Plain white rice

Hey look, I got a cool new rice cooker! It's a birthday present from my mother, (thanks Mom!) although I had to tell her exactly the make and model I wanted and where to get it from. I was kind of interested in the super-fancy models that have humidity and temperature sensors and use fuzzy logic to adjust the temperature and cooking time for perfect results every time, but I couldn't find one that did anything other than cook rice. I really wanted one that doubled as a slow cooker. One that tripled as a deep fryer would have been nice too, but, as far as I can tell, that remains a dream.

On the other hand, this one can also steam and make tofu. But that's for later, for now, let's talk rice.

My old rice cooker was fine if your expectations weren't too high. The rice tasted fine, but it was always kind of mushy and had a crunchy crust on the bottom which is a good thing in Chinese and Korean cooking, but it's a no-no in Japanese. The new cooker has settings for both styles along with the standard white, brown and congee settings.


Here's the first batch with the new cooker. I'm not sure I've zoomed in far enough for you to see, but each individual grain is distinct and has expanded until it looks like a little length of rice noodle. They're slightly sticky, but come apart easily; soft but not mushy; aromatic and flavorful (as rice goes, anyway). It's a far superior rice experience all the way around.

Since then, I've made a batch on quinoa (on the brown rice setting), which did turn into a bowl of mush, but I think that's just the nature of quinoa. It was a
fluffier mush than the old cooker ever managed and tastier too. Beyond the aesthetic improvements, I'm just pleased that it didn't burn as it did half the time in the old cooker.

Next up is slow cooking some short ribs, but that deserves a post to itself. And there's also the issue of what to top a big bowl of fine quality rice with which I'll be covering soon, too.

Hey, look what I bought!

I've mentioned a few times the difficulties I had dealing with my broken down manual pasta roller. It's screwed up one too many dishes and I finally tossed it. And I've replaced it with this shiny new Kitchen Aid attachment motorized pasta roller!

Using it is a completely different experience than the frustration of that old machine. The pasta goes in one end and comes out the other end flatter. And that's it; no drama involved. The only problem I encountered was, because I didn't need any flour to keep the dough from sticking to the rollers, I forgot that I needed it to keep the dough from sticking to itself. The net of noodles in the picture is one solid object.

I tore it into reasonably-sized pieces, made do and learned a lesson for next time. For the record, I sautéed up some broccoli raab (not brocollini as I mistakened identified it in the risotto post) and shrimp in butter and olive oil with plenty of garlic, red pepper flakes, fresh oregano and parsley for the pasta sauce. Finished with a squeeze of lemon it wasn't bad despite the uneven cooking of the wads of noodle.

Like all Kitchen Aid attachments, the price is ludicrous, but if you're serious about making pasta and maybe if you've got one of those 20% off Bed Bath and Beyond coupons, it's worth the investment.

CSA week nine start-up

Clearly, when I called last week a light share I didn't know what I was talking about as the freeze left us with even less to work with this time around.

I ought to use the corn today as it loses sweetness quickly. If I've got enough shrimp left I think I might make a shrimp and corn chowder.

The green beans are a bit too much for one side dish, but not enough to be the main component of a dish. I haven't come across many recipes that use green beans as one of several major ingredients. That's kind of an odd thing about green beans, isn't it?

The bok choy, on the other hand, is precisely the right size for a side dish and I have a recipe for restaurant-style Chinese greens in oyster sauce. I'd often order that as a secondary dish when ordering a meat-intensive main dish at the more authentic sort of Chinese restaurant. The mysteriously generic "Chinese greens" was my preferred version, but it's good with bok choy too.

The big bunches of parsley and cilantro make me think of North Africa as that's the only cuisine I know of that uses large amounts of both. There's a braised chicken and chickpeas that will use maybe a quarter of each bunch. Parsley salads aren't too tough to come by. I did a little searching just now and found that you can find cilantro-intensive recipes if you search for "dhania" or "dhanya" which is the Hindi and/or Punjabi term for it. I'll have to sort through what I found for a bit before I know what I'm going to cook.

Also in my North African cookbook was a charred red pepper salad that looked pretty good. Or, since it's so big, I might stuff it instead.

The extras bin was full of black sapotes when I got to my pick-up spot kind of late so I think a lot of people have given up on them. I took one so I'll be sure to have a full cup of pulp to work with when they're ripe. Given my success with the oat bars I think my next attempt might be a black sapote congo bar or maybe substituting them into a fig cookie recipe. I've got to deal with my nearly-ripe canistels first, though.

That leaves the tomato, which I'm sure will find a place, and the strawberries which have been so good fresh that I'm happier eating them by themselves or with a little cream than processing them at all.


After picking up my share I headed over to the Coral Gables Farmers Market and did a little shopping before it was time for the Slow Food Stone Crab Picnic. At the Rare Fruit Council booth I picked up a pummelo and a dragonfruit cutting. Pummelos are sweeter than grapefruit, but there is, I'm told, a fair bit of variation so I won't know what I'll be doing with mine until I get it open. The dragon fruit cutting, though, I've already planted. They're supposed to grow pretty quickly so I should know fairly soon if mine is going to do well.

I also bought some onions, potatoes and peppers. The peppers are nothing unusual, but I like how they looked with the pummelo and dragon fruit so I put them in the photo.

That's kind of long and it's getting well into the afternoon so I'll talk about the picnic in a separate post later.

Cracking the coconut

Last week I got myself a coconut and today I decided to get that thing open. I had to wait until I had a day off because I think this is something best done outside and I don't get home from work until after it's started getting dark these days.

I did a bit of research on coconut opening techniques and found that an expert coconuteer can hold it one hand, a machete in the other and have it open in moments. That was out as I wanted my fingers nowhere near the blade during this process. Another method I've seen is embedding a tall metal or bamboo spike in the ground and repeatedly impaling the coconut and ripping off chunks of husk. If there was a wrought iron fence with pointy bits on top nearby I might give that a try. But since I don't, plan C is to just lay the coconut on an open piece of ground and whack at it with the biggest knife I've got. That knife would be my Chinese cleaver. Not quite a machete, but not bad.

This process has several stages because a coconut has several layers. The labels on the cross-sectional diagram I found are rather botanical but you can see, from outside to in: the outer shell, the fibrous husk, the inner woody hull of the nut (actually a drupe), the meat and the water.

The first step is to cut through the hard shell and then pull the blade sideways to tear out chunks of husk. The shell wasn't as tough as I expected, possibly because this particular coconut is pretty ripe (I'm guessing at that because it's yellow with black spots instead of green like some of the others I saw.), and the husk comes loose with just a bit of effort. But man is there a lot of husk to deal with. I keep on chopping and tearing and chopping and tearing and there's no sign of the brown I expect to see under all of that.

Eventually, maybe 10 minutes later, one cleaver blow goes "chonk" instead of "chumpf" and it seems I've finally hit the hull. But I still don't see anything brown or any sign of separation between the layers that might make things go more easily.

I decide to clear away some more husk to see what there is to see, but I start getting splashed a little and I see I've broken the hull open so it's time to drain out the coconut water. I'm a little disappointed as I had hoped to have a clean solid Gilligan's-Island-looking coconut to work with. For one thing, you get to pound nails into the eyes, pull them out and then pour out the coconut water like a juicebox. Once you've done that, there's a neat trick where you tap the coconut around its circumference with the back of your knife until it cracks open into two pieces. But I'm not going to get to do either. Instead I pour out the coconut water into a bowl, filter out the bit of dirt and husk that got in, and put it away. I read that there's supposed to be less water in a ripe coconut, but I got a fair bit: well over a cup. OK, I've done some more research and while there's a lot of contradictory information out there, I think I've got a half-ripe "water coconut" or "drinking coconut". That explains why I've got so much water. Fully ripe coconuts are relatively dried out, shrunken and hard. I probably wouldn't have been able to get into it using my makeshift methodology so I chose correctly out of the pile at least.

From what I've been reading, there's not much to be done with coconut water except to just drink it (generally with rum). And it is pleasant enough straight, although not nearly as sweet as I was led to expect. I spooned a few teaspoons over the scallops I'm marinating for ceviche; that ought to work.

Since I've got an edge to work with, the husk is easier to peel off, so I clean out some space, break off a chunk, and do it again until I can reach in to scrape out the meat. I've read that this is a tough job that requires special tools and results in flakes, but I'm scraping it out with a teaspoon like an avocado. The texture is more rubbery though--like overcooked lobster. This morning, when I was doing the scraping, I didn't know what to make of this so I figured it was best to play it safe, avoid the recipes calling for flakes of fresh coconut, and just make some coconut milk.

Instructions for coconut milk say to put the coconut meat into a blender with some wildly varying amount of boiling water, blend, let cool, and then squeeze the liquid out through cheesecloth. They also say not to bother as canned coconut milk comes from Thai coconuts which are far superior for the purpose. But I've come this far so I guess I may as well give it a try and see what I get.

I've got over six ounces of coconut flesh as opposed to the two and a half the recipes describe and, from the texture, it's clear it contains a good bit of water it's not supposed to so I blend it with just a couple cups of boiling water. After I cool it, I try to squeeze the liquid through a couple layers of paper towels, since I haven't been able to find cheesecloth anywhere, but the perforations stymie me. Upon closer inspection it doesn't really seem to need filtering as the meat blended in quite nicely. It's also not especially rich, sweet or flavorful as coconut milk goes. I'm not sure I should bother using it all considering I've got cans of far superior product in my pantry. Maybe if I add some sugar and cook it down a bit it may become more appealing. I may not have ended up with a useful ingredient, but I have learned a good bit about coconuts and had an interesting experience so it's not been an entirely wasted effort.

The Ramble

Today I went to the 68th annual Ramble garden festival at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. It wasn't too terribly different from the Mango Festival I attended there a while back. More arts and crafts and general ecological do-gooders and a wider variety in the plants for sale. Mostly the same food vendors though, which means I got to try some of the stuff I missed last time when I went to the Mango Brunch instead.


Here's some very nice Peruvian ceviche I had.


I'm of the entirely unsupported opinion that the best ceviche is sold at room temperature out of stalls without proper kitchens. It just stands to reason.


I picked up a bottle of Peruvian hot sauce while I was there, too. Ceviche is easy to make at home but you need the right condiments.

I also got a bottle of jerk sauce from another vendor. The bottle I picked up last time was disappointingly thin and chunky so it was hard to cook with. I hoping this will work a bit better.

I also got a couple new plants for the herb garden: sage and culantro. I haven't really cooked with sage, but I keep hearing good things about sage-butter sauces that I'd like to try. The culanto has the same flavor as cilantro, but, I'm told, is much easier to grow. It certainly looked far healthier than the cilantro the herb stall had on sale.

And I helped out at the Slow Foods stand, talking up the local chapter, handing out brochures and selling totebags. If any of you aren't familiar with Slow Foods, it's all about connecting farm to table and food to community, promoting heritage ingredients and techniques and the idea that food, both the production and the eating, is something important that should be approached thoughtfully. The totebags are attractive, roomy, and exceptionally sturdy with their extra thick canvas and double-stitched straps. I should have got a picture.

While I was at the stand we had a cooking demonstration by Begonia Tuya, owner and chef of Xixon cafe. I've mentioned occasionally before that that's my favorite place for tapas and Spanish ingredients but I didn't know that they were associated with Slow Foods at all. [I met Ms. Tuya a couple weeks ago when I was the first person to show up for the lunch seating. She talked me through the specials board. I've been slowly improving my Spanish vocabulary by ordering untranslated dishes there and seeing what shows up, but I appreciated the accelerated course.] She made gazpacho, which I would have gotten a picture of but I didn't get a good vantage point for the demo and was busy helping distributing the results. The recipe was quite straightforward--a good choice for a general public demo--and made use of ingredients that are grown locally, although I don't know if those were actually local cucumbers and tomatoes she use. Still, it was a good slow food-friendly choice. Lots of little garnishes in each shooter glass gussied it up nicely. I expected to like the fried serano ham bits best on general principles, but the little cubes of pepper actually did the most to elevate the soup.

Oh, nearly forgot, I also got a coconut. Free, of course. Coconut trees grow like weeds around here. Look at that pile.

What you pay for is for someone to open it up for you, but I want to try it myself. I've read up on the technique but the instructions usually say that you're going to screw up the first few. And that's with the proper tools; I haven't got a machete so I'm going to use my Chinese chef's cleaver. Watch for this exciting event a bit later.

Yeah, I know I didn't look at the art or the antiques or the gardening stuff so I missed out on most of what the Ramble is about. I assume so, anyway; I didn't do any research on the history of the thing.

I guess that's all I've got to say. It's still going on tomorrow (if you're reading this on Saturday). Worth a look-see if you're local.

Advances in baking technology

I just want to write a quick update here on how my baking is going. I finally bought the 7 quart cast iron dutch oven I've been wanting to replace my clay cooker as my steam-containing sub-oven for bread baking.

For my first trial with it I decided to stay simple and familiar and did a basic rustic loaf:
2 3/4 cups bread flour
1/2 cup rye
1/4 cup whole wheat
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/4 cups water.

It came out a rather wet dough this time around, but I'm not sure if that's due to the rainy weather, loosely packed flour or if I accidentally shorted the flour by a quarter cup. It didn't matter all that much since I wasn't going to be handling it much by hand. And since wet doughs have been pretty standard for me it's not a bad idea to change that constant as I change the baking vessel. I found it substantially easier to work with when I reshaped it after the first rise. Maybe that's just because I was well dusted with flour, but maybe it helped that the flour had time to absorb some moisture and the protein strands had a chance to relax. I think I should start letting the dough rest between the first knead and shaping into a loaf like some recipes suggest.

I had hoped that I'd be able to make a round loaf now that I've got a round pot to bake in, but the dough folded in on itself a little as I dumped it out of the plastic bucket it rose in. I think the larger open space of the dutch oven was a help here. The dough would fill up the clay cooker so much of the sides were in contact with a hot surface which broke more bubbles upon first contact.

Getting the lid off was much easier now that I'm using a lid with a handle. And the bread was ready after only 30 minutes with the lid off, a good 5-10 minutes faster. That translates to a thinner, no-longer-verging-on-burnt crust so that's another plus.

The bread itself is dense and chewy with a fine grain. It's really good for sandwiches, but that's not really what I'm looking for. I think I'm going to let my next loaf rise longer to get that airy interior you sometimes see in really high-quality store-bought loaves.

I'm going to put my plans for butter rolls and pumpernickel loaves on hold for a bit so I can try out some variations of technique on this basic recipe. Once I've got a better handle on the baking basics I'll start playing around a bit more with recipes.

My visit to the Mango Festival

The 16th annual International Mango Festival was held this weekend at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. I went on Sunday so I could attend the 9th annual Mango Brunch which offered dishes from seven local chefs all featuring mangoes. I kind of regret not going to the taste test on Saturday, too, but I didn't realize until I got there the sheer number of different types of mangoes available. I only got to taste a few at the tasting tent and another one at the brunch. The chefs didn't specify what sorts they used in their dishes; I think that would be a good touch they could add--have the chefs come by to try different varieties and create a dish that brings out the best of one they pick. Probably too much extra trouble for everyone involved, though.

That's not to say what they had this year was bad. I was pleased with most of the dishes on offer and, as far as I could tell, a good time was had by all.


Beyond the brunch, the festival consisted of a small ring of food vendors with mango dishes. There were Caribbean, Ethiopian, French crepes along with ice cream, cupcake and smoothie vendors. I would have liked to have tried a meal at one; another reason to go on two days next year.

There were also a couple of sauce and marinade vendors. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing; after going through the tasting I always feel obliged to buy something even if I know I never end up using these things and I'm perfectly capable of making my own sauces. I'm marinating a pork chop in a tamarind molasses ginger sauce as I type. And somehow once I've bought one it's a much lower hurdle to buy a few more that I liked. You probably can't make out the labels in the picture, but those are a hot pepper sauce, a jerk sauce and a curry spice mix from Hey Mon Caribbean Cooking Magic and two hot mango sauces and a tamarind chili sauce from Chef Allen's. I can't recall why one's in a Ball canning jar and the other in a bottle. I'll go into any details when and if I ever actually use them. One of things I want to try this next CSA go-around is stir fries using non-Chinese spice profiles. These should work well for that sort of thing.

Another booth at the festival was from Schnebly Redland's Winery. They claim to be the southernmost winery in the U.S. and they make wine from carambolas, mangoes, lychees and the like completely grapelessly. For seven bucks I got to taste everything they brought (and keep the glass. I didn't have a champagne flute so that was nice). They had three sparkling wines, one sangria-esque wine and a couple dessert wines. The sparkling wines lacked real distinctiveness, I thought; they're not going to be great wines so they should at least try to bring out the unusual fruits they're made out of and go for unique. The dessert wines succeeded more at that, but they could have been fruit syrup with a shot of vodka. Of the lot, The lychee dessert wine the best as the flavors strayed into brandy territory; I liked it, but I certainly didn't thirty-five dollars worth of like it so I didn't buy any.

There was also a mango market with a large amount of four varieties (two of which were the usual supermarket mangoes) and a few of maybe a dozen more varieties. Alongside was a tasting tent with samples of three non-supermarket sorts. There was a banana mango, one I don't recall, and a champagne mango. The banana mango had an interestingly banana-esque elongated shape and color and maybe some banana in the flavor, but that could just have been suggestion. The one I don't recall apparently wasn't interesting enough to make a note of. The champagne mangoes were particularly small and had an intense not-too-sweet flavor and a smooth creamy texture. It had the flavor I'm looking for for mango ice cream, but the mango-smoothie-booth-lady happened to be stocking up nearby and she explained that mangoes with no fiber would completely fall apart during cooking so they wouldn't work. I took her advice and I shopped around when went over to the market. I settled on a Ford mango which I'm told has an interestingly complex flavor and should be firm enough to hold together during the candying process. We'll see once it's ripe.

Finally, there was a mango tree booth selling a couple of varieties specifically bred by the horticulturists at Fairchild to be suitable for Florida gardens: the Angie and the Jean Ellen. (Jean Ellen herself was at the brunch and was presented with a plaque and an armful of her namesake mangos. Most of the crowd there were Fairchild members so they knew who she was and why she deserved a fruit named after her and the outburst of applause was no doubt genuine and heartfelt. I was there as a foodie not a plantie so I just applauded politely.) I was tempted to buy a tree but a) I don't think my landlord would appreciate it and b) I don't know if I'll be living here in when it's ready to give fruit and c) one of my co-workers brought in a bunch of mangos last year and she may well do so again.

Well, that went on a bit long. I'll put the brunch stuff in a separate post.

Slow food, stone crabs and farmers markets

As I mentioned in passing in my last post, I spent some time at the Coral Gables farmers market after picking up my CSA share yesterday. I picked up a few interesting items and attended a Slow Food stone crab picnic.

Personally, I'd call the Coral Gables farmers market and pretty good street fair, but with only a couple of produce stalls amongst the caterers, bakers and candlestick makers it's not quite a farmers market to my mind. And can anyone explain the appeal of a guacamole stall? Even if guacamole was hard to make, who wants some out of a giant tub that's been sitting out for the last four hours?

I had expected to make some rapid recipe decisions on my CSA share but this week's selection didn't require it. The only produce I picked up was a pint of strawberries which I'll probably end up eating straight instead of making the ice cream topping I meant them for. I also got a couple of rather impressive foccacia: one artichoke and one sun dried tomato. They definitely beat the wares of the foccacia vendor at the Union Square farmers market in Manhattan. I picked up a little bit of tea as well; I'm generally happy with Theine, but Kyra doesn't stock as good a variety of fruit green tea blends or candy-enhanced black teas as I'd like. I don't like the open bowls the tea and spice vendor stores his wares in, but I got there early so I don't think the tea lost too much zip. I picked up a caramel black tea and a blend called Sunny Sencha with a tropical fruit and flowers mixed in.

At Karen's Kreations I picked up Garlic & Raspberry Jelly and Cranberry & Chipotle Jelly. I've had garlic and hot pepper jellies before and while they're nice novelties it's hard to find real uses for them and most of the bottle ends up going to waste. The fruit additions Karen used makes them more than ingredients; they can actually be used as jelly. I have to carefully consider the next loaf of bread I bake to make the best match, though.

And, as I was running out, I got a jar of honey. I chose gallberry honey which is exceptionally light and should be good for tea. In the slightly blurry picture, you can see that the label looks quite similar to the Bee Heaven label on the honey I got in my share a few weeks back. So if Miguel Bode, who packed the gallberry honey, isn't associated with Bee Heaven, you guys ought to have a word with him.

After my shopping it was off to the picnic. There was a demonstration of a stone crab and avocado recipe by Chef Roberto Ferrer, but just as I sat down for it the head of Slow Food Miami, Donna Reno, shanghaied me into helping set up. (I wasn't surprised that she recognized me given my distinctive hat and the knack the heads of these sorts of groups tend to have for that sort of thing, but she remembered my name and knew where I worked which I knew I had never mentioned to her. It seems she noted my lack of sociability back at the Slow Food wine tasting in October, followed up by talking to the couple I had sat next to at the Ideas dinner and now has taken a particular interest in introducing me around and making sure I mingle. Is it so wrong that I'd prefer to eat my lunch in peace while reading a book?) Check the Slow Food Miami webpage for more pics likely including one of me mingling.

The picnic featured stone crabs supplied by Judy the Stone Crab Lady and sides from Chef Brendan Connor (left) and Kristin Connor who run a catering company called Whisk Gourmet. It was pretty good on the whole.

This was my first experience with stone crabs. Any local folks reading are probably familiar with the Miami tradition of gathering in public places to brutalize crustaceans with blunt instruments. I generally prefer to dismantle crabs in a more precise and considered manner, but just whacking away with a hammer makes some sense when it's just claws. (Stone crabs are caught in traps, de-clawed, and then thrown back to grow a new one which they can do several times. All very ecologically sound if you do it the proper way Probably nobody does as the wrong way is significantly faster and cheaper, but I'll assume the best of Judy the Stone Crab Lady until I learn otherwise. She seemed nice enough, anyway.) A pound of claws gives enough meat for lunch and, since it's particularly sweet and succulent crab in unusually large chunks, is definitely worth the ten bucks.

The sides were good but nothing too outstanding: a standard coleslaw, beets, a greek salad sort of thing, potato salad with bacon and key lime pie. The best was the beets although I would have liked to have identified the creamy white substance they were coated in. Personally, I thought they all (bar the pie) could have done with a bit more salt.

From what I heard, the picnic was a new venture for Slow Food Miami although I would have thought some presence at farmers markets would be one of the first things they'd try. It may have been too successful as it was overbooked in reservations so interested passers-by couldn't drop in and see what Slow Food is all about. But at least half of the people who did reserve weren't Slow Food members so there may have been some new interest there. Maybe not though; all of the events are open and announced to the public and there's no membership discount so you don't really get a lot for that extra expenditure.

Still, a good time was had by all (bar the crabs) and that's something even if nothing else was accomplished.

Condiment out of Carolina

or possibly Midnight in the Kitchen of Good and Evil.

Either way, I passed through the Carolinas on my drive back to Miami and picked up a few things along the way. One stop was for lunch at a restaurant called Gullah Cuisine. Gullah cuisine, the cuisine, developed from West African cooking with less European influence than most southern cuisine. It survived in the Carolina low country because area was so miserable and disease-ridden that the white plantation owners left their slaves there unmolested for half of each year. Or something like that, anyway. Gullah Cuisine, the restaurant, is as much a cultural center devoted to that culinary heritage as it is a place to have lunch.

I normally stay away from buffets, but I wanted to try a lot of different things. That may have been a mistake as, by the time I got there, most of the signature dishes were cleaned out. As you can see from the photos here that's a real shame. Here's my poor plate for comparison.

I'm not going to say that I didn't enjoy what I had. Those are some very nice sweet potatoes there, and that's an interesting gumbo-esque chicken dish on top of jambalaya-esque rice (both simpler versions of the fancy dishes the place is known for). The greens were surprisingly lightly cooked considering they came from a steam table and had plenty of ham in them, and the mashed potatoes had plenty of cheese and bacon involved. There was also some quite respectable fried chicken and a nice banana pudding I didn't photograph. I really do need to get back there at some point to order off the menu, though.

On my way out I picked up bottles of their signature spice mixes.

I tried the fried chicken mix tonight.
It seemed like a fairly typical southern fried chicken seasoning blend. I used too much this first time so the salt overwhelmed the subtleties and I can't really give any details.

Later, I stopped at one of the roadside tourist-trap groceries that dot Rt. 17 every couple miles. I was stuck between two big slow-moving trucks on a road with no passing lanes so I had to stop somewhere. I picked up this:
which isn't really cider of any sort. The clerk admitted that South Carolina law requires pasteurization and, while there is no legal definition of cider, it is traditionally unfiltered and unpasteurized. This is really just peach and apple juice. Not bad for what it is, though.

Also
. The green tomato pickles are in a standard sweet-pickle brine. The firm texture is a nice change, but a familiar flavor. The Jerusalem artichoke pickle is a little more unusual. It's as much a vinegar-based coleslaw as it is a pickle. I think it would go pretty well with barbecue, but that's not any great surprise.

I also got some boiled peanuts. I had tried boiled peanuts once before and found them a revelation. A very different flavor and texture than the roasted version. My previous experience had been with a package from the supermarket so I expected the fresh stuff to be another step above, but it was about the same, really. Shows what I know, I suppose. Unfortunately, now that I've developed a taste for it, Publix stopped carrying it. I may have to boil my own.