 
  • 1/2 tsp. lemon juice 
  • 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon 
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract 
  • 3 tbls. butter, cubed small 
  • 1 egg white beaten with 1 tsp. water 
  • Pastry for two crust pie
  • Large-granule sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 425 F. In a large bowl, mix the rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, tapioca, flour, lemon zest and juice, cinnamon and vanilla. Pour out into chilled, unbaked bottom crust. Dot the top of the filling with butter. Brush edges of pie crust with egg-white wash, then put on top crust and crimp to seal edges. Brush top with additional egg-white wash and sprinkle with large-granule sugar. 

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then decrease temperature to 375 and bake for 45-50 minutes more, or until the filling starts bubbling. Cool before serving.

May can be a difficult month in the produce world: We’re all looking forward to the local harvests, but except for cooking greens, some baby salads and a few hoop-house tomatoes, the local stuff just isn’t ready. We’ll have local asparagus by the end of the month. But one crop that is always fresh and local is mushrooms.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms are so sensitive to physical insult that even careful “one-touch” picking and packing can activate an enzyme that hastens rotting. Or so says Scientific American in a March 2016 article about genetic editing of mushrooms to stop browning and decay. 

Here at the Co-op, we almost never have a problem with mushrooms, but maybe that’s because they are fresh and local, and they sell so quickly. But mushrooms from Kennett Square, the “Mushroom Capital of the World,” are shipped all over the country, so maybe that co-op in East Gbip is having trouble.

I recommend reading the article, which I have in my office, but be prepared for statements such as “The homing is accomplished by a small piece of nucleic acid called the guide RNA, which is designed to mirror the DNA sequence in the target area and attach to it using the unique and specific attraction of DNA base pairs made famous by James Watson and Francis Crick.” Right. Just what I was about to say.

So, what are genetically “edited” mushrooms? Not Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), according to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which regulates GMO crops. The distinction between “genetically modified” and “genetically edited” is that genetic editing does not involve the introduction of “foreign,” i.e. non-mushroom, genes, and thus does not need to be regulated. The technology is apparently fast, simple (!) and inexpensive, and mushroom growers could embrace it fairly quickly. Oddly, though, no one has yet tasted a genetically edited (GEO) mushroom – as soon as the browning tests were completed and proof of the principle established, the mushrooms were destroyed.

How will the public respond to a genetically edited mushroom? Perhaps the way they’ve responded to GMOs – with deep suspicion. 

Strawberries

Last year, early warm weather brought us local strawberries weeks earlier than expected. They shouldn’t be here yet, but if we have weather patterns similar to last year’s, they might show up early.

Fresh local strawberries are of course delicious, and that’s reason enough to eat them. But did you know that strawberry consumption has been linked to improved heart health and maintaining motor skills and memory?

A study at Harvard Medical School found that subjects who consumed the most strawberries had lower levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which is a bio-marker for inflammation. The USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University conducted studies that seem to show that strawberries protect against losses in motor and memory function as we age.

Rhubarb

Soon we’ll have local rhubarb, and aside from its distinctive flavor, rhubarb has a significant nutritional bonus: One cup of cooked rhubarb packs a whopping 348 milligrams of calcium. The RDA for calcium, essential for bone health, ranges from 1,000 mg to 1,300 mg.

Bring on the strawberry-rhubarb pie. I feel better already.

mackenzie@weaversway.coop