Free Republic

President Biden finished his campaign-style Saturday trip to Michigan with a cherry on top. The Democrat met with local officials and voters at a cherry farm near the Traverse City National Cherry Festival, an event that has also attracted Presidents Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford. He chatted with two Guatemalan couples who worked on the farm for 35 years about a potential pathway to citizenship for farmworkers, before eating a cherry out of their basket.

Apples originally evolved in the wild to entice ancient megafauna to disperse their seeds; more recently, humans began spreading the trees along the Silk Road with other familiar crops; dispersing the apple trees led to their domestication. Recent archaeological finds of ancient preserved apple seeds across Europe and West Asia combined with historical, paleontological, and recently published genetic data are presenting a fascinating new narrative for one of our most familiar fruits. In this study, Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History traces the history of the apple from its wild origins, noting that...

President Donald Trump may soon be able to claim a sweet victory for his deregulation push, with officials preparing to get rid of the decades-old rules for frozen cherry pies. Emails show the Food and Drug Administration planned to start the process for revoking the standard for frozen cherry pies this week, followed by a similar revocation of the standard for French dressing. Plans to get rid of the obscure rules had been tucked into the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda. Standards for an array of foods including cottage cheese and canned peas were put in place decades ago partly to...

Recently – for some reason that I can’t even remember now – I was looking for information on Germany’s Black Forest. Many of the links that came up were for the famous Black Forest Cake – an extravagant confection of chocolate sponge cake, ‘kirschwasser’ and cherries. Definitely a 'celebration' cake, and it looks very nice for Christmas. Here, from Genius Kitchen, is a ‘from scratch’ recipe: http://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/authentic-black-forest-cake-schwarzwald-kirsch-kuchen-343698and here is one using prepared cake mix (includes a little history on the cake) from What's Cooking America: https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Cakes/BlackForestCake.htmI may have been looking up the Black Forest because I’ve become entranced by train...

A mild winter followed by a spate of cold weather in Washington, made its mark on the city’s cherry blossoms, but the annual festival delighted first-time visitors on Sunday. The cherry blossom trees were a gift from Japan to the United States in 1912. The cherry blossom trees currently grow in three National Park Service locations, including the Tidal Basin, Hains Point and on the Washington Monument grounds. The cold weather killed half of the blossoms on the Yoshino cherry trees just as they were reaching their peak. The National Park Service says on its website that peak bloom was...

Last week I got to thinking about Sloppy Joe sandwiches, which I hadn't had in ages but loved when I was a kid. We decided to try making it from scratch, and settled on Chef John's recipe. It came out really good - I think I might add some jalapeno next time - but it doesn't really taste like the Sloppy Joe made from the canned sauce. I'm not sure what to do to it, to make it more like the childhood favorite (except buy a can of sauce ;-) and I'm wondering if anyone else has made it. Here's...

Study finds daily cherry juice reduces muscle damage caused by exerciseTart cherries could help athletes reduce muscle damage to recover faster from a tough workout, according to new research published in the American College of Sports Medicine's journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Researchers at the Sports and Exercise Science Research Center at London South Bank University in the UK gave 10 trained athletes 1 ounce of an antioxidant-packed tart cherry juice concentrate (provided by CherryActive) twice daily for seven days prior to and two days after an intense round of strength training. The athletes' recovery after the...

Researchers find red hot Super Fruit aids sleep in older adultsLANSING, Mich., July 12, 2010 – Drinking tart cherry juice daily could help reduce the severity of insomnia and time spent awake after going to sleep, according to a new study published in the Journal of Medicinal Food1. A team of University of Pennsylvania, University of Rochester and VA Center of Canandaigua researchers conducted a pilot study on the sleep habits of 15 older adults. The adults drank 8 ounces of tart cherry juice beverage (CheriBundi www.cheribundi.com) in the morning and evening for 2 weeks, and a comparable matched juice...

Farmers in Michigan and six other states are harvesting a bumper crop of tart cherries. But the bounty is turning out to be the pits for farmers whose fruit is rotting in orchards instead of bubbling in cherry pies. Under a Depression-era federal program designed to keep prices from plummeting, tart-cherry farmers are being told by fruit processors to leave up to 40% of their crop unharvested. "It's kind of heartbreaking," said Rob Manigold, a tart-cherry farmer near Traverse City, Mich. Michigan grows about 75% of all the tart cherries in the U.S.

EATING MELATONIN-RICH CHERRIES ARE ‘‘NATURAL” WAY TO RESET YOUR BODY CLOCK WHEN CROSSING TIME ZONES Research Reveals that Cherries Boost Your Body’s Melatonin Levels to Help Prevent Jet Lag After Long International Flights It takes mere seconds to reset our watch to a different time zone, but our body’s internal time clocks often take longer to sync up in our new locale. Experienced travelers often stash a bottle of melatonin supplements in their carryon bag to help adjust, but experts say there may be a more natural and tasty way to get melatonin: cherries. Recent studies have revealed that cherries...

LEONA VALLEY - It's time to get pickin'. The cherry season in Leona Valley is in full swing this weekend with nearly 20 U-pick ranches opening their orchards. The cherry season is expected to extend through the end of June or until orchards are picked clean. Most orchards will open at 8 a.m. today. "I believe nearly all of us has a decent crop," said Chuck Fluharty. "Hardly anyone got froze out this year. I know we're better off than we were last year. Windy Ridge features three varieties of cherries - Bing, Rainier and Black Tartarians. Other varieties grown...

There's a sneaky new trend sweeping kitchens around the country. Chefs are serving meat with something hidden inside, and it's getting rave reviews. Marcie Flies enjoys cooking for her family and sometimes uses meat with a fruity surprise mixed in cherries. "My kids can't tell. My husband can't tell. In fact, I had to tell them what it was," said Flies. She buys the meat pre-made in a product called Plevalean. It's one of several new products hitting the market with fruits mixed into the meat. Al Booren, Professor of Meat Science says, "Cherries added to ground beef are popular....

Extreme weather has virtually wiped out Door County’s cherry crop for this year, which not only means slim pickings in orchards that attract thousands of tourists each summer, but also a loss of an estimated 350 to 400 seasonal jobs for workers who harvest and process the iconic scarlet fruit. At a time when epic rains and flooding have wiped out berries and vegetables in other parts of the state, Door County’s loss may seem surprising because it is attributed to an opposite extreme: a three-month drought last summer, followed by a January that brought rain and wild temperature fluctuations....

LEONA VALLEY - Hundreds of cherry lovers wound their way into the hills west of Palmdale on Saturday to gather some of the first fruit of the cherry season. A handful of cherry growers have opened their orchards for the season. Many more are expected to open within the week, said Joe Lucida, the owner of Amber's Sweet Cherries on Leona Avenue and vice president of the Leona Valley Cherry Growers Association. "It's been kind of cool. It's slowed the ripening process," Lucida said. Amber's could open its gates for the "u-pick" season on Saturday because about 30% of his...

LEONA VALLEY - The cherries are ripe, the orchards are open and the locals will be celebrating on Saturday. The 35th annual Leona Valley Cherry Festival, which starts at 11 a.m. with a parade through town, will feature a craft show, plenty of food and, of course, hand-picked cherries from the community's local orchards. "The orchards will be open, so you can go and stuff yourself with cherries," parade organizer Jim Bonn said. This year's theme is "Cherry Trees and Bumble Bees," an homage to longtime Leona Valley resident and orchard owner "Big John" Mayfield, who died in December. Mayfield...

CHICAGO - Buying organic milk these days - or organic apples, eggs, or beef - no longer has to mean an extra trip to a Whole Foods supermarket or the local co-op. Organic products now line the shelves at Safeway and Costco. And Wal-Mart - already the nation's largest organic-milk seller - says it wants to sell more organic food. Large companies including Kraft, General Mills, and Kellogg own sizable organic- and natural-food brands. Now, they are developing organic versions of their own products, too. Still, while some organic-food fans welcome its broadening appeal and availability, others worry that the...

George Washington cut down one tree. Bureaucrats in Washington, DC, are trying to pull up the whole orchard. On October 17, 2005, letters went out from the Food and Drug Administration warning cherry purveyors that they had better quit telling people that cherries have health benefits or dire things are going to happen. The lucky recipients were warned that it's illegal to say things like, "The same chemicals that give tart cherries their color may relieve pain better than aspirin and ibuprofen." estimonials such as "I no longer take any drugs!" had better cease-or else. Although most of the 29...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. A woman found dead in a tank of cherries and brine at Peninsula Fruit Exchange apparently drowned. That's according to preliminary autopsy results on Jo Ann Mendoza. The 38-year-old was found by co-workers in a large vat of cherries Tuesday evening after a babysitter told a company official that she had not picked up her two daughters. Mendoza worked as a quality control inspector at the facility. The medical examiner's report also says the death appears to have been accidental. An acquaintance says Mendoza may have been testing the solution mix of the cherry processing vat at...