Farmer's Market Haul, July 4th

The July 4th holiday is a big one. And like most holidays, it has its own food associations and traditions.  Strawberries, certainly, and cherries are two.  Both are patriotic colors and come into season around early July.  Pies, cakes and other pastries made with these red fruits or in combination with blue ones like blueberries are on the dessert menu.  Grills are fired up as summer is perfect grill season.  The problem is when these fruits come from conventional farms that use a lot of pesticides, when the meat on the grills comes from factory farms where the animals are fed an improper diet and kept in inhumane conditions.  The problem also manifests itself in the white bread hamburger and hot dog buns, the potato chips fried in vegetable oils, and all the rest of the processed foods that help fill out the picnic.

I celebrated my independence from the industrial food system by going to the farmer’s market bright and early and purchasing the bounty that you see in the photo above.  Going shopping is a pleasure rather than a chore if you have a farmer’s market or a farm that you can buy directly from.  I love talking with the people running the stalls – often times it is the very farmer him/herself!  And just seeing all of the wonderful food and thinking of all the possibilities with the ingredients fills me with optimism.  Cooking food isn’t so bad either.  In the summer you can rely heavily on salads which don’t require a hot stove or hours in the kitchen.  And even in the winter, roasts and soups provide delicious meals and many leftovers with very little effort involved.  And when I do rely on packaged foods or convenience foods, they can be purchased from ethical companies that source good ingredients and create the food in a way as to keep the nutrition in.

Want some examples?  Look no further than the rest of the posts on this blog, or read many of the food blogs linked on the right.  Or stay tuned as I blog over the next few weeks about some of these foods in more detail.  Below the jump you’ll see what I purchased on July 4th and a description based on what I know so far of these foods.

Heavy Cream – I got this from Ronnybrook Farm.  They are an organic dairy upstate.  They feed their cows grass and they pasteurize the milk at the lowest possible temperature allowed, as to retain more of the nutrition.  Heavy cream can be used to whip into whipped cream for desserts (especially fruit desserts!), it can be added to scrambled eggs instead of milk for a little extra richness, added to soups, or used about a hundred other ways.  I specially purchased it to pour it over berries for a simple sugar free dessert.  The cream is sweet enough that I don’t need to add any sugar.  It even overcomes the tartness of the berries.

Red Leaf Lettuce - This lettuce is especially beautiful in salads or on sandwiches, with its ends tinged of red.  Leaf lettuce may not last a long while in the fridge, but it can also be cooked and added to stocks, soups, or stir fries, giving you more uses for it.  Red leaf lettuce is particularly high in beta carotene and vitamin K.  I bought this for salads, but I’ll probably throw some into a stir fry as well.

Quark - yeah, I had never heard of this either!  Quark is a traditional cultured dairy food from Germany.  The easiest way to explain it would be yogurt or sour cream made out of buttermilk.  It is thick enough to spread on toast or crackers, but still creamy.  It can be used in baking, as a dip or a spread.  The taste is similar to sour cream.  A little sour, a little tangy.  But there was something about it, I loved it more than I love either of those two things!  It can go savory with the additions of herbs or sweet with fruit.  Quark will make a regular appearance in my diet.  Absolutely delicious.  And since it is made with probiotics and the milk from happy grass fed cows from Hawthorne Valley Farm, I know that it is at least as nutritious as it is delicious.

Apple and Black Currant Juice - from Red Jacket Orchards.  Their interesting fruit combination and from what I can tell, good farming and juice making practices make them a good place to buy juice from, if you are inclined to buy juice.  I don’t buy a lot since I’d rather eat the whole fruit instead, but they are a good way to help keep a smoothie drinkable, so I do buy every now and then.  This fruit combination is very good!

Broccoli - We all should know by now that broccoli is good for us.  There are so many great nutrients in abundance that I couldn’t list them all here or my post would get too long.  I got this for a stir fry, but I plan on using the entire broccoli, not just the tender heads we all love to eat.  The stems are very good for you too, and eating them helps stretch your food budget and prevent waste.  Chop them into smaller pieces to use in soups, fritattas, pastas, stir fries, or anything else you can think of.

Purslane – I love purslane!  It is one of the best vegetarian sources of omega 3s, and plus, it just tastes good!  A little tart and lemony, it goes well on salads or cooked in stir fry or soup.

Purple Cabbage - I got this for a stir fry (sense a theme?) and chose it over the green because of its pretty color.  Purple cabbage has more fiber and beta carotene than green cabbage.  All cabbage is a decent source of vitamin C which can be further increased by turning the cabbage into sauerkraut.

Zuccini – I made a yummy zucchini bread that made me hungry for more zucchini.  Aside from being put into baked goods, zucchinis are great stir fried, or battered with some egg and fried, which is how I ate a lot of them as a kid.

Green Beans – These just said “summer” to me!  I’ll probably just cook them with some butter.  Delicious and simple.  Green beans are high in vitamin K, vitamin C, and beta carotene.

Sweet Cherries – The pits annoy me (I need a good pitter, recommendations?) so I got the sweet kind that I can just eat out of hand.

Gooseberries – Gooseberries look like miniature watermelons.  They are the same size and shape as grapes and have the same feel in your mouth.  They taste wonderfully sour and can go sweet or savory.  I’ve put some in salads, but I want to try a dessert with them too.

Blueberries - They are packed with antioxidants, but is that why I eat them?  No.  I eat them because they are just so good.  I remember going blueberry picking in Michigan as a child, or hiking in Alaska, eating blueberries along the trail.  That these are so healthy for me is just a bonus.

Plumcots – A plumcot is a cross between a plum and an apricot.  It can occur naturally in areas where these trees are both grown from seed.  Plumcots have been known for some time.  They look similar to a regular plum, dark smooth skin.  The taste is sweet in the flesh, tart in the skin, a delightful combination.  And, like many fruits, high in vitamin C, fiber, potassium, and much more.

Black Raspberries – it struck me that the “blue raspberry” artificial flavor that you can sometimes find in slurpee style drinks and popcicles might actually have its inspiration from nature.  These are small, firm, dark raspberries.  They look black, but stained my fingers purple.  They didn’t spoil as quickly as regular raspberries.  The flavor is somewhere between a blackberry and a red raspberry, and I suppose their nutrition is similar as well.

Lamb’s Quarters – This is a green similar to spinach in taste and usage.  Cook it or eat it raw.  In many places it grows wild like a weed, so you might already have it in your garden!  Don’t weed it out!  It is at least as healthy as spinach, with high amounts of vitamin C, K, beta carotene, and calcium.

Middle Eastern Summer Squash - I can’t remember the exact variety of this summer squash, possibly Magda.  It is a middle eastern variety that holds up well to cooking.  I love trying out new varieties of vegetables, so I thought I’d give this one a try and compare it to zucchini.

And there you have it.  Celebrating my independence from the industrial food system with these great foods.  This will easily last me a week of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with very few pantry items added in.  I won’t even want to make any desserts since the fruit and berries are plenty sweet to satisfy any dessert craving I might have.

Farmer's Market Haul

I got up early this morning and went to the Farmer’s Market at Union Square.  The Union Square one is the biggest around.  There are the most vendors, and it is definitely the most crowded.  I do not enjoy that aspect of it.  However, when you get there as soon as it opens, it is not crowded.  I was able to take my time.  I like being able to walk the entire market before purchasing something.  This helps me plan meals in my head and know what to get.  It also allows me to find the best source for each item.  I’m concerned about price and I want good quality.  Getting there early also means the vendors aren’t too rushed.  They can take their time and you can too.  Ask about the meats – are they grass fed?  Do they receive routine antibiotics, or only if an animal is ill?  Is the milk homogenized?  What sort of pest management do you use? Where is your farm located?  I ask these questions and so many more.  It opens up a dialog and helps me understand more about the food I’m purchasing.  It puts them in touch with their customers so they know what things are important to consumers.

I saw a lot of fabulous things – non homogenized, lightly pasteurized, grass fed, organic milk; grass fed buffalo, beef, sheep, and goat meat; raspberries; blueberries; strawberries; the first cherries of the season; piles and piles of greens of every size, shape, and shade of green; edible flowers; tomatoes…  Oh, if only I had an endless wallet and an endless stomach.  I would spend my days cooking and eating everything there is to cook and eat.

Here is what I got (as seen in the photo above, left to right):

• Apricot juice from Red Jacket Orchards
• Currants
• Purple carrots (with tops)
• Beets (with tops)
• Purslane
• Feta goat cheese
• Rhubarb
• Almost 2 lbs of ground lamb
• Lamb sausage

The apricot juice comes from Red Jacket Orchards that sells a lot of juice and fruits like apples.   I don’t drink a lot of juice, preferring to just eat the raw fruit,  but every now and then I’ll get some.  It usually goes into my smoothie, which is what happened to a little bit of this when I got home!

The currants excited me.  I remember my grandma once made a current pie.  I LOVED it!  I need to do some research with my cookbooks and the internet and find a good way to use the currants.  My only concern is that I might not have enough for a whole pie.  If that is the case, I could probably add some other berries to the mix, or instead make a quick bread or something else with the currants.  Any suggestions for my currants?

Purple carrots.  Purple!  Why buy regular carrots when you can buy purple carrots?  Did you know that carrots used to come in a much wider variety of colors?  And our familiar orange carrot wasn’t even the dominant variety?  In the 1500’s or so, the Dutch started selecting for the orange carrots because of the ruling family, The House of Orange.  Clever, isn’t it?  I want to be a food historian; I find this stuff so fascinating.  Purple carrots have more beta carotene than orange carrots.  You can usually look at the color of vegetables to find out how much they have – the darker/deeper the shade, the more beta carotene.  If you are like me and love reading about the history of food in addition to its nutrition, check out The Carrot Museum for more information than you knew existed about the carrot.

I love beets with the tops because then it is like getting 2 vegetables in one.  Beet tops are essentially chard and can be cooked like any leafy green.  The roots I’ll probably boil and put in salad.  I love a good beet salad.

The feta cheese came from a farm full of happy goats.  I got to talk to the lady running the stand and I got to see pictures of the goats.  Goats are actually not grazers if they can help it – they are browsers.  They prefer bushes, weeds, even tree bark to grass, though they will eat grass if they have to.  Sure enough, the goats in the pictures were on weedy pastures on the fringes of forested areas.  No wonder the goats looked so happy and the cheese tasted so good!  These cheese will go in my beet salad.

Purslane is back!  I got this once from my CSA last year and loved it.  It is a weed and is unceremoniously tossed from many yards.  But it is delicious and nutritious!  The flavor is herb-y and lemony.  Very moist and delicate.  For nutrition, it is one of the best source for ALA omega-3.  ALA is the vegetarian source of omega 3.  Purslane is great in stir fries or as an accent to soups, meats, and so many other dishes.

It is still rhubarb season!  I’m so happy.  I haven’t even touched on all of the rhubarb things that can be made.  Rhubarb pie, rhubarb bread, rhubarb sauce to put over yogurt or anything else really…  Any suggestions?

Finally, I stopped by Catskill-Merino Sheep Farm’s stand.  They sell wool and meat, and the occasional plant item that grows on the farm.  They have an online store and they ship, if you don’t live nearby.  The sheep seem to be happy, grazing on very green grass, just as sheep are meant to do.  I haven’t eaten lamb in a long time, so I purchased some ground lamb and a lamb sausage.  I figure I can just use lamb instead of beef when making tacos, spaghetti, meatloaf, stroganoff, or anything that calls for ground beef.

Any suggestions for any of the things I got?  I’m particularly interested in ideas for the currants and rhubarb.

fiddlehead ferns

This post is submitted to Fight Back Fridays and the No GMO Food Challenge Blog Carnival.  Eating wild foods takes me out of the industrial food system, and I won’t be eating any GMO foods.  I like that!

Eating fresh sustainable produce and grass fed beef feels good.  I’m getting superior nutrition because of the way the food is grown, and I’m supporting farmers who are good stewards to this earth so that nutritious food may grow year after year.  One step further is wild food, so long as it is foraged in areas away from pollution (don’t forage along the roadside – car exhaust) and the food is harvested/hunted in a sustainable manner, so new generations can be gathered year after year.

I recently purchased a bunch of wild foods: morels, fiddlehead ferns, wild arugula, nettles, ramps and dandelions.  A lot of these were new foods to me.

Morels are a kind of wild mushroom.  As I discovered, they have a rich and powerful flavor that reminded me of a perfectly cooked steak.  I’ll be eating morels again for sure.

Fiddlehead ferns are the top portion of a young wild fern.  When they are young and growing, they are curled up and look like the end of a violin.  They taste fresh and green and woodsy.  People describe them as being similar to asparagus.

Wild arugula is just like cultivated arugula – good cooked or raw.  A little spicy and quite good.

Nettles, as I described in a previous post featuring them, are green leafy vegetables with a flavor not unlike spinach or kale or some mixture of green leafy vegetables.  They are a bit prickly, so you need to boil them before eating.

Ramps are a member of the Alliaceae family – the same family that gives us the onions, leeks, garlics and chives.  They grow wild in many places and are so popular in Quebec that there is a limit on how many you can collect, so as to prevent them from being over harvested.  They taste somewhere between a leek and a garlic, and are completely edible.

Dandelion greens can be eaten raw or cooked, but they begin to get bitter as they get older.  Best to eat these young and fresh.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with all of these, it being my first time cooking many of them.  I decided to saute all but the nettles (nettles weren’t included at all in this dish) and toss them with some pasta and lemon and topped with Parmesan cheese and another drizzle of olive oil.  It was delicious, though I realized at once that I could have easily made the morels and fiddleheads the star of the show.  In fact, I wouldn’t have objected to a plate filled with sauteed morels and little else!  Being my first time cooking most of these, it was a lesson in preparation as well as taste.

If you decide to go for any of these wild foods I’ve mentioned, a few tips:

Morels should be the star of the dish they are included in.  They have such a wonderful flavor – don’t cover it up with too many other ingredients.  Keep your morel dishes simple.  One of my cookbooks suggests cream goes well with morels.  They have a lot of nooks and crannies, so care must be taken when washing them.  They will keep a few days in the fridge, but use them quickly.  Once you taste them, you won’t want to wait.

Fiddleheads can also play a primary role in the dish they are included in, but they will need a little more help from supporting ingredients.  I’m not sure I’d eat a plain plate of sauteed fiddleheads.  Toss them with pasta, other veggies, oils or other fats, etc.  They would probably be good in a soup or in a salad.  For these, I washed them once, then boiled at a good clip for 3 minutes.  After 3 minutes, I shocked them in an ice bath to stop the cooking.  Let them rest in the cold water and let any additional debris sink to the bottom.  Then slowly and without disturbing the water too much, take the fiddleheads out, leaving the debris on the bottom, and give them once more rinse.  At that point, you can saute them, stir fry them, bake them, or do whatever you wish.

Wild arugula can be used just the same way as cultivated arugula.  Use it raw on salads, toss with pasta, bake into a frittata.  I like arugula pesto, which I recently made and served over some steamed potatoes.

Nettles must be boiled before eating.  Once boiled, include them in a soup, or make my gratin recipe.  They can be dried and used in tea.  Most things you do with green leafy vegetables (kale, chard), you can probably do with nettles.

Ramps can be used anywhere you would use a leek, garlic or green onion in a one to one substitution.  Substituting for garlics will give you just a little bit extra leeky flavor, while when you are substituting for leeks, be prepared to get a bit of garlic flavored kick.  I put them in my arugula pesto in place of garlic.

Dandelion greens are best young otherwise they can get bitter.  They can be cooked or used in salads.

I definitely did ok in my first experimentation with these wild foods, but next time I’d like to do better.  What are your favorite recipes, preparation methods, and tips?

Rhubarb at the Farmer's Market

Last week was a pretty easy cooking week for me.  I didn’t go to the farmer’s market because I had plenty of fresh produce from my last trip and  I ended up cooking enough over the weekend to last until Saturday.  But a week without cooking and without the farmer’s market had me really itching to go this morning.  I arrived as soon as it opened.

What a great week it was to go!  There were wonderful cheeses, baked breads, several grass fed/pastured/organic meat stalls, and of course, the vegetables.  I walked in and rhubarb immediately caught my eye.  My dad used to grow this in his garden in Alaska when I was growing up.  I ate rhubarb cobblers, pies, crisps, and sometimes, I’d just go into the garden, pick a stalk and eat it raw, dipping the stalk into a bowl of sugar with each bite, to offset the tartness.  How wonderful is rhubarb!  I could hardly contain my excitement and bought 2 lbs.  Now, what to do with it all?  This is the kind of problem I like to have!

Then the asparagus.  Waves and waves of asparagus, all bundled up.  Every stall had a huge selection.  I had to get some of that.  I also got some sweet potatoes, inspired by Delicious by Nature, some radishes, and some apples.  I  got enough greens for a couple of salads, so I grabbed a cucumber to help round out the salad.

On my way out, I spied another section of the Farmer’s Market I hadn’t seen before.  There were never this many stalls before, so there was one section set a bit apart from the others.  There was the mushroom stall.  I love mushrooms, and I try to eat some regularly.  The man there was very friendly and helpful.  I got a bunch of portobellos.

Then it was off to my farmer’s pickup, where in addition to some beautiful fresh eggs, and dairy, I got a pint of wild morels he foraged on his farm land!  How amazing is that?

What a fantastic morning, and all of this by 10am.  But still, by the time I got back home, I still had an ache in my heart.  Fiddlehead Ferns -I wanted some.  Desperately.  And the farmer’s market I went to failed to have any.  A huge disappointment.  No matter, I put my food away and set out again, this time for the biggest and best farmer’s market the NYC area has to offer – Union Square.

I saw the fiddleheads right away.  Bright and green and curled up – they looked delectable.  I was greedy and bought a whole pound.  I was going to turn around and leave, but I just couldn’t bare to.  So many more treasures awaited!  I saw wild arugala and got that.  It was right next to the ramps, and being out of leeks, I got ramps as well.  Then I saw nettles, and since my last experiment went so well with them, I wanted to try something else with them!  Sensing a theme with wild ingredients (morels, ramps, fiddleheads, arugala, and nettles), I got dandelions as well.  I finished it off with another sunchoke since I enjoyed it in my salads so much last time.

What an amazing day!  All of this from local farmers using sustainable farming practices.  It truly feels good to support them.  My final haul:

• Rhubarb
• Asparagus
• Sweet Potatoes
• Radishes
• Salad greens
• Apples
• Cucumbers
• Portobellos
• Milk
• Eggs
• Morels
• Fiddlehead Ferns
• Wild Arugula
• Ramps
• Nettles
• Sunchoke
• Dandelions

I think I’ll be cooking the radishes tonight (and the greens since I don’t like anything to go to waste).

I'm a food renegade

It is a wonderfully satisfying trip to get food when you arrive and are greeted by the farmer who not only owns the farm that produces the butter and cheese and vegetables and meat and so forth, but he also works in the field and with his animals daily. You can ask him, “how are the animals doing?” and he will tell you. You can ask him how the grass is coming in. He helps you put your newly purchased food in the bags and thanks you for the purchase.

This is why these days about 90% of my meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables, and fruit comes from CSAs, co-ops, and farmer’s markets. I want to know how the animals are treated before the eggs or milk is collected, before the animals are slaughtered. I want to know what vegetables are fresh and in season. I want to know how they were grown. Meeting the farmer gives me that chance to find out. It also makes me feel safer – I can avoid the massive industrial foodchain that can easily become contaminated (peanuts, anyone? Or the latest warning, sprouts? Before that was tomatoes, peppers, and spinach, not to mention the regular e. coli and salmonella scares…). He is running a smaller farm, so it is easier for him to keep a good handle on quality control. Also, since he is producing less food, if there is an issue, it is likely to be small and since his number of customers is small, it is easily contained. On the rare chance I could get sick from something I ate, it will be easy for me to track down the source of it. I have absolutely no fear for the safety of the food I purchase from farmers. I cannot say the same about the industrial food I purchase.

It is about as real as it gets – having that direct personal connection to the farmer. The only way you could be closer to your food source is if you grew it yourself. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option for me at the moment, living in an apartment in NYC. So I’ll take shaking hands with the farmer instead.

Yes, I am a food renegade, and this post is part of Fight Back Fridays.  This post is also part of Food Roots because I like to know exactly where my food comes from.

Raspberries and Cream

Here in the Northeast, we had an absolutely gorgeous day. It was unseasonably warm, and while some people weren’t ready for weather in the mid 80s, I welcomed it with open arms! I woke up early and took off for the Union Square Greenmarket.

NYC has greenmarkets and farmer’s markets all over the city, but the largest one is probably the one at Union Square. They have everything. Maple syrup, honey, jam, baked goods, vegetables, dairy, meat, even yarn. Visiting is wonderful for food lovers like myself. Except for the crowds. It is so crowded! But still worth going.

This week all anyone could talk about were the ramps. Ramps are wild leeks. I’ve never had one, so I can’t really say. I already have leeks in my fridge, so I wasn’t in the market for ramps. I found plenty of other things to get me excited today.

I got quite a haul:

• Raspberries – this farmer grew them in a greenhouse.
• Stinging nettles
• Tomato
• Burdock root
• Sunchoke (also known as a Jerusalem artichoke)
• Arugula
• 2 mixes of salad greens
• 2 containers of goat cheese
• 3 Fuji apples
• Cream
• Blue potatoes
• Spinach
• Mushrooms

Phew! When I got home, I made myself a delicious salad with some of the greens, half of the tomato, thin slices of sunchoke, pine nuts, and a basic salad dressing made with olive oil, flax oil, vinegar, and mustard.

Dessert was the highlight, though. I took all of the raspberries, every last one, and put them in a bowl and then poured cream over the top. It was the most wonderful thing I’ve eaten in recent memory. Who needs a fancy, sugar laden dessert when you can have fresh raspberries and cream?

I’ve never cooked stinging nettles, burdock root, or a sunchoke, so I’ll have some fun experimenting with those this week. I’ll be sure to post what I learn! Please chime in to the comments if you have an idea of a dish I can make with anything I purchased today.

This post is part of the Farmer’s Market Report at To Every Meal.

Bell Peppers at the Farmer's Market

Yesterday I went to the Union Square greenmarket. What a sight to behold! There were a LOT of stalls, far more than at the Grand Army Plaza one in Brooklyn. Not that I would expect anything different of course!

People were selling all kinds of wonderful stuff. Lots of meats and root vegetables. Lots of baby greens. There was one guy selling sprouts. And a mushroom stall that was VERY popular. Lots of and lots of pies, breads, and other baked goods. There was a honey stall that looked amazing. Raw honey, honey on the comb, and all kinds of flavored honeys. Like different flavors of jam or something, but all honey. And 2009 New York State maple syrup! I didn’t buy any since I still have a few cups left, though I was sorely tempted. I found a stall that, in addition to meats and things, offered a fine selection of lacto-fermented foods. I ended up buying about a quart of beet kvass.

Beet Kvass is a very interesting thing. I’m going to try making some. Basically, imagine pickled beets. Its like the pickled beet juice – sour and a little bit thick with a beety flavor. I find it delicious, but I ate a lot of pickled beets as a kid and love that flavor.

I also purchased eggs and cabbage. I felt stupid though, because I didn’t get the details on how the laying hens were raised. I normally try to talk with the people selling, but it was a big crowd and I just got nervous or something. I regretted it as soon as I walked away. Though hopefully they won’t be any worse than the free range eggs at the supermarket. They were at least free range, but it would be helpful to know if that means the legal definition (which isn’t very helpful) or if he really meant what we would THINK free range means, a big outdoor yard, access to sunlight and grass and bugs and things in addition to chicken feed.

Oh well, a lesson for next time.

In other news, I should probably try my homemade cream cheese and see if it is any good! I have to admit, I’m a little nervous! I’d never made anything like it before.

Also, I need to see how my water kefir is doing!