The romantic in me has come seeking fruit of the desert, fruit that brings to mind swirling robes and mysterious eyes, lumbering camels and hot sands. I seek the fruit of palms cultivated in ancient lands since 3000 B.C., fruit that has made the agricultural valley east of Palm Springs, Calif., world-famous.
I want a date.
“Anybody who has visited here sooner or later will want dates,” says Kris Stefferud of Shields Date Gardens as she guides me past tourists peering through a glass case at shiny, wrinkled pods with names such as Medjool, Deglet Noor and Thoory.
“They’re sweet. They’re good.” She pauses. “They’re like candy.”
That must be the attraction, I think, as we head outside to the warm sun, past a pile of steer manure used as fertilizer, to squint at the towering trees. August through December, they put forth their jewels, to be chopped and mixed in muffins and loaves and whipped with ice cream in shakes. Date-lovers revel in the sticky creaminess and high sugar content, which can account for up to three-fourths of a date’s weight.
But I’d like to think the attraction is more than that. I’d like to think that here in Indio–home of the annual National Date Festival–romance is alive and well. After all, the Coachella Valley produces 90 percent of the country’s dates.
The date can be misidentified and certainly misunderstood. Years ago, when Floyd and Bess Shields began harvesting fruit from their trees, offspring of those imported from Algeria, Iraq and Morocco by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the turn of the century, the Coachella Valley carried mystique. Hollywood celebrities made the 100-mile dusty drive east to winter in Palm Springs, and date farms took on a glamorous luster. Stands with names such as Valerie Jean and Hadley’s sprung up along with Shields, selling thick, frothy date shakes and dates by the pound, dates that tasted like caramel or molasses or licorice.
Today, date stands are still a draw, particularly among tourists such as heat-seeking Canadians. “When people ask at their hotels what there is to do, they’re told Palm Canyon, the tram and visiting the date places,” says Stefferud, general manager for Shields, in business since 1924.
The Shieldses, who sold their business and have since died, in the 1950s built a long, aqua-counter soda fountain with yellow stools, and a theater to show “The Romance and Sex Life of the Date,” a family film that until three years ago was composed of black-and-white slides.
“People really wanted moving pictures,” Stefferud says.
But Shields, like most of the date stands in the valley, is somewhat, well, dated–changing little over the past 30 years. Old-fashioned road signs recall an era of fat-tired cars and Sunday drives, while pastel paint jobs–peeling at some of the weathered date stands–are back in style.
Though the Coachella Valley harvests about 40 million pounds of dates, it is usually the hardy travelers that make it to grocery-store shelves–familiar varieties such as the Deglet Noor, a medium-size date that has its roots in Algeria, and accounts for 90 percent to 95 percent of the dates grown here. There are, however, more than 100 varieties of dates. Shields sells two kinds not found anywhere else, Blondes and Brunettes, developed by Floyd Shields more than 50 years ago.
I join visitors chewing dates and spitting pits, sampling dates with exotic-sounding names such as Zahidi, Khadrawy and Barhi. Even on a supermarket shelf, such a name would stir my heart. Here, each is wonderfully sweet, some more than others, some more fibrous and chewy, others creamy soft like a caramel, all happily sticking in my teeth.
I pack up some dates and head down Highway 111, the Romance Highway, I’m told, to Oasis Date Gardens in Thermal.
Already the Oasis stand projects a slightly exotic image, at least compared with the nothingness on the other side of the highway. Tourists, before they continue down the road to towns such as Mecca, can picnic beneath the shade of tall date trees. The owners want to shift primary production from Deglet Noors to Medjools, large, plump, soft and creamy dates from Morocco, often called the Cadillac of dates.
Freimuth and Tim Burke, general manager, explain the complicated care of date palms–how either by hand or machine, man must help pollinate them so they’ll bear fruit; how, though the trees are majestic looking as the sun casts dramatic shadows of their fronds onto the ground, their thorns can tear a shirt to shreds and go right through a boot.
Freimuth, who with his partner Chris Nielsen farms dates farther out in the desert near the Arizona border, didn’t like them much when he got into the business.
“You get that bad connotation of dates as a kid,” he says.
“Prunes,” says Burke, son-in-law of an offspring of the family that founded Oasis in 1912. “People think they’re like prunes.”
But a hesitant date-eater might start with Medjools, says Burke, who though he speaks in technical terms–describing dates that have “skin breaks,” “little puff” and “checking”–seems to understand the mystique of fruit hailing from ancient lands.
“You can develop a nice relationship” with a Medjool, he explains.
LOW-FAT DATE-YOGURT SHAKE
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Yield: 2 servings
From Shields Date Gardens, Indio, Calif.
1 banana, sliced
1/2 cup each: chopped dates, orange juice, plain non-fat yogurt, crushed ice
1. Put banana, dates and orange juice in blender; puree until dates are finely chopped.
2. Add yogurt and ice; blend until just combined.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories ………… 220 Fat ……… 0.6 g Saturated fat .. 0.2 g
% calories from fat .. 2 Cholesterol … 1 mg Sodium ……… 50 mg
DATE-CARROT SOUP
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 piece (1-inch) fresh ginger, peeled, minced
2 tablespoons flour
2 cans (16 ounces each) low-sodium chicken broth
2 1/2 cups sliced carrots
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
Pinch each: ground red pepper, freshly ground black pepper
2/3 cup pitted dates, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion, celery, garlic and ginger; cook until translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in flour. Return to heat; cook 2 minutes. Whisk in chicken broth.
2. Stir in carrots, cumin, curry, ground red and black peppers. Heat to boil; reduce heat. Cover; simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Stir in dates; simmer until carrots are soft, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat; puree in blender or food processor fitted with metal blade until smooth, working in batches if necessary. Pour back into pan. Stir in lemon juice; heat until hot.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories ……… 335 Fat ……….. 9 g% calories from fat .. 24
Cholesterol ….. 0 mg Sodium ….. 480 mg
