Tag Archives: farmer’s markets

Winter Market

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This past Saturday, a friend and I went to a Winter Market put on by Fulton Farmers Market (kind of a mouthful).  It was housed in the greenhouses at Bachman’s in South Minneapolis.  They had a great turnout.  I think the combination of a sunny day and a city itching for spring had everyone eager to get out of the house and pick up some treats.

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They had a mix of canned goods, meats, cheese, honey, jewelry, and crafts for sale.  A couple of food vendors were there too if you needed a croissant for breakfast or falafel for lunch.  I was really hoping there would be a little bit of early, fresh produce but it’s still just a little to early for that.  Stupid snow.

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I picked up some fresh Feta (from Singing Hills Dairy) for sprinkling over salads this week and some Raspberry Pepper Jelly (from Hazelwood Creek Farms) that I might eat with some cream cheese and crackers later this week.  Yum!

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What’s in Season?

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For the past couple of weeks I’ve been a little MIA, sorry about that.  I’ve had a couple of work trips back to back but things should get back to normal around here soon.

In place of sharing a recipe or project, I thought I’d share a little more about what’s in season for the Minneapolis area for the month of June.  This is based off of what I’ve been picking up at my local farmer’s market and some personal preference.  Hate to say it but I’m just not a fan of rhubarb…  It changes week to week, and we’ve also seen a few things early this year because it warmed up so quickly.  Here’s the link to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s produce guide.  You can reach out to your state’s Ag department for information on your area too.

Plenty of salad greens

Radishes

Strawberries, with bonus adorable containers

Peas

And always check for other goodies like canned goods, meats and cheese:)

Recipe- Swiss Chard Side

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As you may remember, the weekend before last I picked up some swiss chard from the farmer’s market.  I knew I wanted to cook it as a side so I went with my old standby way of preparing cooked spinach to see if we’d like it.  I used a little over half a bunch of chard.  We waited until toward the end of the week so I ended up pulling out a few of the leaves. First up, I cleaned the leaves and trimmed down the ends of the stems.  You can eat the stem but you want to cut them down so you get rid of the more woody pieces. Next, I cut the leaves and stems down to more manageable pieces.  I rolled the leaves like I would to do a chiffonade cut and cut them down to pieces about an inch or so wide. When they were all cut up, I heated up some olive oil in the pan at medium heat (about 2 tablespoons, just eyeballing) and added a chopped up clove of garlic. After it had cooked long enough to be fragrant, I added in my leaves and put the lid on. I left it alone for around 3 minutes before using tongs to move the leaves around and flip them to make sure it was cooking evenly, then put the lid back on for another 3 minutes and removed it from the heat. We ate the chard with steak and potatoes from the grill.  On the whole it was really similar to cooked spinach with a slightly different flavor, just a little bit sweeter.  I’m thinking about loading up on some this week and trying to freeze some cooked like you would find frozen cooked spinach in the grocery store.  I’m going to do some more research on it to see if there are any good tips out there.  I’ll keep you posted on what I find out. I’ll be back this weekend with some boozy dessert!

Busy Weekend

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After my post last week about cabinets you’d think I’d hop right on that project and get to work.  Nope.  Didn’t even touch ‘em.

I was up before 8 am on Saturday morning to get a good selection at the Fulton Farmers Market.  It was opening weekend and by the open at 8:30 the place was packed.  We did a quick walk through to see what we were working with, then went back and made our selections.

We picked up spring salad mix, breakfast radishes and swiss chard from Uproot Farm.  We dug into the salad mix right away this weekend.  Still have the chard and radishes to eat yet.  You can learn more about the farm here.  They have a handy tab for recipes by vegetable they grow.  I’ll probably be browsing that for some ideas over the summer.

We also picked up some plants from Gardens of Egan, a farm based out of Farmington, MN.  From the looks of it they’ll have fresh produce later this year but also a great place to pick up organic flowers and veggies for your yard.  Our herbs and tomato seedling just haven’t gotten started this year.  I think we may have started to late this year, we’ll know better next time around.  We picked up 9 tomato plants, basil, parsley, cilantro, and thyme.

Finally, we treated ourselves to some breakfast to go by way of Patisserie 46.  They had one of the busiest stands due to their spread of irresistible pastries.  We picked up a couple of croissants and called it a day.  It’s still a little early to find a wide range of fruits and veggies, but I’m interested in checking out some of the pickles and jams some of the other vendors were offering as well as some of the other croissants varieties…

When we got home we really got to work.  We planted all of the herbs and tomatoes and also put up a canopy of patio lights.  It doesn’t sound like much written out, but we were in the back yard from about 10:30-7 or so.  We got inside about 5 minutes before we got hit by a thunderstorm that started with hail:(  UGH  We lost about 5 lights to the hail but the plants looked pretty good.

The lights aren’t too shabby either.  I think we’ll have some fun nights chilling out on the patio with a beer or wine.

Springtime Frittata

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Hi There.
So it’s safe to say I’m more than a day late on this post.  Sorry about that, work got away from me a little this week.  But as promised, here’s the frittata I was telling you about.  I used a recipe from Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks.  I was given her latest cookbook for Christmas this year and I’ve enjoyed every recipe I’ve tried so far.

Making a frittata was fairly easy and it’s a flexible recipe that allows you to use whatever veggies are in season. I used new potatoes, shallots, peas and my farmer’s market eggs.  One of the biggest things I liked about this recipe was that it allowed me to use up 10 of the 12 eggs!  I always run into having about half a dozen left over after baking something or just making an omelet.  They’ll sit there until i’m not sure when I bought them and then it’s just a waste of food.  No longer!

 

Making this did get me thinking about some of my kitchen supplies.  My skillet was a bit small and the straight sides made it difficult to run my spatula around the side to keep the edges from getting too brown.  My spatula is also permanently curled on the end from forcing it…. maybe I just created the perfect frittata spatula

So Long April

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Hi All,
I hope you’re having a good start to your week!  I have a bit of catching up to do with you.

I went back to the farmer’s market and picked up more asparagus, morel mushrooms, radishes, rosemary and wisconsin cheddar cheese.  It was a good haul and the number of vendors easily doubled from the last time I was there.  I’m going to freeze more of the asparagus and keep some fresh for dinner tomorrow too.  I’m undecided with the rest of the haul.  Do I make another pasta dish with the mushrooms?  Radishes in a salad?  Or dipped in vodka and salt like I had at my photography class?  Do I eat the block of cheese all in one sitting or shred it over tacos or burgers.  Decisions, decisions….

All day Sunday the Hubs and I worked in the yard.  I’m talking 6-7 hours of work.  We planted almost all of the herb garden.  The final piece will be some mint plants and one more  rosemary to finish it out.

The container veggies are also all planted and ready to grow.  2 potatoes, 2 onions, and 2 carrots.  Don’t they look exciting right now?

We also transplanted our teeny, tiny tomato seedlings into some larger pots to get them better established before we put them in the larger garden.  They’re looking pretty spindly, I’m hoping their new homes will encourage them to pick up the pace a bit.

The largest chunk of our day was spent doing a combo of mowing, picking up sticks, picking up dog presents, weeding and re-seeding the lawn.  We’ve got a lot of watering to do over the next few weeks between the different gardens and lawn.  We’ll keep our eyes on things and hopefully we’ll get some herb sprouts soon and some strong tomato plants.

I’ll be back tomorrow to fill you in on what I did with the eggs I bought last week.  Time to start the sprinkler!

Morel Mushrooms 2 ways

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I wanted to get as much milage as I could out of the morel mushrooms I picked up at the farmers market.  I’ve never cooked with them before so I wanted to try a a couple of dishes one simple and one a bit more complicated.

Tuesday was fast and simple, just sautéing them in butter:)  Topping off a steak right of the grill with buttery mushrooms was a perfect way to elevate a regular Tuesday dinner a bit with minimal effort.

Wednesday took a little more time and effort.  I made Wild Mushroom and Farro Risotto using the recipe from Spoon Fork Bacon.  It also gave me a chance to try cooking with farro, a whole grain that is similar to rice in preparation but just a touch on the healthier side.  I followed their recipe pretty much to the T.  We used dried porcini mushrooms in place of chanterelle just based on what was available at the Co-ops.

While the mushrooms were re-hydrating, I started the chicken broth simmering on the stove.

Then jumped into the onions and garlic.

When the onions were translucent, I added in the farro to start toasting.

After about 5 minutes I added the wine, super steamy goodness

When it was almost all evaporated, I started adding in the chicken broth a ladle full at a time as it absorbed and cooked.  Like cooking any other risotto it took a bit of time for each addition to absorb and cook off .  I’ll spare you the pictures of each addition of broth.

After the last of the broth had been added and cooked for a bit, I started tasting for doneness.  When still had a little bite too it, per the recipe, I added in the mascarpone and Parmesan cheese and stirred until it had melted and been mixed in completely.

With the farro done, I turned back to the mushrooms.  I drained them and then sauteed them in olive oil before adding them into the cheesey farro.

We topped our bowls off with a bit more Parmesan and dug in.  It was so creamy and delicious!  The recipe said it would make 3-5 servings and we just about polished it all off before we got too full.  I was pretty pleased with how the two dishes turned out and really glad I got to try cooking with a couple of new things this week.  It makes me look forward to heading back out this weekend to see if there’s anything else new for me to try.

Freezing Asparagus

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As I shared with you on Saturday, I made my first trip to the farmer’s market this weekend.  It was a damp, chilly day but there were a handful of booths open for business.

I picked up some morel mushrooms, asparagus and eggs to use with dinner throughout the week.  I’m excited to try the morel mushrooms but more on that later this week…  I bought a bit more asparagus than I normally would for a week (it’s not all pictured) because I’m determined to start freezing extra veggies this summer.  I put some thought into doing another CSA but I wanted to be able to better plan out what would be eating as well as be able to load up on things we liked rather than just getting one or two of something.  This way I’ll be able to stock our freezer and come winter, hopefully we’ll be able to enjoy a variety of summer vegetables that were all bought locally at the peak of their season.  Think of how great the taste of asparagus will be in November!

Freezing veggies is a fairly simple process called blanching.  To start off you’ll need to get a large pot of water to a rolling boil as well as another large pot, bowl or in my case a very well scrubbed out sink full of cold water and ice.  While I was waiting for the water to boil, I cleaned and trimmed down my asparagus to get rid of the woody ends.

Then once the water was boiling, in went the asparagus.  It’s best to do it in batches so your water stays nice and hot and you don’t loose your boil.  Leave the veggies cook in the water for about 1-2 minutes.  The idea is to get them started cooking but not close to done.  If you leave them in for too long you’ll end up with mush when you re-heat them later.

When the two minutes were up they went right into the ice water bath for another 1-2 minutes.  This stops the cooking process right away which is also important for avoiding mush later..

From there, I sorted out my batches in to even portions.  I went for roughly 2 servings per bag to make it really easy for grabbing for dinner later.  I ended up with 3 bags to throw in the freezer.  I know it doesn’t sound like much, but if I keep it up with a bit extra each week I think we’ll end up with a pretty full freezer before long. That being said, I should probably go clean out some of the freezer burned mystery meat;)

P.S.  I went back and re-made my asparagus with cream sauce for dinner that night too.  Here’s the original post for a refresher.

Markets are Opening!

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It’s hard to think about browsing for fresh produce in a farmers market after the nasty mix of snow and rain we had over the last couple of days but they’re gearing up!  My go to farmer’s market, Fulton Farmers Market,  is starting sell a few items indoors.  I’m going to be checking them out over the next couple of weeks to see what there is to choose from.  I’m hoping with the warm winter we’ve had there will be some fresh asparagus sooner than last year.

It also got me thinking about signing up for a CSA again.  We’re going to have to figure out our strategy for how much we want on a weekly basis and what farm we’d like to get our veggies from.  I’m going to browse localharvest.org to check out some options and see who would be our best bet.

Local Harvest is a good place for you to check out both CSA’s and Farmer’s Markets in your area.  They also have some more info about how CSA’s work and what they’re all about.  It’s good to sign up early to make sure they have enough produce for you.

 

Eat Local Challenge

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It just came to my attention that we’re in the middle of the annual Eat Local Challenge.  While the month of the challenge varies by community, for Minnesota this year, it’s set for Aug. 15- Sept. 15th and is being sponsored by the neighborhood co-ops and farmer’s markets.  You can find more information about Co-ops and the challenge here.

image from lindenhills.coop

This is really the best time to give it a shot.  The farmer’s markets are brimming with fresh produce, farm raised meat, poultry and other local goods like bread and jam.  If farmer’s markets aren’t your thing, try checking out some restaurants that make a point of supporting local farms, eatwellguide.org is a great way to search for everything from fancy dinners to a corner bakery.  I hope this gets you out there and you get to try some new foods.  The best part of the whole challenge, you get to EAT!