Have you tried cutting in to a juicy peach, especially a cling stone, in the hope that the stone at its center would come right off without creating a royal mess of the fruit itself? I did! Every single time but in vain! Over the years, my disdain for cutting up any cling stone fruit only grew stronger as I dreaded losing out on most of the fruit’s juice in the process. This was before Frog Hollow Farm co-owner Sarah Coddington left a pouch on my office desk.
On the pouch was a handwritten note from Sarah that read, “Ask me about it.”
But before I could get back to my desk, Sarah got to me! She was so excited to show me what was in the pouch that she walked me back to my deskright away. Her excitement was palpable and 100% infectious. When I opened the pouch, I discovered an 8GB memory card. Of course, at this point, my curiosity knew no bounds. What was on this card??? We waited anxiously as the computer loaded up the program to reveal the contents of the memory card. And there it was – on a memory card — my very own “Eureka” moment. Of course, I didn’t run out of a bath tub like Archimedes did, but the two-minute video that was on there, changed how I had felt about cling stone fruit my entire life.
The video features University of Pennsylvania tropical ecologist (and distinguished UC Berkeley alum) Daniel Janzen sharing a quick and easy two-step method to pitting cling stone fruits. In the video, he holds a Frog Hollow Farm nectarine and reveals a technique likely dating to our Pleistocene ancestors, and illuminates the ecology of the ancient large mammals and their progeny that still share our earth. Janzen's effective swipes of the knife belie over a half-century studying the co-evolution of plants, insects, people, and other animals.
So go on, watch this video and cut open your very own cling stone fruit and be proud of what you’ve accomplished!
Read more about Janzen and his work at www.gdfcf.org, http://www.acguanacaste.ac.cr/ ; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Janzen
Author: Pearl Driver
Pearl is the Marketing Director at Frog Hollow Farm. She is a digital marketing expert. Before joining Frog Hollow Farm, Pearl worked as a journalist and as Website producer. She brings a combination of creative thinking and knowledge of the Web to Frog Hollow. Her favorite fruits from the farm are the O’Henry peach and the Flavor King pluot. She loves good food and like to experience foods from different nations and cultures. She loves to cook with a variety of ingredients and experiments often with fruit from the farm in her own, home kitchen.