When I kick the bucket and have harvested my last breath, I hope that it will be September for eternity. I don’t think about the afterlife all that much, but if I could enjoy September every day, well…I would be a happy dude.
With that said, this week’s offering is about as pure a September box as you will find. For those of you keeping score at home: roasted Green Chile, local Tomatoes both big and small, the first of Arizona apple harvest, pears from Excelsior Orchards, fall grapes, and some insane citrus from our buddy Noel at Stehly Farms in San Diego. Having all of these fun flavors in your kitchen might make you feel like Ignacio from Nacho Libre, “My life is good, really good.”
Other stuff this week is a bunch of housekeeping items. So stick with me here please. Delivery Texts. We are compiling all the info we need to launch a cool new add-on to our already amazing service. We will be launching a new driver software that will enable our chariot drivers to send you a text prior to your delivery. This will allow you to know when the order has landed safely. It will provide a heads-up if you need to sign for any alcohol delivery. Finally, this gives you sufficient time to stretch out your hamstrings so you don’t pull a muscle sprinting for the door when you hear the bell.
So to enable this functionality, we need you to log into your account. Go to Preferences. Then click on your phone carrier and double check that your number is correct on your account. We will let you know when we are ready to launch this functionality, but first we need to get your text info. Thanks.
Field Run Fruit. I would be willing to bet you that you have never had a piece of memorable fruit from the grocery store. I know that I never have. And that is because the stores’ produce sections are not set up to entice your taste buds, they are there to attract your eyeballs. How many times have we all heard, “Oh Doris, you should see these berries!” Only to find out that these beautiful berries taste like crunchy cardboard. In our effort to sell food with our eyes, we have desensitized our taste buds and eat some pretty flavorless foods folks.
Don’t fret. This is why you have me here. And as a part of this food journey that we take together every week, I want to educate you on the idea of the Field Run Fruit. I don’t actually need to capitalize those words, but I am going to so that it sticks in your brain like a peanut butter cracker sticks to the roof of your mouth. Remember this idea of Field Run Fruit.
What this means is that when harvest crews hit the trees, they send us the whole block. The fruit that we are getting from our growers does not get sorted/waxed/warehoused. This fruit goes from the trees to you. Or from the trees to us then to you. The grocery stores will sort all the fruit for that perfect “looking” fruit. We strive to bring you the perfect tasting fruit.
With that, we might get fruit that was not completely covered by leaves and has a little sunburn on it. Kinda like when you forget to put sunscreen on your kiddo. They get a little crispy, but you still love them. Our fruit is the same way. A tree branch may rub against the fruit and leave a little blemish, but the flavor is still incredible. Eat with your mouth and not your eyes. We need to stop this waste of food.
Do you know that on a commercial farm, less than 50% of the harvest meets acceptable grade for a grocery store. The smallest of blemishes can ruin a perfectly good fruit, cucumber, zucchini, pepper, etc. So tons (literally) of amazing food gets composted or unused. Again, this is all due to the persistent marketing that food has to look a certain way.
So bringing you field run fruits, we are able to bring you better value for your pesos and we are able to offer a farmer more money for their harvest (since they are not throwing away 50% of it). A win-win for everyone.
This does not mean that you will get moldy or sub-standard fruit. On the contrary. We will be bringing you firm fruit bursting with flavor and of the highest quality. Offering our members field run fruit also means that we are able to bring you varieties of fruit that are no longer commercially grown because of the blemishes they show. Just like the Shiro plums that we brought you earlier this summer.
Enjoy September, Farmer Monte