Cooking with Our CSA Produce

This summer we have a share in a local CSA, Open Hands Farm. Actually, we are sharing that share -- splitting it weekly with our friends Mary and Steve. It's been quite a few years since I tried a CSA. A half-share seems just right for us -- enough produce to feel like a bounty each week, but not so much that we really struggle to keep up with it.

In case you're not sure what a CSA is, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture. A local farm sells shares at the beginning of the growing season and then throughout the season the share-owners (members) get a weekly allotment of whatever is ready to be picked that week. This provides members with a steady stream of fresh-from-the-farm produce (in some cases going to the farm to pick it up, or even sometimes to pick some of it themselves in U-pick fashion; in other cases, picking it up at a convenient distribution point) and allows them to get know their farmers and where their food comes from. The arrangement, importantly, also gives farmers an upfront source of capital for the year and lets them spread out the risk of farming to some extent. If it's a typical year, members have paid a fair price for a steady supply of fresh, local produce. If it's a bumper year, the members benefit -- they get more than they paid for, so to speak. If production is down or crops ruined due to bad weather, disease, or other factors that affect how well plants produce, the members take home less than they'd hoped for, but the farmer doesn't bear the entire financial brunt of the losses, because they were paid upfront. It's still a huge amount of work, but the greater financial stability can make the difference for these relatively small-scale farmers.

The CSA helps keep me on my toes, nutritionally. I tend to get lazy about fixing what I think of as "real dinners," but with fresh produce in the house and the promise (threat?!) of more coming in a few days, I do get spurred on to make more salads and incorporate more produce into our meals. The growing season starts off mostly with greens -- tender lettuces, mixed salad greens, spinach and cooking greens like small bok choy. Early root vegetables like radishes and salad turnips have also been in the mix, and we've had modest quantities of small but sweet and intensely-flavored strawberries (this very rainy June hasn't been the best for strawberries). Now, near the end of June, more substantial foods like summer squash and broccoli are already coming in, along with sugar snap peas, green onions and beets, chard and kale. These are all wonderful, and hint at the glories of the peak of the CSA experience, when you're taking home bags of tomatoes, squash, corn, beans and cucumbers every week.

We've been having a lot of salads, needless to say, and I made a really good stir-fry a few days ago using about half a dozen CSA ingredients. Dave also made a big batch of tabbouli a few days ago, using green onions from the farm. A batch of tabbouli can get us through several days of lunches or dinners, served with pita bread, feta cheese and/or hummus. That first night he also made chicken kebabs on the grill, using a Turkish seasoning mix as a rub, which went great with the tabbouli (shown in the photo at right).

And then we fell in love with cooked greens. To accompany a meal of leftover chicken kebabs, cut into smaller chunks and sauteed briefly with mushrooms, I made lemon-spiked garlic greens, following a recipe in 1,001 Low-fat Vegetarian Recipes by Sue Spitler (Surrey Books, 1997). Having about six large kale leaves, I cut the leaves away from the central stems (discarding the stems) and coarsely chopped the leaves. I heated some olive oil in a saucepan and added some chopped green onions and a handful of finely diced leftover red bell pepper that I happened to have on hand (most of it was used with the kebabs). Then I added a good teaspoonful from a jar of garlic puree, but one could of course use diced fresh garlic, and stirred it all until fragrant. Then I threw in the chopped kale along with about a third of a cup of water, stirred it all up, turned down the heat a notch and put the lid on the pan so the greens would braise. When after a few minutes the greens were looking wilted but there was still quite a bit of moisture in the pan, I took the lid off and continued to stir-fry for a few more minutes until most of the moisture had evaporated, and then seasoned the mixture with a good squirt of lemon juice and some salt and pepper.

The result was intensely satisfying, with a bold but not bitter "greens" flavor and a fresh, not-overcooked texture that was a perfect accompaniment to the milder-tasting chicken and mushrooms, and with a lingering garlicky finish that we were still enjoying an hour later. I only wished we had had more kale so we could have had seconds. Can't wait for next week's delivery!

New Eat Local Post

I've just written about some of my favorite locally produced foods that are available at this time of year, on the Eat Local Just Food blog. The folks at Just Food Co-op are gearing up for the Winter Eat Local Challenge, taking place the first week of March. Participants aim to eat about 50% locally produced foods during the week -- and even in Minnesota in March they'll learn that that's not hard to do these days, which is part of the point of the challenge. Full disclosure: Just Food Co-op has recently been a client of the firm where I work and I've been very involved in that account, but my history of writing about local food issues, my involvement in their Eat Local blog, and my commitment to what Just Food stands for all predate any client relationship. Read my blog post here.

Food Culture: Turn Off the TV and Cook!

The most useful thing we can do – if we care about food and where it comes from and how it’s grown and prepared and what’s good for us and what tastes good, and if we want to sift through all the contradictory and overlapping claims about health benefits or environmental degradation or sustainability – is unplug the television set, because for the most part, the food traditions that were gaining a foothold in various regions of the United States have been in steady decline since the growth of TV as the national communications medium at the end of WWII and continue to the present day.

So says my wise blog friend Patrick at Duck Fat and Politics. It's an important, eloquent post, and it's not just about TV. It's about apple pie and sweet potatoes and ginger beer and not allowing our food heritage (not to mention biodiversity) to be lost. Read it all here (on the Eat Local: Just Food blog) or here (on Duck Fat and Politics).

Time Magazine Cover Story: Real Cost of Cheap Food

This week Time magazine gives cover-story prominence to an issue I feel strongly about: namely, that the industrial-scale cheap food we have become accustomed to comes at too high a price and is not sustainable. The article notes:

The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans.

Price subsidies for commodity crops result in price-per-calorie dysfunction like these examples provided in the article. One dollar can buy:

• 1,200 calories of potato chips
• 875 calories of soda
• 250 calories of vegetables
• 170 calories of fresh fruit

The fruit and vegetables are still the nutritional bargain here, but people get fuller faster (and fatter) eating the cheap calories.

When we enjoy a cheap hamburger from animals finished on grain in high-density feedlots, or bargain-price pork or chicken where thousands of animals are raised together in close proximity, we are getting that cheap meat at the cost of:

• a horrendous (at the very least, a most unnatural and crowded) quality of life for the animals
• routine antibiotic use to prevent control disease in such unnaturally large concentrations of animals
• pollution from the huge quantities of waste produced in such concentrated areas
• increased chances for food contamination from large, high-speed processing plants
• increased use of petroleum-based fertilizers to grow the endless monocultures of cheap corn to feed the animals
• our own health and enjoyment of the food (did you know, for example, that the fats in grass-fed beef and dairy products - such as humans have been eating for thousands of years until the last several decades - are considerably better for us than the fats from grain-fed cattle?)

Bon Appetit food services company (which manages the dining programs at both St. Olaf and Carleton colleges here in Northfield and relies heavily on local, sustainable producers), Niman Ranch beef, and Chipotle restaurants are highlighted as examples of how to take a different, healthier, more sustainable approach in large-scale food production. Our own nearby Thousand Hills Cattle Company is a premium source of grass-fed beef; you can find their meat at Just Food and other area co-ops, and I believe I even saw some at EconoFoods recently.

I encourage you to read the article, which concludes:

The industrial food system fills us up but leaves us empty — it's based on selective forgetting. But what we eat — how it's raised and how it gets to us — has consequences that can't be ignored any longer.

Zucchini, Basil & Cherry Tomato Pizza

Behold an improvised homemade pizza with half-slices of zucchini, jewel-like slices of sweet Sun Gold tomatoes, and strips of green and purple basil, all from the garden. I brushed on a little olive oil over the top. I wasn't sure if the zucchini would release much moisture, so I didn't want to load it too thick, but it just roasted nicely in a 450 F. oven and wasn't too juicy at all. Next time I'll double the amount. It was awesome.

Summer's Bounty

We're halfway through the summer Eat Local Challenge, so in abbreviated form let me comment on some of my pleasures of the season:

• A batch of "dilly beans" marinating in my fridge right now, made from string beans our backyard neighbor gave us from his garden, and dill from our own. I don't make enough to can these, but I follow Jane Brody's recipe for a batch big enough to enjoy as a side dish for several days.
  
• Dinner tonight: 1000 Hills Cattle local, grass-fed beef hamburgers on bakery buns with slices of the first ripe slicing tomato from our garden, plus sweet, buttery corn on the cob from Grism's stand on Water Street
• A dozen or so new Sun Gold cherry tomatoes ripen every day or so in the garden - extremely prolific, early to ripen, and utterly delicious
• Enough zucchini from my two plants over the past two or three weeks that we have made zucchini-cheese bake, zucchini muffins, chocolate zucchini cake and oven-roasted zucchini "fries" (melt-in-your-mouth wonderful)
  
• The ever-wonderful local tortilla chips (both yellow and blue corn varieties) from Whole Grain Milling Company in Welcome, Minn. A terrific addition to practically any occasion.
• A mind-bogglingly enormous cabbage from a recent farmers' market made a nice big batch of Asian coleslaw, and we've still got some cabbage left over
• Potato salad from local farmers' market potatoes
  
• Cucumbers from my colleague's garden, plus some more of my own. I eat them many ways, but one favorite way is to chop them up and put them on top of a quesadilla that's first topped with good salsa, either homemade or Salsa Lisa (made in Minneapolis)

Things I still look forward to this summer: ripe cantaloupe (there's plenty around; I just haven't bought any yet); enough big ripe tomatoes to pile up on my kitchen counter and make lavish tomato sandwiches and fresh salsa with lime and cilantro; perhaps a blueberry-picking outing to the lovely Rush River Produce at Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, overlooking Lake Pepin (their website says that their midseason Nelson crop has failed, but they expect good picking from the Elliots in late August).

What are you enjoying eating this summer?

Eat Local Anniversary Dinner

This delicious and colorful mixture of summer vegetables with shrimp, served over pasta, made up our mostly-local dinner last night. It was our wedding anniversary - one year ago Dave and I were married on the deck of our dear friends Sarah and Bob's house in the nearby countryside. Tonight I made a recipe from a book called Serving Up the Harvest, by Andrea Chesman, which I bought in Duluth while we were on our honeymoon, so that seems fitting. It's a sautée of zucchini and yellow squash (from my garden and the farmer's market), yellow and red tomatoes (from the co-op and farmer's market), a yellow Hungarian pepper (from the garden), white wine, saffron, garlic, and fresh basil (from the garden). Oh, and yes, some shrimp out of the back of the freezer, slightly freezer-burned. (My approach to Eat Local challenges is always: if it's in my house already, it counts as local!) Fresher shrimp would certainly have been better, but this was really good anyway! The photo shows the final view in the skillet before the sauce was tossed with pasta shells.

Eating Thoughtfully - In August and Year-round

It's time for the Eat Local Challenge once again! The particulars for our local effort are much as they have been before, except that this year the challenge runs from August 1 to August 31.

Of course, the bounty of fresh, delicious, local produce at this time of year makes such a challenge about as easy as it could be in Minnesota. (Ooh, have you noticed that Grisim's sweet corn stand is now open on Water St. in Northfield?!) But it's not superfluous, because even for those who would be eating a lot of their food from local sources in midsummer anyway, the challenge nudges us to consider why we eat what we eat and how we think about food.

My own thinking about food has come quite a long way in the last couple of years. My very first Penelopedia post spoke of the inspiration I'd gained from Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and my feeling that by eating more locally, organically, and sustainably, I could "do some good for the local land, the global environment, and the local economy." I still believe that.

But I've learned more. In particular, I've learned about the benefits of grass.

To make a long and very interesting story short*, the evidence is powerful that when cows eat primarily grass (their natural food), not corn and other grains, they are healthier. Their meat is healthier for us to eat. The fats in their meat and milk are healthier - downright good for a body, in fact. (Really!) And the land, air, and water where they are raised is healthier (natural fertilizer is automatically provided, no need to raise lots of pesticide-intensive corn, more natural and diverse ecosystems to support birds and other creatures, and so on).

As I've quoted before and will doubtless quote again, "Eating is an agricultural act." (Wendell Berry) Where you buy your food and what you eat have effects far beyond your own household. Cheap industrial food comes at a real cost. Especially in the area of meat, dairy, and other animal products, I now find the hidden costs of "cheap" food unacceptable for myself. The high rate of production and resulting low price of meat or milk come at the cost of the animals' quality of life, the waste-disposal challenges caused by large concentrated animal production facilities, and a significant portion of the traditional healthfulness of the meat or milk itself. It's not a trade-off I can routinely make in good conscience anymore.

If you haven't put much thought into where your food comes from and how it is produced, perhaps the annual Eat Local Challenge is a good time to give it some thought. Consider cooking more whole foods from scratch, so you have more control over your ingredients. Buy from a farmers' market or a co-op or other source where you can determine something about how and where the food was raised. If you eat meat, choose meat from animals raised humanely and provided a traditional diet for which they are biologically suited. Seek out dairy products and beef from grass-fed cows. Favor traditional foods, raised well, over industrial foods.

And enjoy some wonderful local food this August.

------------------------
*If you want longer versions of the story, here are some books I recommend:

• Real Food - Nina Plank (a book that may well turn your ideas about dairy products and about traditional fats like butter and lard on their heads)
• The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
• In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan
• The Compassionate Carnivore - Catherine Friend (a local farmer and author)

Rhubarb and Asparagus Time

Spring is really here: white-throated sparrows have been heard, the grass needs mowing, the rhubarb is growing nicely (I have a nice, deeply red variety, as you can see in the photo), and fresh local asparagus from Lorence's Berry Farm is now available at the co-op -- and, one assumes, at Lorence's! Had an exalted dinner tonight of salmon and asparagus. Heaven! The canine and feline members of the household thought so too when they received tidbits of the salmon skin.

For more musings on oh-so-welcome spring foods, you might possibly want to pop over to my recent post, and others, on the Eat Local Just Food blog, where the pleasures of rhubarb, asparagus, and strawberry shortcake are discussed at greater length. Not that we have local strawberries quite yet, but it won't be too long now.

New Post on Eat Local: Just Food

I have a new post on the Eat Local: Just Food blog about variations on the traditional potato-and-cabbage dish known in England as "bubble and squeak" -- a good option for a winter Eat Local supper.

Silkey Gardens Strawberries

Among the local foods I've purchased at the co-op lately are Silkey Gardens strawberries. (Check the "Local Foods Recently in My Kitchen" sidebar item for others.) They were marked as Minnesota Grown, but I wasn't familiar with the name so I checked out their website and their listing with the state department of agriculture's Minnesota Grown directory. Turns out they are about as local as you can get -- they are right down the road on 115th St., technically still in Northfield, adjacent to Dundas. Their Ag department description reads:

A family owned small fruit farm and orchard offering pick-your-own and pre-picked strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, apples and more.

Their website notes that they are just in their third year of production, and so far strawberries are the main crop, though they will have limited quantities of blueberries and raspberries and hope to expand their offerings of these and the other fruit mentioned above as their plantings mature. Pick-your-own hours are most days 6-11:30 a.m. and 6-8 p.m., but they ask pickers to call for current conditions before coming out (the number is 507-645-4158).

I've eaten my way through my first quart of Silkey Gardens strawberries the last several mornings, and bought another today. I've not had a good track record of eating enough fruit and vegetables -- especially fruit -- in recent months. I'm trying harder (and finding the food tracker at MyPyramid.gov to be a useful tool to help make sure I eat a more balanced diet). Local strawberry season makes it easy to change my ways.

Recipe for a very pleasant breakfast:

• One slice of Just Bread multigrain bread made by Brick Oven for Just Food co-op, spread with...
  
• chunky natural peanut butter (I definitely go for the with-salt kind and the chunkier the better), accompanied by...
  
• 5-10 ripe strawberries, plus...
  
• half a glass of orange juice, and
  
• tea or coffee
  

On another local-foods note, I have been invited to write an article about eating locally for the next issue of ComPost, Just Food's member publication (also, I'm sure, available at the store), which will highlight the annual summer Eat Local challenge. Watch for it in a few weeks.

Local Tortilla Chips - Really!

Today I stopped in at Just Food for several items -- among them, the tortilla chips I'd seen listed on the local-food shopping list the co-op has put together in connection with the Winter Eat Local Challenge.

I rather suspected that though produced by a local company, they would prove to be made with corn from an unspecified, probably distant, location. Not so! These are organic blue corn tortilla chips from Whole Grain Milling Company, made from non-GMO blue corn grown and milled on their family farm in Welcome, Minnesota. Here's a page from the Linden Hills co-op about the growers. Their business is also featured in an article from the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service about farmers adding value to the grains they grow so that they can capture more of their eventual retail value -- an important advantage in an age when the price of the grain itself has at times been below the cost of production.

But back to the chips. Not only are these genuinely local, they are really good! Tortilla chips are one of my downfalls -- I've got a much bigger salt tooth than sweet tooth -- and for the past couple of years I've sworn by Bearitos yellow corn tortilla chips (not the unsalted variety -- good lord, talk about defeating the purpose!) but these are just about as good, I'd say, and that's no small praise.

Whole Grain Milling also makes a hot cereal, two pancake mixes and a bread mix, which could be valuable additions to anyone hoping to expand the variety of local foods in their pantry.

Just Food's Winter Eat Local Challenge & CSA Day

Northfield's Just Food Co-op is sponsoring its first-ever Winter Eat Local Challenge, March 3-9:

Even during the winter, there is a plethora of delicious ingredients produced locally. You can eat local in the winter too, and there's no better time to try than the Winter Eat Local Challenge! From March 3rd to March 9th Just Food Co-op challenges you to eat 50% of your diet from the 5-state area.

...Visit the store each day of the challenge from 4-6 p.m. and Sunday from 11-2 and meet one of our local farmers tabling in the aisles!

On their website, and available in print form at the store's entrance, is a week's worth of menus for local meals put together by Just Food's Deli Manager, Kirsten Lindquist, and an aisle-by-aisle shopping list for ingredients needed to prepare those meals. The shopping list could also give you great ideas for your own local meals.

Local foods (defined for the purposes of this challenge as grown or produced in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota or North Dakota) currently available at the co-op include:

• dairy products: milk, cream, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, butter
  
• eggs
  
• grains
• beans
  
• pasta
• cereal
• tortillas
• salsa
• corn chips
• beef
• ham
• chicken
• bread
• jam
• cereal
• maple syrup
• potatoes
• mushrooms
• hydroponic lettuce
• sprouts
• and a variety of frozen fruits and vegetables, and other frozen foods

Just Food's e-mail news today also announces CSA Day on Saturday, March 8:

From 11-2 on Saturday at Just Food you can meet MORE local farmers -- our local Community Supported Agriculture farmers! Stop in to chat with them about their farming practices, what they grow, and how much a share costs. Then if you’d like you can purchase a share and begin to look forward to the weekly baskets of fresh vegetables picked for you throughout the growing season!

My family has been a member of a couple of different CSAs at various times over the past dozen years or so. Some weeks, especially when corn and tomatoes and potatoes and green beans and basil were in season, we felt we were in heaven. Other weeks, especially when the bag was full of beets and dark greens, we had a bit of a job to use up what we brought home. If you're not used to eating a lot, or a wide variety, of vegetables it can require some dedication to make good use of every weekly delivery, but you could consider sharing a membership with another individual, couple or family if you'd like to try it out. Some CSAs may also offer half-shares. You'll know your produce is the freshest possible and that you're doing something healthy both for yourself and for your local farmer.

Kudos to Just Food, both for offering plenty of produce and other products from local farmers, as well as for encouraging people to shop at the farmers' market and join CSAs.

Extreme Eating, Glocavores, Luddites and More

This week's Time features an in-your-face column by Joel Stein, called "Extreme Eating." He declares the local food movement out of control and goes shopping at Whole Foods for an anti-local meal:

To prove how wrong the farm-to-table movement is, I cooked a dinner purely of farm-to-airplane food. Nothing I made was grown within 3,000 miles of where I live in Los Angeles. And to completely give the finger to the locavores, I bought the entire meal in the local-food movement's most treasured supermarket, the one that has huge locally grown signs next to the fruits and vegetables: Whole Foods.

After describing a shopping list of Spanish almonds, Chilean sea bass, Greek olives, French brie, Scottish smoked salmon and more, he concludes:

My distavore meal was more a smorgasbord than a smart fusion of cultures, but I still ate the way only a very rich person could have dined just 15 years ago. The local-food movement is deeply Luddite, part of the green lobby that measures improvement by self-denial more than by actual impact—considering shipping food in containers is often more energy-efficient than a local farmer trucking small amounts that are then purchased on a separate weekend farmers'-market trip you take in your SUV. So I'm going to keep buying food from my foreign neighbors. Because it's the only way we Americans learn about other countries, other than by bombing them.

Somewhere else not too long ago, and it's not coming up in a web search so I can't link to it, I read a piece advocating for a "glocavore" stance as opposed to a "locavore" one. In addition to supporting our local farmers and contributing to their sustainable care of local land, the writer made the case, which I strongly join, that we also have an obligation to our global community. We're a wealthy nation. We do good by supporting sustainable ventures around the world that maintain valuable ways of life or crafts or foods, not just ensuring the health of our own economies.

I don't think everyone should eat only foods produced within 100 miles of home; I think we should support important regional products that we value, whether they're from our own region or elsewhere. I do think we should be thoughtful about our consumption when a food is well suited to our region but we are buying it from California or Chile or South Africa instead. For example, we grow beautiful winter squash here in Minnesota, which are by their very nature "good keepers," but the winter squash I've seen available in stores recently come from another part of the country. By asking for local produce of this type, we let farmers know there is a market for their goods and encourage them to produce more, rather than giving over more farmland to commodity monocultures like soybeans and corn.

A point Joel Stein made in his Time commentary is one that I've pondered. We have easy access to a variety of food that throughout most of human history only a very rich person, perhaps a monarch, could have eaten. We're extraordinarily fortunate to live in such a time -- to have out-of-season produce and a wealth of food choices available all year round and affordable, at least in modest quantities, to most people in developed nations.

Perhaps we shouldn't expect that to be the norm forever; quite arguably it is an aberration made possible only for a relatively modest window of time as a result of cheap oil. Some who feel most strongly about the importance of eating locally appear to be those who believe we are rapidly approaching a post-oil society. They believe the oil will be gone, or will be too expensive to use on transporting from coast to coast so many goods that can be produced much more locally, and that we're going to be in deep trouble quite quickly if we don't have strong local food networks in place.

I'm skeptical -- not of the view that oil will become scarcer and more costly (that's inevitable), but of the view that this will mean the end of much of that our consumer society takes for granted. I think the economic powers-that-be have far too much at stake to let that happen. I think the threat of such a change will be (is, in fact) incentive enough, finally, finally, finally, for alternative fuel sources and technologies to be developed to replace oil on a huge scale. Maybe in 20 years all those coast-to-coast trucks will be hydrogen-powered. Or solar powered. Or hybrid hydrogen-solar-electric powered.

If that happens, do the reasons to support local foods go away? No, I don't think so at all; there will always be important reasons to encourage people to care for their local soil and enable those who want to to make a living raising food in a sustainable way to do so. But reducing the carbon footprint of long-distance food transportation might make us a bit less guilty about enjoying the fact that we really do eat like kings. Let's just work to share that good fortune with all.

Local Meal of the Week: Butternut Tostadas

For this week's Dark Days Eat Local Challenge meal, I browsed through lots of squash recipes and settled on this simple, quick, delicious meal: butternut tostadas. I found it in The New Laurel's Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery & Nutrition, by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders and Brian Ruppenthal. When I was being an at-home mom in the early to mid '90s, I loved this book for being so much more than just a book of recipes -- more like a trusted friend -- but I have less time to cook these days and haven't visited it much for quite a while. Silly me. It's still wonderful.

This recipe is credited, to my surprise, to the late artist Alan Gussow, whose wife, Joan, wrote a compelling book about their gardening lives that I have often quoted here: This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader.

Here's the recipe: You cut a butternut squash into quarters and scoop out the seeds. Put it with a little water into a covered glass dish and microwave for about 10 minutes, until flesh is soft (or steam in the conventional way for 20 minutes). Meanwhile, toast corn tortillas on a griddle until softly crisp. When the squash is tender, scrape the squash pulp off the skins and mash it. Heat a tablespoon of oil, add some chili powder, garlic and ground cumin, and stir-fry until the spices are fragrant. Add the squash and some oregano; stir and fry until the mixture is hot.

Spread some squash mixture onto a prepared tortilla; sprinkle with a little grated cheese; cover with shredded lettuce, and dot with salsa.

"Makes 4 rather unusual but very tasty tostadas," the book says. It certainly does! The combination of toasted corn/spiced squash/mellow cheese is a real winner.

My squash and lettuce were from the farmers' market; my tortillas are from down the road in Faribault (purchased at the co-op during the Eat Local Challenge in August, but tortillas seem to keep almost forever in the fridge or freezer); the cheese is from perhaps slightly more than 200 miles away (Crystal Farms is based in Lake Mills, WI), but I had it on hand; and the salsa was Minneapolis's own Salsa Lisa.

Addendum, 11/1: I should have noted above that Joan Dye Gussow is a noted local and organic food advocate and nutritionist; my description above doesn't do justice to her national stature.

Cornucopia of Local Goodies

This morning I stopped by one of the final farmers markets of the year. A few last hardy souls were there with their trucks, selling squashes (a wonderful variety), broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, salad greens, pies, jellies, eggs, flowers, and ornamental corn.

The morning's takings made a still-life worthy of capturing. Note the beautiful French heirloom squash at the right, looking like a pale pumpkin. The grower said her pumpkins had rotted from all the rain, but these had flourished, and would last well. Note also the deep purple cauliflower just behind the cabbage. The eggs were apparently from assorted breeds of hen; the white ones are actually a very pale blue. Also included here are Native Harvest maple syrup and bread I picked up at Just Food. The syrup (a must to go with baked squash, in my mind) is from the White Earth Indian Reservation's land recovery project, and the bread is a new variety from Brick Oven, baked especially for Just Food -- and called Just Bread.

It's a multi-grain bread made with all organic grains and local honey. I made a peanut butter sandwich with it after shopping, and ate it with a local Honey Crisp apple. Yum.

Eating Locally in Winter

The Star Tribune had a nice piece a few days ago about ways we northerners can continue to emphasize local food in our winter menus. Relatively local grains, including wild rice, and local meat, dairy products, eggs, beans, squash, root vegetables, cabbage, and sturdy greens like kale can carry us a long way. Apples can last quite a while if carefully kept, and cranberries are a major crop of our neighbor, Wisconsin, that are being harvested now, last a long time when refrigerated in plastic bags, and freeze well. Maple syrup and honey are often available from Minnesota sources.

Many of us freeze, can, or dry some of our local produce to get us through to the next growing season (I have one jar of strawberry jam left from my flat of Lorence's strawberries), and as the article notes, "while 'frozen' may not be the first word association match for 'local,' Sno-Pac Foods Inc. in Caledonia, Minn., has been freezing local organic fruits and vegetables since 1943." Butter Kernel canned vegetables are processed by Faribault Foods, based just down the road.

I'm not a hard-core locavore; you won't see me writing a book on "how I lived for a year on food grown within 100 miles." I see great value in supporting local food production that's a good fit for our ecosystems and in strengthening our local, sustainable farming infrastructure. I believe in being thoughtful about food choices and being aware of how much fuel is expended in transporting tons of food thousands of miles around this country every day. But I also recognize that trade has always tended to improve quality of life and I don't want the local food ethos to lead to the demise of other valuable, traditional regional economies like those that produce citrus or tropical fruit, coffee, tea, olive oil, wine, or spices.

Lorentz's Meats Featured at Econofoods

I dashed through Econofoods this evening, picking up a few necessities for the week ahead, and I noticed that an entire case in the meat department is now devoted to products from Lorentz Meats, which is based in Cannon Falls. Bacon and quite a variety of sausages were on display. What a delightful surprise.

The Lorentz Meat label, above, was designed by Triangle Park Creative, which has also designed packaging for Thousand Hills Cattle grass-fed beef, Cedar Summit Farm cheese, and other local specialty food producers.

Here's an article from Ag Innovation News about Lorentz's diversification from a typical small-town meat processor to a firm with expertise in direct marketing of meat from the farmer to the consumer. They've been very involved in a direct marketing initiative called Branding Your Beliefs, presenting seminars they developed in association with Land O' Lakes, The Sustainable Farming Association of Minnesota, and The University of Minnesota. It's nice to see a small, traditional business find ways to adapt to the changing economy.

Back at Econofoods, Minnesota-grown pumpkins are featured out front, and sturdy-looking, inexpensive, reusable shopping bags -- the likes of which the store (or its predecessor, More 4) has offered before but not recently -- are on sale at the checkout lanes.

Econofoods has recently reorganized its shelving plan, with one of the main results being that organic or natural brands of many canned and packaged foods are now, for the most part, placed right next to conventional brands, where they will offer a new breadth of choice to shoppers. While there is certainly some logic to the more traditional supermarket practice of segregating natural/organic products to a specific section of the store, it has always struck me as rather a shame -- as if it were a statement that such products were not part of the mainstream, and making it too easy for the typical shopper not to see them as an everyday shopping option. I'm pleased to see Econofoods integrating them with other products in a more "natural" way.

Become a Just Food Owner-Member

Since it opened nearly three years ago, Just Food Co-op has held a special place in the hearts of Northfield-area residents who value access to locally produced food and to organic, natural and/or bulk foods and personal care and household products. It's also a great place for people who simply appreciate top-quality food, from artisanal cheeses to fine olives to the freshest produce and dairy products.

If you shop at Just Food, appreciate their presence in the community, and are not yet an owner-member, consider this a personal invitation to become one. It's a great way to help ensure the co-op's financial stability, which not only benefits you as a shopper but also supports the local farmers and other food producers who provide much of the co-op's produce and other fresh food.

It's not like the '70s and '80s, when co-op membership meant store discounts in exchange for actually working at the store a few hours a month. The way it works now is that you simply purchase shares in the co-op. In exchange -- on top of the satisfaction of supporting a store that you value -- you get case discounts, member specials, voting rights at the annual meeting, a monthly newsletter, and more. Visit www.justfood.coop and click on Membership to find out more. There is a downloadable membership application, which you can fill out and bring into the store. The application form outlines options for paying the $125 cost in a single payment or in quarterly payments over the course of a year, which makes the cost quite manageable even to those on a tight income. You may also opt to give a gift membership.

I borrowed the image at the top of this post from a website, The Northfield Food System, I stumbled upon recently that reports on three major Northfield food suppliers from the perspective, at least in part, of their support for local food producers. It appears to have been an Environmental Studies course project by St. Olaf College student Jason Hendricks. The introduction concludes:

With farm bought foods giving way to frozen foods, the average consumer cannot help but lose their sense of place in the food system. It is no longer apparent where your food was grown and what was put into it. This web page will seek to discover how Northfield has responded to the loss of its rural identity, and whether a sense of locality has been retained through its food system.

As you'll see, Just Food emerges as the hero in this particular story. If you're looking for a sense of place in the food system, Just Food is where you'll find it in Northfield (along with the farmers market, of course). I encourage you to give it your support.

It's Honey Crisp time

After our outing to Maltby today, we headed over to the Fireside Orchard & Gardens on Hwy 19 and tasted quite a few varieties of apples in the refrigerated Apple Room. The Haralsons and Honey Crisps are fantastic, as are a few others whose names escape me at the moment. In the interests of local eating, I bought a bag of premium Honey Crisps, a half-gallon of fresh cider, and a jar of seedless blackberry jam (the jam's from Lodi, Wisconsin).

The roses outside were looking lovely, and the bees were enjoying them too -- there seemed to be a bee on or in almost every blossom, like this beauty. (Click on photo for larger version.)