Why not let our local fruits and vegetables get fresh with you? We brazenly do that here at Salty’s and there are many reasons why. The biggest is that our primary goal is to bring you the ripest, rosy cheeked, freshest and most nutritious foods that come from the Northwest, each in their season. Delicious! We do this also with the harvesting of our fish and shellfish, and we have come up with a 52-week seasonal “freshest of the fresh” foods list for our chefs to work with. This focus on sourcing what is regionally available is precisely what the native people who originally inhabited this land did out of necessity. Today we get to do this by choice. They had to eat what they could locally harvest or catch, while preserving what they could for the long barren winter. These days with trucking, shipping and air-freight transportation available, we can move a plethora of products from all over the globe right to your table any day of the year, winter included. For this availability of variety, we are grateful to our growers, catchers and distributors.

Each area of the world specializes in delicious foods that are native to their locale and culture, such as kiwi fruit from Australia or apples and Walla Walla onions from Washington; plus there are foods that can be grown anywhere like leafy greens that don’t have to be transported long distances. For a fresh local harvest guide, including dates, check out this resource: Willie Greens Harvest Guide.

“Climacteric produce such as tomatoes, avocados, papayas and bananas ripen after they are picked.”

There are two categories of fruits and vegetables, climacteric and non-climacteric. Non-climacteric fruits and vegetables do not continue to mature after they are picked and they include cherries, strawberries, cucumbers and oranges. Climacteric produce such as tomatoes, avocados, papayas and bananas ripen after they are picked. The fruits and vegetables that ripen after they are picked need to be harvested early because they will continue to mature while they are in transit causing spoilage. This early “green” picking prematurely stops their exposure to the sun and to nutrients from the soil, stunting their maturity and not allowing them to get to their luscious and nutritious potential.

Hey, parents! Have you ever asked a youngster, wet behind the ears, to do the job a fully mature adult should do? Same idea. That tomato picked unripe will not taste as good or be as juicy, delicious or nutritious as the one allowed to ripen on the vine. A fully mature and ripened, luscious red tomato, still warm from the sun and just picked off the vine, is what a tomato should taste like.

Local means it goes from the nearby farm to your table. It means that the produce is harvested fully ripened and in its season. It means it had a chance to develop and get all the nurturing it needs to become its absolute best naturally. You will know it when you taste it, but don’t say we didn’t warn you, our food is shamelessly fresh!