Good Conversation about Local Groceries

Hop on over to Locally Grown to follow an interesting conversation comparing shopper's experiences at Just Food Coop vs. Econofoods vs. Cub.
http://locallygrownnorthfield.org/archives/717/

First Frost

Yesterday my desktop weather icon started flashing red to indicate a weather alert: a frost warning had been issued for a large swath of Minnesota. My backyard container garden of tomatoes and cucumbers has been looking wan and played-out lately anyway, but I've still been picking smallish fruit now and then and have hopes for a small continued harvest for another few weeks. So, along with many others last night. I hauled out sheets to cover the tender plants. This morning, though I couldn't see any signs of frost myself, my daughter on the phone from her dad's house (bubbling over with excitement at the thought of her first rehearsal with the Minnesota Youth Symphonies this morning in St. Paul) said there was a coating of frost on their grass that looked like a light snowfall.

Over my morning mug of tea, I finished the book Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally, by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, who spent a year eating food almost entirely from within a 100-mile radius of their British Columbia home. That put me in the mood for the farmers market. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and my mood soared as I put on a sweater and light jacket and wondered vaguely where my gloves might be. I know people who sadden at the onset of fall because it is the first harbinger of winter, but I come alive with the cooler air. Fall is my favorite season. As I drove to the ATM to get money for the market, the First National Bank thermometer read 35 and I sang aloud to "Tiny Dancer" on the radio.

At the farmers market, it was clear that fall had arrived. I haven't been there for a couple of weeks or more. The winter squashes -- both edible and ornamental -- were everywhere. Late, partially green tomatoes and green peppers had clearly been picked in quantity yesterday to escape the ruining frost. I overheard Gary Vosejpka of Thorn Crest Farm saying he'd covered 1000 feet of young beans with tarps, looking ahead to more warm weather and hoping yet to bring those beans to harvest. That's a lot of tarps, and a lot of work.

For my $16 spent today, I came away with several large potatoes, a container of good-sized carrots and a big bunch of much smaller ones with greens attached, a loaf of freshly baked basil-and-garlic bread, a bunch of leeks, a large butternut squash, a large pattypan type squash, and a bag of tender-looking green beans. I've already trimmed and scrubbed the little carrots; they and some potatoes and leeks will go into a fish stew for dinner. Ah, the pleasure of being in the kitchen again after avoiding baking and long-simmering preparations for the past several months. Welcome, fall.

Harvest Festival this Saturday 12-4

Just Food Coop is holding a Harvest Festival, open to all, this Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. Their notice about the event announces:

Attendees can enjoy the live music of Bill McGrath & Ed Frost, Ozark Asher & Ann, Multe, and the Artech African Drummers. Tasty and free local food samples will be available, including Thousand Hills beef, Lofton Ridge bison, Brick Oven bread, Pastureland cheese and butter, Angie's Kettle Corn, Open Hands Farm soup, and more. Plus, visit with other local farmers whose products you can find at Just Food.

Other activities not to be missed include henna tattooing by the Northfield Union of Youth, a composting information table, the chance to reserve your plot in the Northfield Community Gardens for next year, and a kid's table where kids of all ages can get crafty!

I plan to be there!

Having Fun with Library Thing

Thanks to a link from Rob Hardy's excellent blog, Rough Draft, I've discovered Library Thing. It's a highly addictive web-based service that lets you quickly select and enter books that you own, often in the exact edition you own, and often with cover art. From there you can rate, tag and review your books, find others who share your literary tastes, and create fun blog widgets (see my sidebar, near the bottom of the page, which generates a random list of four books at a time from my library).
I've been startled to discover just how many editions there are of many books -- sometimes dozens. Sometimes I've been able to find mine and sometimes not; you can upload your own cover image and I've done that in a few cases. The default search engines are Amazon and the Library of Congress, but you can access many others, like university libraries, for specialized titles.

Many of my books are in boxes these days, and I'm not going to begin to try to list all the paperback mysteries I own. The books I've entered so far are among my favorites, which is why they are out and accessible, and also why I've rated almost all of them highly.

It occurs to me that I've been building up to this blog for a long time in how I've organized my books. For the past six years, at least, I've had a special bookcase that holds all my books on gardening, cooking, birds, other nature guides, and most of my memoirs (I particularly collect travel and gardening memoir). I've slowly realized that that is the place of honor for any new book of mine.

Anyway, many of those favorite books, and quite a few more, are now in my catalog at Library Thing.

My Excellent Breakfast

My mostly local breakfast today is still making me smile. Here it is in cookbook format:

• 2 local red potatoes, finely diced
• 1/3 of a largish local zucchini, coarsely shredded with grater
• a handful of organic baby spinach leaves, coarsely chopped
• a couple of basil leaves and a few puny threads of green onion (picked from my overplanted, under-watered windowsill herb pots), chopped
• 5 eggs (in this case Litchfield, MN-based Sparboe Farms cage free brown plus Omega 3 eggs), beaten
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat a couple of tablespoons of canola or olive oil in large nonstick skillet. Fry potatoes, stirring frequently, until lightly browning and almost fork-tender. Add shredded zucchini; sauté until it has lost most of its excess moisture and is starting to brown. Add spinach and herbs. Sauté until spinach is bright green and mixture smells fragrant. Season eggs with a little salt and pepper to your liking and add to pan; stir until eggs are just set.

Serve with any condiments of choice and thick, toasted and buttered slices of Naturally Northfield multigrain sourdough from the Brick Oven bakery. Yummers.

Makes 2 ample servings.