To go along with the celebration of American Heart Month, we decided to create a healthy, yet tasty dish. Our main dish was roasted salmon with a shallot grapefruit sauce, and we decided to kick it up a notch and include a side order of watercress salad with grapefruit, olives, and fried sage.

According to the American Heart Association, fish should be eaten twice a week as part of a healthy diet. Loaded with Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and protein, salmon has been shown to benefit everything from cholesterol to brain function. Combine this with the healthy citrus power of grapefruit, throw in a little ginger and honey, and you have a delicious and healthy meal everyone will enjoy.

For those that find the flavor of grapefruit a little overpowering, I would recommend cutting the segments into smaller pieces, maybe one inch or smaller. The sauce is delectable but deceivingly rich, a little goes a long way. And while the directions don’t state this, wrapping the salmon in foil to bake will help it from drying out and give you a few extra minutes to finish cooking your sauce.

If you have trouble finding watercress you can substitute with arugula. For those of you on the east coast or in the south you can find watercress at most grocery stores and markets. We are not as lucky in the Northwest. This salad is a wonderful blend of ingredients and a nice twist on a tradition dinner or garden salad. One word of warning however is that fresh sage (especially fried) is very strong; set it to the side and let your diners add to taste.

Recipes courtesy of foodnetwork.com and marthastewart.com

We’re always talking up fruit; it’s healthy, delicious, and makes for a fantastic holiday gift.  And this last weekend as it came time to hang our wreaths and fill our houses with sparkling tinsel and evergreens, we came across another reason to love fruit: decorating.

Think about it: how many meals did you eat this week that you’d display on a fireplace or as a centerpiece?  Exactly.  There’s something to be said about decorating with items that at the drop of a hat can turn into a snack.  We kind of wish all decorative items worked that way. But seeing as they don’t, we decided to put together a mini-guide into making the most of your fruit decorations this holiday season.

1.)  Color.  Decorating with fruit means decorating with color.  Take one look at the produce section or our selection of premium fruit and you’ll see a palate of colors waiting to liven up your house and holidays.  For us, there’s nothing better than mixing red apples and green pears.  Call it cliché, we call it classic.  Mix Pink Ladys or Honeycrisp apples with Green d’Anjou pears and you can’t go wrong. But that certainly doesn’t mean you’re limited to red and green, be creative and experiment.  That’s half the fun of it.

2.) Quality. One of the biggest pitfalls when decorating with fruit is underestimating the difference that quality fruit can make.  Much in the way an ugly painting can ruin a wall, a bunch of misfit fruit together is bound to bring down any centerpiece or display.  Look for fruit bursting with color and displaying character.  If it looks unappetizing, it won’t work.  Fruit on display looks good because there’s something beautiful about delicious-looking fruit.  It’s like they say, you eat with your eyes first.

3.) The Arrangement.  With our arrangements, we focus on the fruit.  There’s nothing better than an elegant bowl, either clear or with an understated design, filled with fruit.  For the holidays though, we like to add little flourishes of traditional holiday garnishes to spice up our displays.  Holly, evergreen branches (small ones), and mistletoe can really make a big impact, though you’ll want to avoid overusing them as they can overwhelm the fruit and become gaudy in a hurry.  It’s hard to say how much is too much, but chances are, you’ll know when you see it.

4.) That Natural Look. Our last tip in decorating with fruit is to make it look as natural as possible.  Sure, there aren’t many places in nature where you can find apples and pears carefully wrapped around holly (or whatever you’re using) but the best displays always have a semblance of naturalness to them.  Try not to make your display look too manicured or artificial.  Avoid anything too intricate as the best fruit displays showcase the fruit in all its splendor.  And don’t forget to use seasonal fruit.  Apples, pears, pomegranates and oranges all carry with them memories of holidays past.  You just got to bring it out with a little love.

If you have read some of our other blog and enewsletter recipe articles, you know that we like to combine fresh fruit in some unique dishes. Many times we choose savory dishes since these are often overlooked by people in favor or salads or desserts. For September our HarvestClub™ Exotica fruit is Baby Pineapple and Kiwi so we knew we wanted to find a dish that incorporated not one, but both of these ingredients.

This month Aaron, our eCommerce Manager, took up the mantle of Fruit Company Chef and chose a Pan-Seared Pork with Pineapple-Kiwi Salsa to cook. Although the recipe originally called for pork, we also cooked up some chicken and had a little impromptu tasting session at our headquarters in Hood River, Oregon.

This is a great recipe to use with leftover pork roast, pork chops or bbq chicken, but easily works just as well with fresh meat. Just make sure you adjust the recipe to allow the meat to cook thoroughly. We baked ours for a few minutes before searing them in the pan. The salsa is sweet and tangy with just the right amount of kick from the Jalapenos peppers.

Recipe courtesy of foodnetwork.com

The world. Its existence we experience daily.  We breath, see, smell, feel, a live surrounded by the home we call Earth.  Every year we take a day to think about what we can do to keep humanities impact efficient, safe, and clean.

Here at The Fruit Company we take this to heart and are constantly working towards a healthy impact in our environment.  Here are just a few of our current practices:

Fruit Waste Program: The Fruit Company has partnered with Dirt Hugger, a regional composting company that supports a sustainable, local economy by collecting, processing, and utilizing valuable organic nutrients locally. Dirt Hugger is a member of the United States Composting Council.

Shipping Materials: 93% of our wood fiber corrugated boxes (gift boxes) are made with material supplied by Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) program participants. The SFI® program participants are committed to sustainable forestry on their own forests and follow strict industry regulations. We use paper fill instead of shipping peanuts or bubble wrap. These efforts are a simple, inexpensive way to help our customers reduce the environmental impact of shipping their Fruit Company purchase. We remind consumers to reuse the shipping materials from all products received.

Shipping: 95% of our products are shipped via FedEx. In 2011 FedEx was ranked 8th in the Top 50 by Fortune 500 “World’s Most Admired Companies” in regards to Green Initiatives. FedEx is currently deploying electric vehicles in urban areas where their trucks drive fewer miles and the frequent braking recharges the electric batteries.

There is always room to grow as a company and we continually work towards bettering our world through new initiatives and ideas.  Take some time today to think about your home environment and what you can do to promote a healthy Earth!

Yucatan Chicken

In many parts of the country, winter just doesn’t want to leave, and while we have been relatively lucky in the Northwest this year, we wanted to showcase a recipe that would help blast away those winter chills.

In North America, bananas are used primarily as a sweet additive to desserts, salads, or smoothies. In contrast, Central and South America have many more savory uses for this tropical fruit. This recipe takes full advantage of that combining bananas, oranges, chipotle chilies and achiote paste to make a fiery chicken marinade. While it still maintains some of the sweet, tangy flavor from the banana and orange, the consistency and flavor is similar to a barbeque sauce.

This is a quick and easy recipe to make although you do need to let the chicken marinade overnight or longer. Achiote paste and chipotle peppers can be found at most stores in the foreign food section next to other Hispanic and Latin ingredients. Early in the year, bananas and citrus are plentiful, but since we just finished our HarvestClub™ Exotica for the month, we decided to use Red Bananas in our recipe. Preparation and grilling is straightforward and easy, just make sure you don’t let the chicken burn. The sugar from the fruit will blacken quickly, so watch your temperature and turn the meat frequently.

Ingredients

• ½ cup achiote paste
• 2 tablespoons chopped chipotle chile pepper
• 1 ripe banana
• 1 cup orange juice
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 10 large boneless chicken breasts

Preparation

Blend marinade ingredients in a food processor until the mixture is thick. Pour into a sealable plastic bag, add the chicken and marinate overnight in the refrigerator. Barbeque with marinade on chicken, being careful not to burn the chicken as it cooks. Watch closely. The finished chicken will have a nice orange red color.

Recipe courtesy of foodnetwork.com

Orange Yogurt Panna Cotta

January is an exciting time at The Fruit Company. As the holidays wind down and people get back from vacations, it is a great time to reflect on the previous seasons and prepare for the New Year. It also is the time for great citrus, and the chance to try out some of our favorite varieties is always a treat. Every one of our HarvestClub clubs in January features a different citrus fruit from our juicy Navel Oranges to our exotic Blood Oranges. We also have an assortment of Grapefruit, Satsuma Mandarins, and Honeybells. With all this citrus, employees usually end up purchasing more than a few boxes to take home.

Since it is January, we could discuss the health benefits of fresh citrus or the ways to use fresh squeezed orange juice, but let’s focus on something a little more decadent. Our Orange Yogurt Panna Cotta uses orange peel to flavor this creamy and delicious dessert; a perfect use for those citrus leftovers that so often get thrown away.

This recipe is easy to make and extremely rewarding. It is very rich, and best eaten in small quantities or shared with friends, family or coworkers. It also makes a great party dish as it can be made the night before and kept cool in the refrigerator while it sets.

Recipe courtesy of myrecipes.com

Asia’s Exotic Luxury Fruit

Japan is well known for their love affair with exotic and expensive high-end fruits.  Here’s a look at 8 of The Fruit Company‘s favorites:

1. Musk Melon

source

The Musk Melon runs for $100-$400 apiece.  Considering that the melon gets its name from smell of its musky insides, we hope it’s a special kind of musk, the kind of musk you want to bottle and use as cologne.  Chances are it’s just a musk.  As for the fruit itself, it’s decidedly something special.  Grown in Tokyo, the Musk Melon is meticulously cultivated using devoted greenhouses that keep precise temperature for optimal melon harvesting.  Farmers limit the number of melons on the vine to three in order for the melons to receive the proper nutrients.  As the melons begin to develop, one of the three gets chosen (the chosen one?) and the others are removed from the vine so that this special musk melon, this musk melon to end all musk melons, can thrive.

The fruit’s color and taste are supposed to be enhanced versions of your average work-a-day melon.  The musk however, is that little something special. Read more

Summer Fruit Part 1

As purveyors of Gourmet Fruit Gifts, we know a ton about fruit.  We know how to grow it, pick it, store it, ship it and—as the skins, seeds, and pits in our trashcans show—eat it.  But we don’t know it all; we’re constantly learning new things and we wouldn’t have it any other way.  That’s why we’re introducing our newest feature “Will it Grill?” where we’ll grill different varieties of fruit to see whether we can and should fire up our grills.  Will we burn a fruit or two along the way?  Absolutely.  But for the sake of knowledge, and some sweet caramelized fruit goodness, we’ll give it a shot.  Let the grilling and discovery commence! Read more

Cherry Pork Tenderloin

Normally, Aaron (our E-commerce Manager) handles the recipes.  He’s cooked some tasty dishes in the past few months, and has done so with great aplomb.  Too much aplomb.  It’s time to put an end to his reign of “following the recipe” and “measuring things”.  With great fruit, great things are possible, even in the hands of someone like me.

As proficient as Aaron is, he doesn’t have the experience I bring with me, namely four years of college spent watching The Food Network and Top Chef—if cooking were a spectator sport, I’d be a legend.  Suffice it to say that I was ready for any challenge. Read more

Bing cherries hang from branches, their dark merlot skin glimmering outwards towards the dirt road.  They are ready to be picked.  It’s a week later than expected but harvest will come; the Bings are ready, the Bings are ready.  For Orchard Manager Eric Shrum, the sight of a thriving Bing crop should be cause for celebration, but it isn’t.  He’s not ready to relax.  There will be time for that when all the cherries have been picked, but until then, there’s work to do.

Eric Shrum works for Orchard View Farms in The Dalles, Oregon, where he manages some 2100 acres of cherries.  With the help of over 400 employees during harvest, it’s Mr. Shrum’s job to make sure that Orchard View Farms and their 12 varieties of cherries turn out to be the best of the season.

The job would seem impossible.   And if not impossible, impossible to do well.  But listening to Mr. Shrum talk about his cherries, you would think he was a home gardener checking daily on a lone cherry tree in his back yard, urging it to grow night and day. Read more