Southern California’s blessed with locally grown fruit throughout the year. Citrus is king during these cooler months. Even a mid-sized farmers market like the one at UC Irvine boasts many vendors selling different varieties of lemons (sweet Persian; extremely tart Lisbon; mild aromatic Meyers), oranges (pink and juicy Cara Cara; tart, sanguine blood oranges, several kinds of mandarins; the ever popular navel), and grapefruit scions.

Last weekend, I spied Cal Poly Pomona’s ag school selling a hybrid called a frua, an heirloom love child of a grapefruit and a mandarin orange. It’s the size and shape of the former, its skin color somewhere between the two. Its flesh tempers the tartness of a grapfruit with the juicy, not oversweet flavor of a mandarin.

Most interestingly, the frua’s thin skin is tender and edible, with a mild and pleasant bitterness that might make a terrific marmalade. I bought four of these mongrel fruit with that intent. If you happen to have Grandma Tildy’s killer marmalade recipe in your clutches, help a brother out and post it, willya?

The UC Irvine farmer’s market is held every Saturday morning in the shopping center parking lot at Campus and Bridge. While there’s a wide variety of vegetables and fruit for sale, right now, citrus rules the roost for flavor, variety, and low prices.

Long before industrial snack foods and convenience stores were imagined, boiled peanuts fed the car driving public’s craving for salty snacks. Throughout the American South, roadside vendors set up high BTU propane burners and kettles at gas stations, fruit stands, and empty lots to serve locally grown peanuts in a style as old as the dirt they grew in.

Thanks to an influx of Southeast Asian farmers, Californians with a Dixie heritage can fill their cravings for an absent favorite. Peanuts feature prominently in cuisines influenced by the Chinese diaspora, so inquire among the Hmong, Vietnamese, and Thai specialty growers at your local L.A. area farmers market.

Raw, or “green” peanuts, still moist from the damp earth in which it grew, more closely resemble pod beans than tree nuts. Botanically speaking, they are legumes. As these freshly harvested peanuts dry, they harden and take on a more nut like character. Boiled peanuts don’t have the crunch you’d expect from the dry roasted variety, but a wet, briny, bean like texture, more like edamame’s country cousin.

The local season lasts through the end of December.

Basic Boiled Peanuts

1 pound green, or raw, peanuts
4 cups water
1 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a pot, and bring to a boil. You can adjust the brine strength to your preference, but a long boil will increase the salt concentration.
Reduce heat, and cover with a lid cracked opened slightly.
Gently simmer for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally so the peanuts don’t stick to the bottom and burn.

Get your Kyoho grapes before they disappear. The vendor at my local UC Irvine farmer’s market tells me this Saturday will close out her season, and they won’t be back until next July.

Kyohos are one of Asia’s most popular table grapes. With its high sugar content and distinctively strong flavor, they almost taste artificially enhanced by some flavor scientists’ mad experiments. They resemble Concord grapes in their large size and thick skin. Some describe them as tasting like Concord grape jelly, but to me, they taste more like Japanese grape flavored beverages or candy. To each his cultural reference, I guess.

Park’s Vineyard grows them on their Temecula property about two hours’ drive south of Los Angeles. If you miss out on local kyohos, you’ll see imported Chilean kyohos next spring.

Park’s Vineyard also sells them at the Santa Monica farmer’s market on Pico Blvd and Centinela. Both the Santa Monica market and the one at UC Irvine are held on Saturday mornings, and I suspect their booths will sell out by noon time. Look for this banner, and don’t show up late.

Late summer’s fruitful riches fill our Southern California farmers markets. The many varieties of apricots, peaches and nectarines tempt buyers with their perfume in a way that rock hard supermarket stone fruit can’t.

Buying direct from the growers can sometimes save you money, but variety and vine-ripened freshness are the real reasons for shopping at the farmer’s markets. Rather than the usual industrial cultivars, they’ll raise more flavorful fruit and vegetable varieties. Among the dozens of heirloom tomato varieties sold here, there’s a supersweet, flavor rich hybrid called Sungold, which was recently featured in Saveur Magazine’s Top 100 list. I’ve grown nine tomato plants in my garden plot this year, and the sungold hybrids are my clear favorite. Gardeners can buy seeds from Totally Tomato. (Thanks, Liza, for hooking me up with my seedlings!)

As a neophyte gardener, I’ve sponged off the market vendors for plant care advice, and lifted ideas for things to plant next season. I find without exception the farmers generously share their knowledge, and I value the markets as much for the producers as the produce.

Not all farmer’s markets are the same, though. My local Saturday market across from UC Irvine is Orange County’s biggest, but still pales in comparison to the biggies in L.A. County. These photos were taken at the Santa Monica organic market last Wednesday. The Santa Monica and Hollywood markets, held several times a week, draw the biggest number of vendors and top chefs who shop for locally grown produce.

Among them was a crew from Santa Monica’s bastion of California cuisine, Josie Restaurant. Chef de Cuisine Jill Davie stopped me and chatted because we were both wearing t shirts from Piggly Wiggly, the southern supermarket chain.

T shirt twins: Professor Salt & Chef Davie

Organic shallots from Windrose Farms. I’m using these to seed my garden this winter.

Does your supermarket sort fruit by ripeness?

For a list of farmer’s markets in the greater Los Angeles region, head over to LA Times list of local famer’s markets.