Herbal Essence

If you have a windowsill, you can have a produce garden. If you have a balcony or a backyard, there's no excuse not to. Just do it. Plant an herb garden. Plant it now.

It might be too late to plant from seeds, but it's not too late to plant seedlings. This pot of basil, as it happens, is a mixture: new seedlings from the Union Square Greenmarket; old, nearly dead little plants I bought last season from the Greenmarket; and plants that I raised from a bag of basil seeds. But never mind the basil's origins; think instead about the convenience of having such a bumper crop. Basil for sauce, salads and garnish on demand, minus the hassle of shopping. Even better, you take only what you need from the plant, so you're spared the guilt pangs of watching the leftover half of a too-big bunch turn to slime in the fridge.

I'm growing dill, too. The dill is a bit less prolific, so I've been using it for garnishes or tiny bursts of flavor. I still need to buy dill when I want to make pickles or cucumber salad. Still, the dill justifies its keep with its lovely, lacy yellow seed head, a fireworks version of Queen Anne's Lace. 

I'm getting full mileage from the cilantro, oregano and chives below. I particularly love the earthy oregano, especially with luscious summer tomatoes. I've also just planted parsley and mint, two other workhorses.

I find a few yanks of fresh herbs add incalculable flavor - and class! - to salads and other dishes. 

I'll be thinking about this simple chopped salad in the winter doldrums.

I grow my herbs for their flavor punch, but they are also part of the world of alternative medicine. I was dimly aware that many favorite herbs are nutritional powerhouses but hadn't pondered why. As the food journalist Jo Robinson observed in her important essay, "Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food," herbs are powerful because they - unlike many popular fruits and vegetables - have largely been ignored by the formal and informal breeding programs that try to make our produce sweeter and hardier, and consequently their nutritional composition has largely stayed intact. 

As she writes, 

Herbs are wild plants incognito. We’ve long valued them for their intense flavors and aroma, which is why they’ve not been given a flavor makeover. Because we’ve left them well enough alone, their phytonutrient content has remained intact...Herbs bring back missing phytonutrients and a touch of wild flavor as well.

So capture that wildness - at least just enough to fit enough in a small pot or two, in the smiling face of the sun.

Red vs. White

We all do it.

Despite our best efforts to appear fair, to be open to all, we all have favorites.

So, love ya, plum! You're fabulous, peach, simply fabby! I'll get back to you in a minute. Lemme just get past you.

The cherries are here.

Yay!

I wait all year for cherries. Occasionally cherries pop up out of season, presumably after a long haul from Chile or another country whose seasons complement our own, but I always end up giving them a pass after trying one. Some fruit don't do well out of their time.

When I think of cherries, I imagine deep crimson ones. When red cherries are identified, they're typically labeled Bing cherries, named after the Chinese-American horticulturalist Ah Bing, although other varieties, such as
Lambert cherries, also are widely sold. As you might guess from their deep color, Bing and Lambert cherries are chock full of anthocyanins, and so are are very healthful. (Even more healthful are tart cherry varieties such as Montmorency, which are typically canned or used for juice, but some of us love as is. Hmm, I sense a separate entry!)

But red cherries are not the only game in town. White cherries, aka golden cherries, also have their partisans. 

A becoming blush!

White cherries, typically Queen Anne or Rainier varieties (and few can tell the difference), are extremely delicate and bruise easily. Buy a pound, especially if you don't get to pick them yourself, and you'll likely end up with a lot of dinged and battered cherries, like the ones below They're also apparently more susceptible to growing problems, such as frost damage.

What to expect when you're expecting white cherries

Not surprisingly, white cherries are generally more expensive than red cherries - note the back-to-back signs at one of New York's gourmet supermarkets, showing red cherries for sale at $3.99/lb and white ones at $8.99/lb. 

Despite their premium cost, white cherries are very popular - especially in places like Japan, where delicacy is valued and a certain amount of fruit coddling is to be expected. As my friend Hiroko told me, "Rainiers, or "American Cherries," as we call them here, are quite popular in Japan. I remember my friend Aya complaining around this time of the year. She worked for an American semiconductor company in Tokyo, and she always had to make sure that semiconductor chips from the U.S. would secure their spot on air cargo in June. Otherwise Rainier cherries would take over the rides to Tokyo!"

If you look closely at the text in the supermarket's sign for Rainier cherries, you'll see it not only touts "firm skin that creates a satisfying crunch with every bite," (as if the cherries were tortilla chips), but also white cherries' lessened tartness.  This reminded me a bit of the recent trend to praise white chocolate, which used to be scorned for its absence of cocoa solids/chocolate liquor and the attendant mixture of bitter/tart flavor with the sweetness. But as food activist Jo Robinson wrote in recent and fascinating New York Times article entitled, "Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food," produce's color and complexity of flavor has been seen as a disadvantage for a while:  

In 1836, Noyes Darling, a onetime mayor of New Haven, and a gentleman farmer, was the first to use scientific methods to breed a new variety of corn. His goal was to create a sweet, all-white variety that was “fit for boiling” by mid-July. He succeeded, noting with pride that he had rid sweet corn of “the disadvantage of being yellow.”

The disadvantage of being yellow, we now know, had been an advantage to human health. Corn with deep yellow kernels, including the yellow corn available in our grocery stores, has nearly 60 times more beta-carotene than white corn, valuable because it turns to Vitamin A in the body, which helps vision and the immune system.

And yet I'm happy both red and white cherries are around. For me, white cherries never scale the heights of magnificence that red cherries do, but they are much more consistent. There are points in June and at the end of July when red cherries are available but not worth buying. To me, they taste like mud. I have found (undamaged) white cherries to be pretty consistent in taste whenever they're available. 

The season is too short for me to spurn either contender. Which to choose? I say, Both.

There's a reason why it's a metaphor for a happy, easy life!