Peaches and milk, one of four dleightful Fruttare flavors. Photo courtesy Unilever..

If you’re a fan of Creamsicles, you know the unique combination of creamy ice cream and fruity sorbet.

Creamsicles debuted in California in 1923. A mere 90 years later, there’s another creamy frozen treat that combines ice pop and milk: Fruttare bars.

Created in Europe by Unilever, they’ve arrived in the U.S., and they deserve your attention.

A distant cousin of the Creamsicle concept—which is a vanilla ice cream bar coated with orange sherbet—Fruttare bars are a blend of fruit juice (the base of ice pops and sherbet) and fresh milk. Chunks of fruit add texture and bursts of flavor.

The initial flavors include:

Fruttare bars, available at retailers nationwide, are certified kosher by KOF-K.

Read the full review.

Gazpacho, a low-calorie, high-nutrition dish, is one of those recipes that afford maximum customization: Each cook can do his or her thing, and even a favorite recipe can be tweaked each time it is made.

 
Many people think of gazpacho as tomato based. But, as this recipe for gazpacho verde (green gazpacho) shows, no tomatoes are required.

That’s good news right now, since our stores and farmers markets stores are filled with pricey hothouse tomatoes. If there’s a bumper crop of tomatoes in August or early September and the price goes down, that’s the time to make tomato-based gazpacho.

We love the ease of gazpacho: Toss chopped vegetables into the blender, and in a minute you’ve got soup.

Gazpacho verde garnished with diced avocado. Photo courtesy Pink Sands Resort | Bahamas.

GAZPACHO VERDE RECIPE

Ingredients

*Canned tomatillos can be substituted for fresh ones, but the flavor of fresh tomatillos is far superior. Tomatillos are not “little tomatoes”; they are cousins of tomatoes. While both are members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae, they have a different genus: Physalis for tomatillos (P. philadelphica) and Solanum for tomatoes (S. lycopersicum).

2. ADD the rice wine vinegar and oil and blend until smooth. Add the hot pepper sauce. If you’ve added too hot, dilute it by adding additional rice wine vinegar or some honey.

3. CHILL. Garnish and serve.
 
GAZPACHO GARNISHES

Dairy Garnishes

Non-Dairy Garnishes

 
 
GAZPACHO HISTORY

Gazpacho is a cold raw vegetable soup that originated in Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain. The name is of Arabic origin, and literally means “soaked bread,” an ingredient of early recipes that made use of the prior day’s stale bread. The term has become generic for “cold vegetable soup.”

The original recipe came from the Arabs who occupied much of Spain from the 8th through the 13th centuries. Early on, gazpacho was a way for field workers to make lunch from the vegetables at hand. The recipe typically included stale bread, bell pepper, garlic, olive oil, onion, tomato, wine vinegar and salt—which remains the Andalusian style. Since the tomato is a New World fruit that was not eaten in Europe until the 1800s*, the earliest gazpacho was made without it.

There are many variations of gazpacho, depending on local ingredients and preferences. American recipes tend to leave out the bread, although some garnish the soup with a garlic crouton. White gazpacho is made with olive oil, sherry vinegar, bread, garlic and salt, and substitutes green grapes and almonds for the vegetables.
 
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*A member of the Nightshade family of plants, the tomato was deemed poisonous until it was eaten out of desperation during a famine in the early 1800s in Italy. The original tomato, which grew wild, was the size of a cherry tomato, which made an attractive house plant.

 
HOW MANY TYPES OF SOUP HAVE YOU HAD?

Check out the history of soup and the most popular soups in our Soup Glossary.

Today’s tip is an easy, kid-friendly, guilt-free, handheld snack or dessert.

Ice cream cones filled with fruit are a way to bring the fun without the refined sugar, calories or drippiness of ice cream.

Simply cut up a fruit salad into a small dice (the size of raspberries). Blueberries and raspberries can go into the cone as is; blackberries and strawberries should be halved or quartered.

You can add a little ice cream or frozen yogurt as a topping, using a small scoop or a tablespoon. Or, top with:

 
GLUTEN-FREE CONES

We really enjoyed these gluten-free ice cream cones from Goldbaum’s.

The line is certified kosher by OU.
  

Stack slices of grilled polenta with your favorite fillings; here, crab salad and guacamole (photo © Costanero Cocoino Peruana).

While corn itself is a whole grain, polenta is refined: It is degerminated cornmeal, with the germ and endosperm (which contain the fiber and other nutrition) removed. As with all refined grains——the majority of the grains we consume—the protein, iron and vitamins are left on the factory floor.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a delicious addition to the table. We spotted this attractive starter at Costanero Cocoino Peruana, a Peruvian restaurant in Montclair, New Jersey. It reminded us of Caprese stacks, one of our favorite first courses to make with summer’s heirloom tomatoes (see photo below).

You can make polenta from scratch, or buy it in rolls, available in most supermarkets. The latter makes it easy to create stacked appetizers and sides. It’s available in plain plus flavors such as basil-garlic and sundried tomato.

STACKED POLENTA APPETIZER RECIPE

The most time-consuming part of this recipe is deciding what to layer in-between the polenta slices. Tips: Select different colors, and check out your leftovers to see what could work. You can serve the stacks with a lightly-dressed frisée or mesclun salad.

Ingredients

 
Then, select two fillings:

 
Preparation

1. SLICE polenta into desired thickness. Broil, fry or grill until edges become slightly crisp.

2. TOP first polenta round with first filling and top with second polenta round. Use a spatula to make the filling flush with the edges of the polenta. Repeat with second filling and third polenta round.

3. PLATE as desired, with pesto/sauce, fresh herbs and/or salad.
 
MORE RECIPES

There are two styles of polenta: creamy polenta, which is like cooked grits, and sliced polenta, in rounds or squares/rectangles. These recipes use rounds from purchased rolls of polenta. Start by slicing and grilling/frying the rounds.

Breakfast

 
 
MORE POLENTA IDEAS

Potatoes originated in the Andes Mountains of Peru, where more than 2,000 varieties still grow wild (there are more than 4,000 varieties of potatoes worldwide). They were first domesticated more than 6,000 years ago.

Don’t you wish you could buy some of these beauties, instead of the plain potatoes grown for the mass market?

If you look closely, you’ll see versions that look similar to what we can buy today. What we can buy is based on which varieties:

 
THE HISTORY OF POTATOES

Wild potatoes are indigenous to the Andes Mountains in Peru, and were cultivated by the Incas.

However, not everyone was enamored of the potato (or the tomato). They were feared at first, accused of causing leprosy and being poisonous. They were classified as a relative of deadly nightshade, because both contain toxic compounds known as glycoalkaloids, though the levels in domestic potatoes and tomatoes fall far short of being harmful to people.

Slowly, more countries realized the power of the potato. It could grow in any climate. It thrived in Ireland, so much so that when hit by a potato blight, Phytophthora infestans, three years in a row, more than a million people died of starvation and disease.

Potatoes were introduced to America in the 18th century. They were first planted in Idaho in 1836; the state now grows 25% of the nation’s potatoes.

Idahoan Luther Burbank developed the Russet Burbank potato in 1872, a more disease-resistant version of the Irish russet potato (there have been additional russet developments since).

And the rest is history—even if modern history is not as colorful as the original created by nature.
 
CHECK OUT THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF POTATOES IN OUR POTATO GLOSSARY.