Halloween has come and gone and that means the holiday season is upon us. Some believe this is the most wonderful time of the year with the family get-togethers, Friendsgiving, Christmas baking. But then there are those that do not enjoy this time of year, because there is just so much going on! Well whatever category you may fall in, the Produce Navigator is here to help yet again, as we share a simple and tasty dish that you can take to all of your holiday gatherings.

All holidays call for getting together with those you love and sharing a meal. Traditionally Thanksgiving calls for a Turkey with all the trimmings like mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and stuffing just to name a few and get your stomach growling and mouth-watering. Yes, we love those traditional side dishes but this year why not try a healthy alternative. This month, at Gold Coast we have whipped up a Veggie Risotto, made with our Caulifornia™ Garden Rice.

Our Caulifornia™ Garden Rice is a blend of riced Cauliflower, Broccoli and Carrots. Our Garden Rice comes in a one-pound bag, washed, diced and ready to use. It is part of the Caulifornia™ family along with our Snow (100% riced cauliflower) and our Broccoli Bits (100% riced broccoli.) All of our Caulifornia™ items were created with the home cook in mind. The entire line allows you to make quick, easy, healthy meals, whatever you can dream up… the possibilities are endless.

Caulifornia™ Garden Rice is the perfect carb alternative that can be used in a variety of ways. Some of our favorite way to use the riced veggie medley is in tater tots, or mixed up as hash browns, or as the base to your favorite fried rice recipe. And that is the basis of this month’s recipe, we are making a Veggie Risotto that is oh so good… you’ll forget that you are only eating vegetables. This recipe is pretty easy and comes together quickly, which is perfect because with all the craziness that comes with the season, you’ll want to have your dish ready in a hurry so you can bolt out the door.

Thanks for joining us on The Produce Navigator again this month, we know you’re busy planning your Thanksgiving feast and travel plans. Check out the video below for a step by step guide and the handy printable recipe is at the end of this post.

Full Recipe Here: Veggie Risotto

For several years Kale was the most popular vegetable. Everyone was on the kale kick, kale t-shirts, kale chips, kale salads, kale smoothies… you name it and there was a kale version of it! Kale is everywhere, but it is slowly being pushed aside by cauliflower! Cauliflower is now the new it vegetable. Cauliflower is a culinary chameleon, it can easily be added to any dish and it absorbs its flavors.

Cauliflower is considered one of the healthiest foods as it is loaded with essential vitamins and antioxidants. Several studies have shown that cauliflower is useful for preventing several types of cancers, including breast and colon. So yes, it’s a great, healthy and super tasty idea to substitute your protein or carbs with Cauliflower!

We offer cauliflower in several forms here at Gold Coast Packing, including florets and “riced” Caulifornia™ snow. Our florets are available in a two-pound bag, washed and ready to use.  There is so much you can do with those beautiful florets, roasting and pickling is the latest cauliflower craze. Roasting cauliflower is the easiest and most flavorful ways to cook up some cauli, pickling takes a bit longer, but once those florets are pickled you will have found your new favorite pickled veggie!

Cauliflower is trending as a meat replacement, and as the center of the plate superstar… that means no meat for lunch or dinner, everyone is serving up cauliflower! Some of the most popular recipes are Cauliflower “mac” and cheese, Cauliflower tacos, Roasted Cauliflower soup, and Buffalo Cauliflower. These are all great meals featuring our favorite veggie, but the recipe that has us saying more please is Baked Orange Cauliflower. Yes, that’s right, the meatless version of your favorite take-out!

This recipe comes together quite easily and with ingredients that are pantry staples. The cauliflower is baked not fried then glazed with the perfect orange sauce with a slight spicy kick. Serve it with some steamed rice and you have the perfect fall dinner. To simply your cooking process even more you can check out the video below and the easy to follow printable recipe is also linked below. Thank you for following along for this trendy, fall, cauliflower dish. Hopefully you enjoyed this instead of all the pumpkin flavored everything being shared right now! Should we say, Orange you glad this isn’t a pumpkin spice recipe?!?

Recipe Here:Baked Orange Cauliflower

September means the end of summer is approaching and kids are heading back to school, moms and dads everywhere will be busy packing lunches and back to playing taxi, heading to football practice or dance class or swim lessons… oh the joys of parenthood! With so much going on, it can be hard to get dinner on the table between the frequent drop-offs and helping with homework. Have no fear, The Produce Navigator is here to help!

Nothing is better than getting a tasty and veggie packed dinner on the table in a short period of time. One way to make dinner in a snap is to prep, prep, prep! You can set aside a weekend afternoon to chop, and dice the ingredients for your upcoming week’s meals. Or you can spend an entire day making freezer meal, which are complete meals you pre-cook and freeze, then you simply take one out on a busy night and pop it in the oven. Another convenient idea is, simply prep dinner the night before or the morning of, which is exactly how you can put this month’s recipe together quickly. We will tell you all about the marinating in a bit. But first let’s talk Broccoli.

At Gold Coast Packing we are all about making things quick and easy for you. We are known for our Value-added products, meaning our items are washed, cut and ready to use! Our Spinach, Cauliflower Florets, Broccoli Florets, Cilantro and all of our Caulifornia™ items are ready to use right out of the bag! Talk about simplified convenience! For this month’s recipe, we used our Broccoli Florets, which are available in a variety of pack sizes, including 2lb. and 3lb. retail bags. Making it as easy as opening a bag and tossing in a pan.

This month’s recipe is a super tasty, better than take-out Beef and Broccoli. With a little bit of prep the night before or prior to heading out the door in the morning, you will have a delicious dinner, jam packed with broccoli. And even better… this dish will whip up in less than 30 minutes! Yes, it’s that simple!! The only prep, is super easy, you simply cut up your flank steak and make a marinade. The longer your meat marinades the more tender and flavorful it will be, but if you forget to prep, as long as you leave that meat in the marinade for one hour, you will be good to go. The next three steps are as easy as making a sauce, sauteing broccoli and mixing it all together! What? Yes! That simple, and when you taste it you may never want to order take out again.

Thanks for navigating with us through some meal prepping ideas. We hope you have learned some tips that will help with those busy nights. The easy to follow recipe tutorial is below, as well as the handy printable recipe.

Recipe Here: Beef and Broccoli

Spinach is an amazing superfood. It is low in fat and high in protein, fiber, vitamins A, C, E and K, calcium, iron… let’s just say it is loaded with health benefits. The leafy vegetable is quickly becoming the most loved green. Spinach is very versatile as it can be eaten raw, sautéed, baked or blended into your favorite dish to add in those much-needed vitamins.

Spinach gained popularity back in the day, all thanks to Popeye the Sailor Man. In the well-known cartoon, Popeye would squeeze open a can of spinach, consume the greens, and suddenly his biceps would grow to the size of bowling balls, giving him the super power to fight Brutus the bad guy! Parents everywhere used Popeye as the example on why you should eat spinach… it will give you all the nutrients and strength you could ever need! Guess Mom is always right!

Here at Gold Coast Packing we love spinach so much that we grow it year- round. We offer it in a variety of pack-sizes, washed and ready to use (yes, all the hard work is done for you). So, the only thing you need to do is open the package and think of how you want to serve it up.

Spinach is a salad bar staple, and yes, we love it as our dinner salad base, but so much can be done with those beautiful, dark green leaves. You can sneak it into your favorite smoothie, toss it into your favorite pasta, add it to your favorite soup, top a pizza with it, or you can do what we’re doing, and whip up a nice bowl of gnocchi.… the possibilities are endless.

Gnocchi are little dumplings traditionally made from potatoes and flour. It’s typically served in soups or with a hearty sauce. In our Spinach Gnocchi, we are ditching the potatoes and the sauce! Don’t get us wrong, we love potatoes, but we are passing on the extra starch and whipping up a healthier version that’s loaded with all the superfood goodness Spinach has to offer. Our version is drizzled with olive oil and Parmesan cheese, but this can be customized with your favorite sauce.

Thanks for joining us on this Spinach Gnocchi journey. Check out our easy how to video below and when you are ready to make this at home, we’ve also included a printable version.

Recipe Here: Spinach Gnocchi

Original Article Here by Keith Loria

Gold Coast Packing, Inc., based in Santa Maria, CA, is looking forward to attending the PMA Foodservice show this year, and as always, has some big plans for its involvement.

The company invites people to come over to Booth No. 1006, where it will be serving up hash, as well as its complete lineup of value-added vegetables and herbs and salad kits.

“This year we will be showcasing our new Gold Coast Veggie Hash and showing the foodservice world that hash isn’t just for breakfast,” said Crystal Chavez, marketing coordinator for the company. “Our hash is a blend of gold beets, kohlrabi and fennel. It comes washed, cubed and ready to use. Our new versatile hash can be sautéed and served up as the perfect dinner side dish next to your favorite steak, or it can be roasted and placed over a bed of your favorite greens for lunch or it can be grilled up next to your morning eggs.”

Gold Coast Packing finds that PMA is the perfect opportunity to highlight new innovations and connect easily with those in the foodservice industry — important aspects for the company to maintain its success.

“We enjoy sharing what we’ve been working on and getting feedback on our newest offerings from attendees,” Chavez said. “It’s a great event and one that the team looks forward to each year.”

The Gold Coast Packing team has been growing, with the company expanding in recent months. Chavez noted that adding to the team and bringing so much industry talent together to grow the company has made it an exciting time.

“We are working to grow our retail line, and many exciting things are in the works for us,” she said.

Located in the Santa Maria Valley, nestled on the central coast, the company grows, processes and packs an assortment of value-added vegetables all-year round and partners with other growing operations locally and process in its state-of-the-art processing plant, Fresh Venture Foods, which it co-owns with Babe Farms.

White Chavez admits the beginning of 2017 has presented some challenges, the company sees a brighter second half of the year ahead.

“It was a tough spring with tight supply after a very wet winter. We faced some challenges with low supply of some of our items,” she said. “We are looking forward to the rest of 2017, now that our supply is better.”

Summer is in full swing; warmer weather has arrived and the delicious smell of BBQ and grilling has filled the air. You’re probably thinking, wait you highlighted grilling last month, yes, that’s right, we did. We shared how grilling is now a spotlight method for preparing meals, especially among millennials, but, we haven’t had our fill of grilling yet. Plus, the best of summer is still to come, so we want to share more grilling recipes and methods with you. So, stay a while, read on, because we are about to share with you our favorite items to throw on the grill, and we’re not talking burgers and hot dogs, we’re talking Veggies, yes you are reading correctly! VEGETABLES!

Vegetables are often forgotten when planning BBQs. Of course, they make an appearance at your cookout, but they are the side dish, the add on, the afterthought, we’re talking about making your grilled veggies the focal point, the center of your plate. Veggie Centric meals is one of the biggest trends amongst millennials and home chefs, and what’s an easier way to make your meal heavy on vegetables than grilling. Grilling your produce is the best way to go this summer, for so many reasons, it’s a healthy way to cook, it adds a smoky flavor to your veggies, prep work is almost non-existent, and clean-up is a breeze! But let’s be honest, the greatest reason to grill is because, when temperatures heat up why would you want to stand in front of a hot stove or oven to make your meals? Use your Grill!!

Here at Gold Coast we like to be adventurous and try different vegetables on the grill, our favorites are NOT your usual squash and bell peppers. No Sir! We like to cook Broccoli and Cauliflower over that open fire. It gets a nice char and a great sweet smoky flavor! Trust us on this one you will not be disappointed. We offer both broccoli and cauliflower florets here at Gold Coast in various pack sizes. Our florets are cut to the perfect skewering size (super perfect for the grill), washed and ready for your summer recipes.

For this month’s recipe, we are keeping it a little on the simple side, but packed with flavor. We have skewered our favorite crucifers, basted them with a little olive oil (the key to perfectly grilled veggies is ALWAYS brushing with a little oil), lightly seasoned them and then laid them on the grill. But, because we love flavor and because we love Cilantro, we didn’t stop there. Oh No! We made a super tasty Cilantro Chimichurri sauce to add a kick to our favorite grilled vegetables. This easy to make sauce can be used as a marinade for grilled meats, as a salsa for tacos, or anything you want the Cilantro zest with a slight spicy kick.

So as the temperatures heat up this summer, step outside to cook your meals and remember to move your veggies to the center of your plate. Our easy to follow recipe is in the video below, but if a printed version is more your thing, that can also be found with our video. Thanks for sticking with The Produce Navigator, and enjoy using your grill this summer.

Recipe Here: Grilled Broccoli & Cauliflower Chicken Skewers wCilantro Chimichurri