You’ll find them in Japanese and Asian restaurants where they are usually served salted and at room temperature. Typically, you eat the beans inside and discard the pods. Check your grocery or specialty foods store – they can sometimes be found in the frozen foods aisle.

In Chinese, young soybeans in the pod are known as maodoujia which literally translates as “hairy bean pod.” No matter what you call them, they are a specific species of soybean grown for early harvesting and are different than soybean crops grown specifically for their mature beans.

Cook them by steaming or boiling for 3 to 5 minutes. Don’t overcook – you don’t want a bunch of mush.

We are used to seeing edamame served salted at Japanese restaurants but edamame without salt is equally delicious.

Edamame calories are high in protein, fiber and potassium. According to http://www.soygrowers.com, soy beans are the world’s foremost provider of protein and oil.

Edamame in the Shell © Seapoint Farms

10. “Healthy” is the first word that should come to mind with edamame – they are a low-fat, low-cholesterol, and high-protein food.  What more can you ask for: easy preparation, super taste and high nutrition value?
9. Look for bags of frozen edamame in your local specialty food or health food store.
8. Edamame are popular in Japan and China but are catching on in the US – you will find them served as appetizers in Japanese and Chinese restaurants.
7. Worried about edamame calories?  You shouldn’t be.  There are only 125 calories per 100 grams.
6. Farmers in Kentucky and other states are now growing edamame.  The USDA has an interesting web page discussing US growing of edamame.
5. US products include those by Woodstock Farms, Trader Joe’s and Seapoint Farms.  You can buy Seapoint Farms products online from Amazon.
4. Grow your own edamame!  Buy seeds from Wannamaker Farms or other vendors online (See the “Grow Your Own” section below).  You can grow edamame just about anywhere in the US.
3. Edamame nutrion equals soy foods nutrition since they are made from the same thing.  There is a great facts sheet at soyfoods.org which discusses all aspects of soy-related nutrition issues.
2. Sprinkle the edamame with lemon juice after cooking or add soy sauce/tamari to the water when cooking to subtly enhance their flavor.
1. Edamame, maodoujia, vegetable soybeans, beer beans, sweet beans,  garden soybeans, green soybeans, immature soybeans, edible soybeans – they are all the same thing.

Edamame: 60 Tempting Recipes Featuring America’s Hottest New Vegetable – “These tasty beans are highlighted in 60 mouthwatering recipes. Whet your taste buds with Grilled Tomatoes with Edamame and Goat Cheese, Flank Steak with Jeweled Salsa, Balsamic Glazed Winter Vegetables, or Warm Scallop and Edamame Salad. Not just delicious, these recipes are packed with nutrients. But health benefits are just a bonus because the recipes are ones that any chef would be proud to serve his diners. No bland health food here but instead rich appetizers like guacamole and creamy soups such as Thai Seafood Bisque. Although the market has many cookbooks, this is the first to focus completely on Edamame-America’s Hottest New Vegetable.”

Soy of Cooking: Easy-to-Make Vegetarian, Low-Fat, Fat-Free, and Antioxidant-Rich Gourmet Recipes – “Soy of Cooking Now, you can create elegant meals that are as healthy as they are delicious. Soy of Cooking is a gourmet guide to preparing savory meatless dishes that incorporate nutrient-rich soyfoods into your diet—high in antioxidants and phytochemicals, as well as fiber and vitamins. With more than 170 enticing recipes, this innovative cookbook shows how to combine creative techniques and easy-to-find soyfoods to make healthy starters, main dishes, desserts, and more with tempting, artful presentations. Soy of Cooking defines 30 new and traditional soyfoods, most of which can be found in supermarkets and health food stores around the country. It also includes a guide to useful cooking techniques, tips on using spices,and soyfood exchange information.”

A few varieties include: “Envy”, “Besweet 2020″, “Beer Friend”, “Butterbaby”, “Butterbeans”, “Early Hakucho”, “Green Pearls”, “Misono Green”, “Shironomai”, “Tohya”  Seed companies that carry Edamame:  vermontbean.com, johnnyseeds.com, and Wannamaker Farms. Here are some direct links to buy seeds on Amazon.com: Edamame Green Soybean Seeds 50 Seeds at Amazon and Soybeans Edamame Black Seeds 7 Grams at Amazon

Soybean Plants © ARS/USDA

Growing your own healthy low-calorie edamame is easy.  Here is one person’s discussion of growing soy bean plants in flower pots on their deck.  Of interesting note in this blog post: soybeans have small root systems and thus you can plant them close together – in 2 inch spacings.  They put six plants in a large flower pot – lots of beautiful foliage and lots of edamame pods!

If you often find yourself in coveralls driving a tractor, then you will find the USDA page on growing edamame as a row crop more informative.

Finally, you will find this article at the National Garden Bureau web site to be most informative: history, seed varieties, growing and harvesting are all covered.

Watermelon Calories and Nutrition

Watermelon is naturally low in calories but high in Vitamin A and C. It is an all-around healthy food. Serve it frequently as both a thirst-quencher and a tasty snack.

Watermelon is high in lycopene, and is second only to tomatoes in its percentage of this important antioxidant. Consuming foods which are rich in lycopene is thought to help prevent heart disease and cancer.

You can find detailed nutrition and calorie information in our USDA food database for dried Watermelon seeds and raw watermelon.

Save When Buying Watermelon

You will pay more for pre-sliced and pre-packaged watermelon but buy only what you can eat within a week. Melons last quite a while if uncut (and when uncut don’t necessarily need to be refrigerated.) Once cut, however, they are only at their best for a few days.

You also will often have the choice between seedless and seed-bearing varieties. Seedless varieties may be more convenient but may cost more.

See our Seasonal Food Calendar — You will find plentiful watermelon choices in June through September, although in many markets you will find imported watermelons year round.

Growing Watermelon

Growing watermelon is easy if you follow a few basic rules. First, always plant the seeds on mounds of dirt. This may sound unnecessary but it encourages deep rooting, and, well, it just works. I have had great luck growing melons even here in New Hampshire where the summers are short and not always hot. I like to plant the seeds directly into piles of manure, or a rich mix of manure and soil. Water the seeds a bit to get them started, but once they get going, just let the plants do their thing. You might want to put a good layer of grass clippings as mulch around the plants to help retain soil moisture. You can also use black plastic which will also combat weeds and help heat the soil.

Watermelon Seeds

Save your seeds! If you grow heirloom varieties, you can keep the seeds, however, do not try to do this with commercial varieties. (Seedless varieties are hybrids that do not produce a viable seed) Keep a few dozen dark colored, fully-formed seeds when eating your watermelon. Dry them completely then toss them in an envelope for use next spring. You will save money and you will find that seeds keep well for one or two years.

Watermelon Varieties

According to the National Watermelon Promotion Board web site, there are 200-300 varieties of watermelon grown in the US and Mexico, but perhaps 50 varieties are the most common. We looked at three seed companies and their watermelon seeds

If you are going to grow your own, consider 3 categories:

Heirloom varieties – These are old varieties that have been kept alive by seed saving. They are often unusual in some respect; growers keep growing them because they find them well adapted to certain climates and they have traits worth preserving. Look to Fedco Seeds, Johnny’s Seeds and High Mowing Seeds for a selection of heirloom watermelon varieties. I love the Moon and Stars heirloom – the unusual markings on the outside of the melon are unique!

Organic Seeds – Chances are that you will find organic seeds where you find heirloom varieties. Look also to Fedco, Johnny’s and High Mowing for organic choices.

Hybrid varieties – Don’t confuse hybrid varieties with genetically modified – hybrid seeds are the result of natural cross pollination of plants to emphasize and accentuate certain traits. The only downside to hybrids is that you cannot save the seeds. We found a selection of 6 hybrid varieties at Park’s Seed.

Watermelon Recipes

There is no better collection of watermelon recipes than at the National Watermelon Promotion Board web site.

Our two favorites are: Watermelon Popsicles and Watermelon Banana Split. So easy to make.

We also love the Watermelon Granita and Watermelon Smoothie recipes at the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Website.

Consider also a Melon Salsa – easy to prepare and perfect for a summer appetizer served with chips.

Watermelon Facts

It would be hard to beat the collection of fun facts on watermelon assembled by the National Watermelon Promotion Board.

Concerned about Pesticides in Watermelon?

On the Environmental Working Group’s chart of contamination load of common produce items, watermelon ranks toward the bottom of the list, meaning it is relatively low in its tendency to contain pesticides and chemicals.

The Fate of a Watermelon

Ever wondered what happens to a watermelon left out at room temperature? Watch this video on You Tube which tracks its slow decomposition over 9 days.

Amazing Carved Watermelons

Somebody forwarded us an email that apparently has been floating around the Internet lately – it contains photos of carved watermelons made by someone with incredible talent.

Amazing table display of carved watermelons

Watermelon carved to show a baseball player at bat

A beautifully carved turtle and crane in a watermelon

A couple dancing the Tango are carved into a watermelon

Intricate flowers carved into a watermelon

Running Horse in Watermelon

A bicycle racer depicted in watermelon - could it be Lance?

Vincent Van Watermelon

A potato chip (American English chips, British English crisps) is a thin slice of potato deep fried or baked until crispy depending on the company it originated from. Potato chips serve as an appetizer, side dish, or snack. Commercial varieties are packaged for sale, usually in bags. The simplest chips of this kind are just cooked and salted, but manufacturers can add a wide variety of flavoring (mostly made using herbs, spices, cheese, artificial additives or MSG). Chips are an important part of the snack food market in English-speaking countries and many other Western nations.

Back in the day when I was a starch-eating-type-of-girl I loved potato chips. Whenever I went grocery shopping I would usually pick up a bag of salt and vinegar or sour cream and onion. Occasionally, as a treat, I would buy ketchup chips.

I would get the normal grocery-store-sized-bag. Which, as you know, is like buying in bulk for a single person. But it was cheaper than getting individual potato chip bags. So I was saving money – yeah, me.

The problem was once I opened up that bag of chips I was obligated to eat them and fast. Otherwise they would go stale and I would waste money. So instead of wasting my hard earned dollars I was eating 16 servings of potato chips in 4 days. That is a lot of potato chip calories. Especially considering I didn’t slow down eating anything else.

I rarely eat potato chips these days so naturally now is the time I finally find the solution to the stale potato chip dilemma. I was speaking with an old friend and she told me to do the following:

After opening your bag and have a serving of potato chips. Close up the bag and toss the bag into a Ziploc bag and put that bag into your freezer. When you want a handful of chips you grab them from the freezer and they defrost in a minute or so. And the amazing thing is the frozen chips taste even better than the unfrozen serving of potato chips.

I asked her how long chips would stay fresh in the freezer and she didn’t have a clue. So when in doubt I always say 6 weeks. I may be wrong but it keeps my freezer rotating.

I wandered over to the Snack Food Association website (you just knew there had to be one) and read their 2009 State of the Industry Report that they had posted. According to the report:

A changing definition of affordability has brought about significant changes in shopper rituals.

· One quarter of consumers have actually reduced snacking frequency.
· Again, stretching products surfaces, with one-third of consumers trying to make their snack purchases last longer.
· And, about one-half of shoppers are spending less on snacks and/or purchasing whatever is on sale rather than their preferred brands.

I am definitely a consumer that has reduced my snacking food to next to nothing. And I have become obsessed with food waste. I shop at Big Lots so I am buying whatever was on sale in another country. Love me some chocolate covered licorice from Australia.

So try it. Freeze your potato chips and see if they really do last longer and taste better than fresh out of the bag.

Additionally, because private-label products are less expensive, a robust private-label program can improve a traditional grocer’s “price image” to cost-conscious shoppers, Hertel said.

“Consumers are worried about their financial state,” Hale said. “They’re worried about their long-term position in terms of where they’re working. … They’re looking for anything they can do to save money.”

Retailers also are putting a greater emphasis on their store brands, Hale said. They’re promoting the private labels more heavily and touting the quality of the products, he said.

“You have a lot more focus around private label than you’ve ever had in the U.S.,” Hale said.

So are Big K and Sam’s Choice colas ready to knock off Coke and Pepsi? Not exactly, but they could chip away at market share while the economy remains weak.

The strength of private labels varies greatly by category. Private label accounts for about 40 percent of dairy sales but just 1 percent of alcoholic beverages.

Brown-Bag It. Save about $187.50 by brown-bagging lunch during the month of December — that’s about enough to buy some of the hottest holiday gifts of the year! Turn holiday leftovers into gourmet lunches and steer clear of unnecessary spending. Make a midday feast by filling a roasted red pepper with leftover stuffing or sprinkle turkey and cheese inside a tortilla for a sizzling quesadilla. Try the new decorative Ziploc(R) holiday bags to pack some holiday cheer with your meal.

“Non’trée (pronounced “non-tray”) refers to the folks who order appetizers rather than a pricier entree – a popular practice in economic hard times. In fact, as the value of real estate plummets, the stock market totters and the jobless rate grows, diners are sharing meals, skipping dessert, opting to drown their sorrows in a glass of wine rather than ordering a whole bottle, or staying home altogether.