Publix plans to promote Florida produce with in-store cooking demos

Lakeland, Fla.-based Publix Super Markets will showcase Florida produce next spring with in-store cooking demonstrations and a cooking school in five cities. The program is in conjunction with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' Fresh from Florida marketing campaign.

“This is an exceptional opportunity to highlight Florida’s early-spring harvest of fresh produce,” Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson said in a news release.

From Feb. 1 to May 21, 2010, each produce item will be part of a Simple Meals cooking demonstration held three to four days in all of Publix’s more than 1,000 stores throughout the Southeast. Recipe fliers will be available at Simple Meal kiosks and near the featured item in the produce department, according to the news release.

In addition, Publix will sponsor five cooking schools that will teach handling and preparation of the featured produce items. They will be held in Jacksonville, Tampa, Sarasota, Boca Raton and Atlanta.

IFAS releases jewel of a grape

Photo courtesy of the University of Florida

Southern Jewel, a new table grape cultivar, bested other muscadines in a five-year field trial.

The University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences has a new high-yield table grape variety that also has a strong disease package.

Dubbed Southern Jewel, the cultivar has a crunchy texture and a palatable skin, making it well suited for the fresh market, according to a news release.

IFAS biology professor Dennis Gray developed the cultivar through conventional plant-breeding techniques.

In six years of comparisons with other muscadine varieties at the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center in Apopka, Southern Jewel was a clear winner.

“Muscadines typically make very small clusters, maybe just four or five berries,” Gray said in the news release. “This one can make more than 12, sometimes 16 berries on a cluster.”

Producing bunches also makes it easier for workers to cut the stem rather than picking individual berries for packing in a clamshell.

For more information, visit the Florida Grape Growers Association’s Web site at www.fgga.org.