Cherry season is a highpoint of the food year. In the U.S., it is mainly June and July, although seasons are not as strict as they used to be. Markets are dominated by dark red Bing cherries and, less commonly, red-tinged creamy yellow Rainier cherries. Royal Ann cherries are similar to Rainier, in fact some people claim they are indistinguishable. Royal Ann cherries are made into maraschino cherries. Yes, yellow cherries are the starting point for the glowing red entries in fruit cocktails and exotic drinks.

70% of California’s Oysters come from Humboldt Bay on the north coast, about a hundred miles from the Oregon border. The Arcata Bay Oyster Festival (Arcata Bay is the north end of Humboldt Bay) was held last weekend, and attending reminded me that I have not said enough about oysters. Famous chef James Beard said his two favorite foods were raw apples and raw oysters. There is much to be said.

Watermelon originated in Africa in the Kalahari Desert. This conjures up visions of a desperate traveler dying of thirst crawling over a ridge to find … a watermelon patch. However it originated, watermelon is now a favorite in much of the world, and you can count me as an enthusiast. As such, I am disturbed by the great blight on the watermelon landscape. Miserable insipid seedless watermelons are threatening to crowd out one of the world’s food treasures. Without real watermelon, summer might as well be cancelled.

The Loco Moco is a Hawaiian breakfast dish of a hamburger patty on rice topped with fried eggs and brown gravy. There are many substitutes for the hamburger, but there is no know low calorie version. Wikipedia says the Loco Moco originated in Hilo, Hawaii in 1949 at the request of some local boys who were after some quick cheap eats. Loco, Spanish for crazy, was a nickname of one of the boys, and moco was picked to rhyme.

Periwinkles are a family of marine snails. They are popularly consumed in Europe and the Far East, but they have not caught on as regular menu items in the U.S. Recently I happened upon a bag of frozen cooked periwinkle meat in market near San Francisco. Traditionally, periwinkle eaters have extracted the cooked meat from the shells with a special two-tined fork or, if forced to improvise, a toothpick. Having the meat extracted is a convenience.

I expect that someday we will be buying watermelons that have been bred to include the store bar code on the skin. For now, we have some interesting varieties of orange raspberries, white rhubarb, and black rice. Beets are on the cutting edge, with red, white, gold, and candy-striped. Our local farmer’s market didn’t have the candy-striped kind, no doubt a step towards the built-in bar code, so I made do with some golden beets.

I noticed a package wrapped in white paper in the meat department of a Save Mart supermarket. What could be more mysterious in a meat product not wrapped in plastic? It turned out to be spiced pork double wrapped in heavy paper and tied with a string. The instructions were place the package in a 250 degree oven and cook for eight hours. Now there’s a recipe I can follow!

When you see fennel in the market it may be labelled anise. Both fennel and anise taste like licorice, but anise seeds are a spice used in Chinese five-spice powder. The vegetable is best called fennel, or more precisely fennel bulb. Fennel seeds. which are not anise seeds, are sold as a similar-tasting spice.

I hate to have to select an ice cream flavor under crowd pressure. I picked hawthorn. My choice was based upon there being red fruits depicted on the sign, and my vague recollection that a hawthorn was a tree of some sort. Also, I figured the odds of sampling hawthorn ice cream elsewhere were probably slim. It was a good choice. The flavor was dominated by the cream in the ice cream, but the fruit was distinct and not quite like anything can recall. It was like a cross between apple and a tropical fruit blend.

Celery root, also known as celeriac, is not the root of our common everyday celery plant, but rather another variety of celery grown especially for the root. That’s probably why this knobby baseball-sized root vegetable is not so common in American markets. It has a mild celery flavor and is eaten both raw and cooked. It’s tasty and easy to use.