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With summer only a few weeks away, Soft fruit season is finally in full swing! I anxiously await all of the wonderful varieties of these tree ripened treats. Today I'll share some tips on a few of the soft fruit varieties that we carry here at AmazonFresh.

- Nectarines are easy to prepare since their skin does not need to be peeled. The skin does not interfere with its taste or texture when eating them fresh or cooked.

- Because of the delicate nature of apricots and their small size, it's not advisable to peel them. To eat a fresh apricot just cut along the seam of the apricot or separate the fruit with your fingers. Once the fruit halves have been separated the seed should be easily removed.

- Before eating or cooking peaches, wash them in cool water and dry with a paper towel or soft cloth to remove the remaining fuzz. Most of the fuzz is removed in the commercial washing process.

- To easily peel Peaches or Plums, place them in a strainer and dip them into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds. Remove them promptly and put them into cold water to cool. This process makes the skin easy to peel with a sharp paring knife.

- Peaches, Plums and Nectarines are separated into two categories: Freestone Varieties, which are easily separated from their pit and Clingstone Varieties, which usually leave flesh attached to the pit when eating or preparing.

- To pit the freestone varieties of soft fruit, make a cut along the seam all the way around and through the fruit down to the pit. Then twist each half in opposite directions.

- Cutting sections right from the whole fruit by slicing down to the pit and removing the desired amount best pits the clingstone varieties of soft fruit.

- As with Apples and Pears, use a little Lemon or Pineapple juice on the cut areas to slow the browning effect.

As always, please feel free to drop me a post if you have questions about any of the wonderful, fresh produce we carry. I am always eager to share what I've learned!

Blueberries are in season! These delectable little berries are healthy, full of antioxidants, and can be used to top off many of your favorite summertime desserts.

Selecting the perfect blueberry:

*When picking blueberries, make sure they're firm, plump and deep purple in color.

*Avoid blueberries that are dull in color, soft and leaking juice.

Blueberry facts:

*The blueberry is the second most popular berry in the U.S. (strawberries are first)

*One cup of blueberries provides us with almost 1/3 of the daily recommended Vitamin C.

*Blueberries contain more antioxidants than any other fruit or vegetable which some say, are beneficial in preventing aging, cancer and heart disease.

*North America accounts for 90% of all blueberry production.

This Memorial Day, show off your patriotism with a red, white and blue(berry) dessert.

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh organic blueberries
2-3 ounce boxes of raspberry gelatin
1 envelope plain gelatin
1 cup half and half
1 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract
8 ounces of cream cheese
2 cups boiling hot water
1 cup cold water

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, pour in one box of raspberry gelatin and one cup boiling water. Once the gelatin is dissolved, add one cup of cold water and let chill. In a separate bowl, pour in plain gelatin and ½ cup cold water. In a large saucepan, heat half and half with sugar over medium heat, and stir. Once the sugar dissolves, add plain gelatin, vanilla, and cream cheese, and blend together. Spoon over the raspberry gelatin mixture and refrigerate. While the mixture is chilling, combine the second box of raspberry gelatin with 1 cup boiling water and fresh blueberries. Let cool and spoon over the second layer. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Top it off with whipped cream before serving to your guests.

We had a suggestion sent to feedback@amazon.com recently stating how helpful it would be to have storage and ripening instructions for our fresh fruits and vegetables. This is something that is definitely in the works, but will take some time. So today, I'll share some tips on some of the produce you get from AmazonFresh.

- When you have some Bananas that are just too green, I suggest putting them in a plastic bag, sealing it and putting it on the counter or the top of your refrigerator. Doing this helps to heat up the Bananas, which in turn, speeds up the ripening process.

- Apples are picked at the peak of their ripeness, so additional ripening causes them to turn mealy and mushy. We keep apples in the refrigerated section of our warehouse to stem this decay. When you get Apples delivered to your house, you should keep them as cold as possible. I suggest the back of your refrigerator where they should last up to six weeks.

- Pears on the other hand, are among the few fruits that improve after they are picked. They are best left on the counter where they will ripen in a few days to about a week. Most Pears will show a slight color change as they ripen and can then be stored in the refrigerator until you are ready to eat them.

- Cut off about an inch from the bottom of Asparagus, wrap the fresh cut end in a wet paper towel then place in a plastic bag in your refrigerators crisper drawer. This helps increase the storage life and gives you a few extra days before using. If the tips start to wilt slightly, soaking them in cold water will revive them.

- Never store fresh, uncut Tomatoes in the refrigerator. This will cause the ripening process to stop and may result in flavor loss. Tomatoes are best stored at room temperature with the stem end up. If you need to speed the ripening process, you can place them in a plastic bag with a Banana that you ripened earlier. The ethylene produced by the fruit will help ripen them naturally.

I hope this information proves helpful although it is just the tip of the iceberg. If there are any produce products in particular that you would like ripening or storage information on, please feel free to post a comment, I would love to share as much information as I can.

Thanks for reading,
Matt

I don't really ever stop grilling for the year -- I just slow down slightly in the winter. With the nice weather in the last couple of weeks, my grilling instincts are really starting to kick in, so I thought I'd share some of the items I'm looking forward to grilling this season.

- Asparagus is starting to pick up. Around mid-week, we'll have medium to large stems from California and some nice slender stalks from Washington. Personally, I prefer grilling larger asparagus as long as the stalks are green -- white near the base means tough.

- Onions are always good for grilling, but in the next few weeks, look for something called salad onions -- especially those from Walla Walla. These are the onions they thin from the fields to allow the remaining onions to grow large. Salad onions will still have tops attached like green onions, but the bulbs will be larger and they grill up beautifully.

- Believe it or not, many varieties of fruit are excellent on the grill -- don't be afraid to experiment! Honeydew, cantaloupe, peaches and nectarines are some of my favorites. Just slice them in half and grill cut-side down.

- I wait eagerly for figs all year because my wife and I use them in a favorite meal. We slice them in half, coat lightly in olive oil and roast indirectly on the BBQ until they start to bubble, about 10 to 12 minutes. Then top with a nice blue cheese like Kaserei German Cambozola. Let the cheese just start to melt and serve. Our favorite pairing is with a rack of lamb, a Caesar salad and a nice Cabernet Sauvignon (we like Clos du Val for this meal).

- Finally, a mixed medley is a grilling standby at our house. Starting with grape cherry tomatoes, I grill lightly with pineapple, peppers, mushrooms and onions -- then top with butter & salt. I grill them in a foil pan next to my steak until the cherry tomatoes just start to burst from the heat.

Happy Grilling!

Mike

Recently, Pat O. wrote us at feedback@amazonfresh.com and asked, "I would be really happy if the romaine were not so wet when it arrives. Do you need to keep it wet to keep it fresh?"

The short answer is yes, it is better for the lettuce if we keep it damp while in our facility. Your refrigerator is a little less "breezy" than our warehouse - the open air can tend to dry out lettuce a bit. Because your vegetable drawer also has some humidity control, lettuce doesn't generally need to be kept wet once delivered.

Here's a bit deeper explanation and a tip for you to use at home: Part of the quality preparation we do at AmazonFresh includes "crisping" our leafy greens (lettuce, celery, parsley, radishes, beets, chard, etc). We trim a little off the stem end and then soak the item in WARM water for 2-5 minutes (no need to trim root items like radishes). Then we let it drain and store in our cooler - ready to be picked for your order. The warm water opens up the cells and causes the item to draw in water, and the chilling causes the cells to tighten again, keeping your lettuce crisp and your celery crunchy for much longer. Upon delivery you can lightly towel your lettuce if you find it too wet, or just let it dry naturally in your vegetable drawer. If you find your leafy greens getting a bit limp and sad-looking, be sure to treat them like this, and quite often they will revive nicely!

Be looking for tips and information soon under the tag "tips" - our team has many to share and some fun trivia too!

Regards,
Mike

I'm Matt, one of the Produce Specialists here at AmazonFresh and I would like to start my post with a couple of trivia questions:

Q: What is the most popular fruit in the world?
A: The mango

Q: What is the most popular fruit in the United States?
A: The banana. It's also the most popular item in a grocery store - it's in more grocery carts than any other item.

With those tidbits, I want to transition right into the topic of this post - changes to how we sell bananas on AmazonFresh. We recently started offering bananas in bunches - 3-count ripe and 5-count green bunches. This was due in large part to customer requests for bunches. Customers emailed us with this request partly because some want to use their banana hangers (a nifty little device that suspends a bunch of bananas off a counter reducing the chance it will get bruised by its own weight). Other customers made the request because it's simply just how they're used to seeing their bananas, and they like the look of a bunch in their fruit bowl. Either way, we've gotten enough of these requests that we've decided to make the switch. With this change, we will be discontinuing selling single bananas in a couple of weeks, but we're offering both bunch and singles for awhile to give customers a chance to get used to the change.

Another recent change to our banana program has been the addition of our 5 lb Ripe & Ready Value Pack Bananas. This addition was also largely driven by customer comments that sometimes our ripe bananas arrive greener than expected. Our goal was to deliver a banana that just barely met the definition of ripe. Our rationale: you can ripen a slightly green banana to your preference, but you can't make it more green! I'll try not to bore you with too many details, but the biggest issue affecting speed-of-ripening is the pulp or core temperature of a banana. Two bananas of equal color but different pulp temperatures will ripen at different speeds and can arrive at your house looking vastly different. With this in mind, I looked for a way to provide customers with a ripe & ready-to-eat banana, but given the pulp temperature issue, sometimes a banana that looked perfect when it left our facility might arrive with a few spots, and that customer-experience goes against our quality standards. However, disappointing a toddler who wants a perfectly ripe banana the instant it's delivered certainly doesn't make Mom happy either. With our Ripe & Ready bananas, you might find a slightly spotted banana because of the core temperature issue, but we have priced them to provide a great value. They will arrive ripe and ready to eat or will be perfect for banana bread in a few days if left at room temperature.

With these changes (as always) we'll be listening to what customers think. So - let us know what you think and thanks for shopping with us at AmazonFresh!

If you're missing your Honeycrisp Apples like I am, there are a couple varieties that I eat when the Honeycrisp are finally and sadly gone for the year - Jazz and Pink Lady. Even though neither can quite replace the Honeycrisp, both are excellent in their own right. A buyer-beware note - I have seen a couple of stores still selling Honeycrisp, but none of my suppliers have them and for good reason - Honeycrisp don't store well. Since what remains has been off the tree for a long time, you're likely to find an apple that is inconsistent at best and soft with little flavor at worst. For those of you who simply can't handle losing your Honeycrisp, we do have a brand new item that should help - it's Honeycrisp Applesauce from High J Orchards - and it's organic!

One other apple I'd like to suggest is the CrispGlo. It's a rare treat and I predict you'll be hearing a lot more about it in coming years. The heritage of this apple includes the Cox Orange Pippin - an apple hugely popular in England. While the color of the CrispGlo is an almost florescent yellow similar to a very ripe Golden Delicious, the texture is nothing similar. It's a very dense apple - crunchy, juicy, sweet and just a hint of spice.

The CrispGlo is rare because it's currently grown only on a few acres in Washington and AmazonFresh is one of very few retailers who will have this apple this year. I was able to get the CrispGlo for our customers partly because the grower is trying to decide how much additional acreage they should invest in this apple. More information soon on how we might ask for your opinions of the CrispGlo apple - in the meantime, enjoy and submit your reviews and ratings!

Regards,

Mike

My name is Mike, and I'm in charge of produce here at AmazonFresh. The entire AmazonFresh team is hyper-sensitive to customer feedback, so the subject for my first blog posting was an easy choice.

One of the most frequent questions we hear from our customers concerns sourcing: "Where is your produce grown - especially the organic fruits and vegetables I'm going to feed my family?" Our stance is to always carry local produce as long as it (1) is available and (2) meets our strict quality standards. Obviously local produce is limited in the middle of winter, but as spring approaches, options increase dramatically. Local sourcing is only part of the issue--communicating where your produce is grown presents a unique set of challenges. While we do provide information on country of origin for fresh produce items, we don't have an efficient and accurate way of telling you when organic carrots are available from Ralph's Greenhouses in Washington instead of California-grown. Both will be available at times, but quality can vary daily, so our commitment to rule #2 (quality) kicks in and we don't (yet) have a good way to share that information real-time. I can tell you that we hear your requests for better and more timely information on where your produce is grown and it's only a matter of time before we find a solution.

Even though our commitment to local produce is simple, it's worth sharing some of the story behind-the-scenes--especially where organic produce is concerned. I'd like to take a moment to highlight our primary supplier of organic produce: Organically Grown Company (OGC). They are a 25-year -old company headquartered in Oregon and provide us with roughly 95% of our organic produce. They started as a co-op of farms and have grown into one of the premier suppliers of organic produce on the West Coast. They currently buy from more than 30 farms in the Northwest, some of whom sell their produce exclusively through OGC. Because of these and other long-term relationships across the country (and around the world), OGC is able to buy 90% of their produce direct from growers. If a particular organic item is unavailable from OGC, we have 3 other produce suppliers at our fingertips:

• Charlie's Produce is our primary supplier of conventional produce and a great backup supplier for organic produce (also with local connections)
  
• Peterson Fruit provides us with apples, pears and citrus and specializes in Washington-grown when available
  
• Northwest Specialty Produce is especially good at sourcing Washington berries and soft fruit in season. They are also our source for mushrooms--conventional, organic and wild-picked.

I think to sum up--our stance on locally grown is sincere, our commitment to quality is unwavering and listening to your feedback is a promise.
Happy reading,

Mike

In the world of cheese, I feel that Blue Cheese is the underdog. Known for its strong smell and unique color, Blue (as I like to call it) is often pushed aside for the more scent-friendly Brie or the all-around loved Cheddar. However, the more time I spend with this lonesome cheese, the more I've come to love it. Pair Rogue Creamery's Smokey Blue with a crisp Fuji apple and you've got the most tempting mixture of salty and sweet. In my personal opinion, it tastes similar to bacon. If you want something more conventional, I recommend Rosenburg Danish Blue Cheese crumbled on top of a salad. My favorite pairing is Ford Farm's English Blue Stilton with honeycomb (or just plain honey if you can't find honeycombs) and a great red wine (my new favorite is a Malbec).