June is National Fruits & Vegetables Month.

The USDA used to suggest five portions a day. The latest dietary guidelines call for five to thirteen servings of fruits and vegetables a day (2½ to 6½ cups, not including potatoes, which are considered a starch rather than a vegetable).

The amount depends on one’s caloric intake. For a 2,000-calories-a-day diet, this translates into nine servings, or 4½ cups per day. Think of it as 2 cups of fruit and 2½ cups of vegetables.

It’s a great month to up your intake. June is busting out all over with apricots, berries (blackberries and blueberries become plentiful while raspberries and strawberries become less expensive), cherries, melons (including watermelon), peaches and plums.

For veggies, try beets, dandelion greens, okra, peas, sorrel and summer squash.

Make an adventure of discovering new fruits and vegetables—like pluots and apriums.

A cross of plums and apricots, pluots were first bred in the late 20th century and are grown in Washington and California. They have more plum parentage (70%), so they have smooth skin like plums. One variety is called the Dinosaur Egg because of its dappled skin. The brother of the pluot is the aprium, a plum and apricot hybrid with mostly apricot parentage. Like apricots, apriums have a slightly fuzzy skin.

Fruits and vegetables are full of antioxidants. The latest research suggests that the biggest payoff from eating fruits and vegetables is heart health. Learn more from the Harvard School Of Public Health.

Here’s more on fruit and vegetable guidelines from the Centers For Disease Control.

Check out our favorite fruits, vegetables and recipes.

We picked special items in six different categories. Today, take a look at the kitchenware—everything from an $8.00 coffee bean ice cube tray to the beautiful Nespresso CitiZ Coffee & Espresso Maker for $349.00.

If Dad loves waffles, the Waring Pro Professional Double Belgian Waffle Maker is a dream ($99.99).

Garlic-loving Dads will be tickled pink with the electric garlic roaster from Roasted Garlic Express ($29.99).

See these and more Father’s Day gifts.

Does Dad love delicious roasted garlic? Package
the gift with some garlic bulbs. Photo courtesy Roasted Garlic Express.

Pamela’s is a virtual bakery of gluten-free products. There are ready-to-eat cookies and cheesecakes, plus mixes to make bread, cornbread, brownies and pancakes (we love the cornbread and brownies, and will soon be making the bread and pancakes).

• THE PRIZE: One winner will enjoy a gift bag of Pamela’s Products: Baking & Pancake Mix, Bread Mix, Brownie Mix and Cornbread Mix; Chunky Chocolate Chip cookies, Simplebites and Spicy Ginger or Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chunk cookies; a Pamela’s baseball cap and tee shirt; and measuring cups and measuring spoons. Don the clothing and munch on the pre-made goodies while you tackle the mixes in the kitchen!
• To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Gluten-Free Section and enter your email address for the prize drawing. This contest closes on Monday, June 7th at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!
• To learn more about Pamela’s, or to enter their Annual Recipe Contest, visit PamelasProducts.com.

One lucky winner will receive a large gift
bag of cookies, mixes, and kitchen
goodies. Photo by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.

Code Blue! Stat! Photo courtesy Code Blue.

That’s the term used by hospitals for patients requiring immediate resuscitation. And it’s also the name of a sports drink—or “recovery drink,” as the makers of Code Blue have cleverly named it.

Many drinks can supply hydration, but Code Blue promises essential fluids and nutrients that replenish and revive.

To revitalize muscles, it claims three times the electrolyte level of the leading sports drink and twice as many vitamins and minerals. It contains additional detoxifiers, replenishers and inflammation-reducers that leading brands don’t have.

Code Blue tastes to us like pineapple with a hit of vanilla—but it’s definitely in the category an energy drink, not an enhanced pineapple juice drink. An eight-ounce can is 60 calories. The only caveat is that its 375mg of sodium is 15% of one’s Daily Value.

And the pet peeve is that the Nutrition Facts panel claims that each little can contains 1.5 servings—a game played by manufacturers to keep the per-serving counts down for marketing purposes.

Has anyone ever drunk a partial can (or eaten 2/3 of a granola bar, or other fraction of what looks like a single-serve portion)? Manufacturers of America: Get real!

Evolve kefir drinks are the latter—which makes it very easy to consume vast quantities of beneficial probiotic bacteria. Probiotics help to promote digestive health and enhance the immune system; while smoothies help to soothe the soul.

Learn all about kefir in our review of Evolve Kefir. The line is so delicious, we’ve given up milkshakes and malteds to focus on its delicious fruit flavors. The products are certified OU(D) kosher.

By the way:

• Many lactose intolerant people can enjoy kefir, as long as it is raw and not cooked. Cooking destroys the enzymes that make the product so digestible.

• Kefir is not “drinkable yogurt.” Although it is a cultured milk product like yogurt, with a similar tanginess, the “recipe” is different. Yogurt can be made with as few as two bacteria cultures and probiotic yogurt with another two probiotic cultures. Kefir is a complex colony of many more cultures, as you’ll learn in the review.

See our favorite yogurt products, plus recipes, in our Yogurt Section.

Plain kefir garnished with strawberries and
mint. Photo by Katharine Pollak | THE NIBBLE.