New Year's Resolution - eat a salad every day

Excerpts from an article on napsnet.com

Enjoying a salad a day can help increase your energy level, fill you up and provide essential vitamins and minerals found in a variety of produce.

Sweet, crunchy and flavorful, this Berry, Walnut and Avocado Salad is a treat for the taste buds and a bonus to your diet.

Berry, Walnut and Avocado Salad
Serves 4-6
1 pkg (6 oz.) spring mix salad
¾ cup fresh strawberries, quartered
⅓ cup glazed walnuts
⅓ cup golden raisins
1 large SlimCado, diced
⅓ cup Blue cheese crumbles
¼ -½ cup Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette

In a medium bowl, toss together the spring mix, strawberries, walnuts and golden raisins. Top with avocado and blue cheese crumbles. Drizzle lightly with dressing just prior to serving.

Papaya - the fruit that fights wrinkles

Excerpt from a 12/17/08 article in the Idaho Statesman by Michael Roizen, MD and Mehmet OZ, MD.

Go ahead, feed your face. Eating the right stuff makes you look younger, and one fruit in particular leads the charge: papaya. What makes it so perfect is that it's brimming with vitamin C. And getting lots of that vitamin may mean more youthful skin.

A recent study in women over age 40 found that women who consumed that vitamin had fewer wrinkles and less thinning and dryness in their skin. (You can also put that vitamin, in the form of a 10 percent L-ascorbic acid preparation, right on your face. But do it at night; it rapidly breaks down with exposure to UV light.)

Vitamin C is a natural friend to skin. The nutrient is essential for making collagen, the protein fibers that give skin its strength and resiliency. C also disarms free radicals that would otherwise chip away and weaken those fibers. A little extra vitamin C isn't the only food that can turn back your skin's clock. Nourish it with these strategies:

• Munch on walnuts. In the vitamin C study, researchers also saw that diets rich in linoleic acid - an essential fatty acid in walnuts - meant moister, plumper skin.
• Ease up on saturated fats and refined carbs. Both can turn your skin old too soon.
• Think whole grains. The magnesium and B vitamins you get from them help with the regeneration of skin cells.
• Keep the fruits and veggies coming. To stay smooth and healthy, your skin needs a whole slew of antioxidant-rich produce.

Avocado, remedy for bad breath

Excerpt from an article by Rone Hooper in Good Health Weekly.

Here are a few simple remedies that you can use at home to help you cure your bad breath.

1. Eat avocado
   Avocado is one of the lesser known of the bad breath remedies. Eating a small amount of avocado can help many people to ease the chronic bad breath that ails them and everybody around them. Plain avocados are best. Don’t eat avocados with garlic on them, because then your breath will smell of garlic!
   
   Other remedies include:
   
2. Brush and floss daily
   
3. Eat less protein
   
4. Drink more water
   
   

Artist uses Brooks Tropicals’ fruit stickers in her art.

Introduced in an earlier blog, Luis Caldwell combines globes, soccer balls and lots of fruit stickers in her sculptures.

Her most recent sculptures include Brooks Tropicals’ fruit stickers and is installed in the brand new and beautiful Public School 244 in Flushing Queens. The project has been very well received.

Dessert party

A dessert party was held today to celebrate Craig Wheeling’s promotion to President of Brooks Tropicals. Here are some of the well wishers at the event.

Homestead Toy Drive thru 12/15

Make the holidays a little more enjoyable for young teens in need this holiday season. Give an unwrapped toy for a young teen age 12-17 years-old.

“Wish List” items include Board Games, Gift Certificates, Backpacks, CD’s, DVD’s, Toiletries, Sports Equipment, Costume Jewelry, Strategy Games, Sports Team Clothing or Memorabilia to name a few.

The Miami Rescue Mission is spearheading this drive. You can drop off toys in the Brooks Tropicals’ HR office or at T. R. Jones and Co. on 1780 N. Krome Ave. in Homestead where a collection box is located in the lobby.

Happy Holidays' artwork

This year’s Redlands Christian Migrant Association artist is Mariana. Her cute snowlady will be gracing our ads, website and market update during the holiday season.

Papaya Lime Soup

Recipe from an article by Jenny Cornbleet in Cooking Light, May of 2004

A big thank you to Sarah Fletcher, Pal’s niece for finding this great papaya soup recipe.

Papaya Lime Soup
Go tropical and hollow-out Caribbean Sunrise Papaya halves to serve the soup in. This recipe will make 4 servings.

2 Caribbean Sunrise Papayas, peeled and diced
1 mango, peeled and diced
1 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 cup water
2 1/2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons honey

Place first 6 ingredients in a blender or food processor and process until smooth. Ladle into papaya halves and top, if desired, with diced mango and sliced mint.

Nutritional Information
Calories: 150 (3% from fat)
Fat: 0.5g (sat 0.1g,mono 0.1g,poly 0.1g)
Protein: 1.7g
Carbohydrate: 38.1g
Fiber: 3.6g
Cholesterol: 0.0mg
Iron: 0.4mg
Sodium: 7mg
Calcium: 50mg

SlimCados makes the list of party foods that keep you slim

Excerpts from an article written by Michael Roizen, MD and Mehmet Oz, MD at seattlepi.com

Fitting into your New Year's Eve outfit doesn't mean passing up appetizers altogether. In fact, choosing the right noshes before your meal or at the season's parties may actually help you eat less overall.

Eating a small amount of healthy unsaturated fat -- think walnuts, avocado spread on whole-grain bread and apples dipped in a little peanut butter -- 25 minutes before a meal triggers a chain reaction in your digestive system that slows the rate at which your stomach empties, which means you feel fuller faster.

It also helps keep your blood sugar levels from spiking after your meal and makes it easier for your body to absorb fat-soluble nutrients, such as vitamins A, D, E and K, as well as lycopene and lutein.

But here's the catch: It only takes about 70 calories of this fat* to get the effect. That's about 6 walnuts, 10 almonds, 1/4 of a medium avocado, or half a tablespoon of real peanut butter (from peanuts alone). More than that, and you're just working against yourself.

*Blogger’s note: When I talk about the nutritional benefits of a SlimCado avocado and how it has half the fat of a California avocado, I sometimes hear “but the fat in the avocado is ‘good’ fat!”

True it’s better for you than saturated fat, but as this article says, you still need to watch your intake of any fat. That’s what is great about SlimCado avocados; that 70 calories goes a lot further with SlimCados!

Funds requested for research to manage threat of the tiny exotic ambrosia beetle

Excerpts from two 12/2/08 Miami Herald articles written by Georgia Tasker and Charles Rabin.

Though the avocado crop is currently sound, Miami-Dade agricultural leaders tried a little preventive medicine Tuesday, warning commissioners of the dangers of the fungus carried by the beetle - no bigger than Abe Lincoln's nose on the copper penny - and saying it could wipe out the crop entirely.

The state's commercial avocado groves in Miami-Dade County are so far untouched by the fungus that the beetle can spread. Avocados are grown on 7,000 acres in Miami-Dade County. Last year it was a $30 million industry

Scientists have noted the damage it has done to red bay trees -- a close relative of the avocado -- as it creeps south from Savannah, Ga., where it was discovered in 2002. The funding requested by University of Florida researchers and agricultural leaders will develop a way to eradicate the insects and disease before they reach commercial groves.

Researchers looking for $10,000 for immediate work got $7,500 from the commission Tuesday. The money will pay for short-term research on insecticides and insect repellents and other means to stop the spread of the beetle.

''We're at the beginning research stage,'' said Craig Wheeling, chief executive of Brooks Tropicals. ''Obviously this is a good first step in putting in place a successful disease management program.”
Brooks Tropicals manages 3,700 acres of avocados in Miami-Dade.

Reports of dying red bay trees started turning up in 2003 and 2004. Red bay is native to coastal forests throughout the southeast, and the fungus now is killing most of the large mature red bay trees in Georgia, South Carolina and north Florida.

The fungal disease spread by the beetles is called laurel wilt. It attacks the laurel family, which has about 100 species, including the avocado and red bay. It plugs up the trees' plumbing so that the leaves wilt, turn reddish and then brown as the trees die.

The beetles are hard to control, because they spend most of their life cycle inside trees. Wilt diseases like this one are equally difficult to control.