summer fruit

Farmer of the Month: Clair Kauffman of Kauffman Orchards

By Lex Flamm on August 16, 2024

Kauffman Orchards in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, turns out super-sweet Saturn donut peaches, glossy Ruby Queen plums, and crisp Ginger Gold apples every year. But Orchard Manager Clair Kauffman is a …

Filed Under: Profiles Tagged With: fall fruit, family farm, Pennsylvania, small farms, summer fruit

August Apples in Season From West to East

By Erin Mittelstaedt on August 14, 2024

I hope you’ve enjoyed these last few months of peaches, nectarines, and plums because their summer season is starting to wind down. We’re still seeing lovely stone fruit for the moment, but August …

Filed Under: Chief Banana Tagged With: Gravenstein Apple, seasonal fruit, summer fruit

Wait, When Is Grape Season? Your California Update

By Erin Mittelstaedt on July 31, 2024

Cotton Candy™, Moon Drop™, Muscat, Koshu, Bronx, Concord… these aren’t just carnival foods and town names, they’re unique grape varieties, too. I first tried Concord grapes about 20 years ago in …

Filed Under: Chief Banana Tagged With: California, farm grants, fruitguys community fund, summer fruit

Cling Peaches vs. Freestone Peaches: What’s the Difference?

By Lex Flamm on June 21, 2024

A few weeks ago, my husband cut open one of the season’s very first peaches. It caved slightly to the touch and released a fragrant, floral mist when the knife bit into it. The scent alone made our …

Filed Under: Fruit Tips Tagged With: fresh fruit, stone fruit, summer fruit

Frozen Grapes: A Healthy and Cooling Summer Snack

By Lex Flamm on June 21, 2024

When I was a little girl, I knew grape season had arrived by the way the air looked in the grocery store parking lot. If it hung there still and sleepy above the asphalt, that meant I had to wait a …

Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: healthy office, healthy snacks, summer fruit

Summer Fruit Guide 2024

By The FruitGuys on June 13, 2024

Have you ever eaten so many blackberries that they stained your fingers red, or bitten into a nectarine so ripe that its sticky juice dripped down your chin? Sweet fresh fruit is truly the taste of …

Filed Under: Fruit Tips Tagged With: berries, stone fruit, summer fruit

Rainier Cherries: The Cherry Jubilee Is Here!

By Erin Mittelstaedt on June 6, 2024

In my early twenties, I started a love affair with cherries. I was doing a six-week language program through my college in Tours, France, and my host family lived on a quiet street just uphill from …

Filed Under: Chief Banana Tagged With: cherries, stone fruit, summer fruit

Upgrade Your Fruit Mix to Get the Widest Variety of Summer Fruit

By The FruitGuys on May 30, 2024

Summer is the perfect time to upgrade your fruit mix! With the right mix, your team will get to taste all of the fantastic peaches, nectarines, plums, berries, grapes, and other fruits in season …

Filed Under: FruitGuys News Tagged With: fruit mixes, seasonal fruit, stone fruit, summer fruit

Summer Fruits You Should Taste

By Erin Mittelstaedt on May 22, 2024

Did you know that American farmers grow more than 100 different varieties of peaches? Most of us think of peaches as either white or yellow (same with nectarines) but there are at least 1,000 kinds of …

Filed Under: Chief Banana, Fruit Tips Tagged With: berries, stone fruit, summer fruit

FruitGuy Noir in The Sugar Crash

By Chris Mittelstaedt on September 12, 2023

I got the call around 2 p.m. They said a candy sugar crash had hit their place of work. This can be a tough town, I told them. There is always a clear plastic bowl filled with miniature chocolates in …

Filed Under: FruitGuys News Tagged With: fruit mixes, fruitguy noir, healthy office, seasonal fruit, summer fruit

Does Back-to-School mean Summer is Over?

By Chris Mittelstaedt on August 8, 2023

I wasn’t a great Latin student, but I lived by the motto coined by my high school Latin Club members – semper ubi sub-ubi, “Always wear underwear.” (Ubi means “where,” but you get the idea, this was …

Filed Under: Chief Banana Tagged With: farm-to-school program, healthy kids, seasonal fruit, summer fruit

The Joys of Summer Fruit

By Chris Mittelstaedt on August 1, 2023

Summer for many of us is tied to the memory of a perfect piece of fruit. The tartness of that just-picked blackberry; the smell of a peach so sweet you salivate in anticipation of biting into …

Filed Under: FruitGuys News Tagged With: fruit mixes, Gravenstein, seasonal fruit, summer, summer fruit

What a Plum-mer!

By Chris Mittelstaedt on July 25, 2023

Summer is flying by faster than a fish on a unicycle and that can only mean one thing: PLUMS. Plums are now joining the parade of stone fruit that began back in June with cherries and apricots, and …

Filed Under: Chief Banana Tagged With: stone fruit, summer fruit

Happy Summer & Welcome Peaches

By Chris Mittelstaedt on June 20, 2023

At this time of year, varieties of peaches begin to come in and out of harvest almost weekly, evolving from June tartness to the cinnamony-sweet notes of late August. As I track the progression of …

Filed Under: FruitGuys News Tagged With: stone fruit, summer fruit

Clinging to Fruit 101

By Chris Mittelstaedt on June 6, 2023

If Cling and Freestone sounds like a 1970s folk group gone electric, you’re not quite wrong. Stone fruit season has begun and it makes me want to do a head-banging pan flute solo. It’s never too late …

Filed Under: Fruit Tips Tagged With: Banana, ripening fruit, stone fruit, summer fruit

The Gamble of Early Summer Fruit

By Chris Mittelstaedt on May 9, 2023

Long ago I wondered why slot machines used cherries as the winning images for hitting the jackpot. It didn’t make sense to me. Maybe a dollar sign, or a star, but cherries? It seemed odd. Yet a …

Filed Under: Chief Banana Tagged With: California, stone fruit, summer fruit

FruitGuy Noir in Spring is Sprung

By Chris Mittelstaedt on April 4, 2023

Tuesday was on my calendar for a meeting on Monday. It had been there since Thursday penciled it in on Friday. I was confusing myself as to who was what-day and what-day was who so I tried to clear …

Filed Under: FruitGuys News Tagged With: fruitguy noir, spring, summer fruit

Pliny The Elder’s Last Podcast

By Chris Mittelstaedt on August 11, 2022

Scene: Pliny the Elder’s open atrium podcast studio in Misenum, Bay of Naples, August 24th, 79 CE Pliny E: Welcome listeners & toga wearers. This is again, Gaius Plinius Secundus coming to you …