{"id":1484,"date":"2012-10-15T16:14:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T16:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/?p=1484"},"modified":"2012-10-15T16:14:21","modified_gmt":"2012-10-15T16:14:21","slug":"greengages-and-variety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/greengages-and-variety\/","title":{"rendered":"Greengages and Variety"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember reading about it years ago, in Eat Here, Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket<\/em>.\u00a0 Among hundreds of interesting insights into our food system, Brian Halweil revealed this tidbit:\u00a0 Britain’s National Collection features of 2000 varieties of apples!\u00a0 What’s more, spread among this diversity is an almost continuous harvest, with some varieties ripening as early as April and May and others clear into winter.<\/p>\n

Maybe this was such a shock because I was raised in the Red Delicious generation.\u00a0 In fact, Red Delicious were so ubiquitous they became synonymous with apples.\u00a0 We know that variety was sacrificed on the altar of industrial convenience.\u00a0 What we don’t know is all the tastes, colors and textures we’ve been deprived of.<\/p>\n

I got a chance to experience some of what we lost this summer.\u00a0 Early July, a friend from England began frantically emailing our beekeeping group about greengages, and how the bears were breaking down the trees to get them.\u00a0 What in the world is a “greengage,” I wondered. Turns out they are a variety of plum, in a lovely, translucent shade of green (big surprise.)<\/p>\n

\"Greengages
Greengages, pictured here with the more familiar black and red plums.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My British friend explained that a man named Gage discovered the plum in France long ago and brought the green beauty to England, hence the name.\u00a0 They have become an English favorite.\u00a0 Now we had to protect my friend’s precious greengage trees from bears, so one morning before work, a friend and I teetered on ladders (on a sloped driveway!), to rescue plums and tree.\u00a0 I ended up with a huge box, which made no less than 16 pints of sauce!<\/p>\n

In the way that seasonal eaters develop a weird pleasure from creating fun things from whatever nature delivers up<\/a>, those plums have got my wheels turning.\u00a0 They have a very subtle flavor–not at all like their sweet-tart cousins that are common in grocery stores here.\u00a0 My British friend thinks they would pair nicely with lemon and\/or ginger.\u00a0 My fellow plum picker and I were thinking along the lines of an orange marmalade.\u00a0 Plenty of fodder for experimentation come winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember reading about it years ago, in Eat Here, Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket.\u00a0 Among hundreds of interesting insights into our food system, Brian Halweil revealed this tidbit:\u00a0 Britain’s National Collection features of 2000 varieties of apples!\u00a0 What’s more, spread among this diversity is an almost continuous harvest, with some varieties ripening … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}