If you’re in the Denver area, please come out to the Local Foods Festival this Saturday, May 2, at the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield. The event runs from 9 am to 4 pm, with information from local farmers, producers and chefs, plus childrens’ activities and a local food court. SeedtoSpoon.com will also have a table, so stop by and say hello!
For more information, click on the Denver Botanic Gardens website, then go to the May calendar and click on May 2.
With a wet, late-April snow falling outside, I knew our plans of swings and sand toys would have to wait for another morning. So I did what I always do with time on my hands and little ones to amuse: I baked.
To kids, cooking is a science project, a marvelous exploration of textures and colors and smells. To parents, it’s an opportunity to turn “to-do list” time into “quality time,” as you explore the softness of flour and the scent of vanilla while making something yummy (and hopefully healthy) to eat.
A peek in the fridge revealed a half-empty carton of buttermilk, so I knew our recipe would start there. Then I flipped through cookbooks, looking for something to fit the occasion. Lemon buttermilk pound cake? Delicious, but too rich and sweet so early in the day. Buttermilk rolls? Too much like dinner and not enough fun. Buttermilk muffins? Sold.
As my daughter stirred the melted butter into the bowl of eggs, buttermilk and vanilla, we marveled at the butter. Remember how it had started out hard, like one of her blocks, and was now runny like water? Kind of like the snow outside, which could be hard like a snowball or runny if left to melt. Little lessons, to be sure, but ones that will keep her climbing up on the counter for more together time — and more opportunities to learn about the food we eat and how to make her own healthy choices.
This being a snowy day and all, I decided to sweeten things up with a cup of half-thawed organic strawberries, picked last fall at Berry Patch Farms. These were for my oldest child, who prefers fruit to chocolate chips inside her muffins, and who, I knew, would be thrilled to find our strawberry buttermilk treats on her plate for an after-school snack.
Click here for the recipe for Strawberry Buttermilk Muffins.
This recipe is adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison. Makes 18 muffins.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sliced strawberries, gently tossed with 1 tbsp flour
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line muffin tins with muffin cups. Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in a second bowl, then combine them with a few swift strokes. Using a rubber spatula, stir the batter up from the bottom of the bowl to make sure that there are not any pockets of flour. Gently stir in strawberries. Don’t beat the batter and don’t worry about a slightly uneven appearance. Spoon or scoop the batter into the tins, going nearly to the top for a nicely rounded muffin. Bake in the upper third of the oven until browned and well risen, about 25 minutes. Turn out the muffins and serve.
If you’re in the Denver area, please check out the Local Foods Festival next Saturday, May 2, at the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield. The event runs from 9 am to 4 pm, with information from local farmers, producers and chefs, plus childrens’ activities and a local food court. SeedtoSpoon.com will also have a table, so stop by and say hello!
For more information, click on the Denver Botanic Gardens website, then go to the May calendar and click on May 2.
Monday isn’t usually a leftover night in my house, but after a weekend of company and a 48-hour storm that did wonders for Colorado’s snow pack but little for my desire to run to the grocery store, my refrigerator was running on empty. On the menu: Sloppy Joes, whole wheat pasta, and frozen sweet corn from last year’s farm share. All leftovers. A little starchy. Not a good way to start the week.
So there I was, 45 minutes to go until dinner, trying to rescue our meal while working on spelling with one child and negotiating a spat over a ball with the other two. I opened the fridge one more time, more as a stall tactic than as an honest attempt to find a fresh addition.
Then I saw them. Artichokes. Two enormous green globes. I was so happy I could have put on a clown face and juggled.
Artichokes are in season…in California. Out in the Golden State they are at their peak from March to May, according to the California Artichoke Advisory Board. Here, they won’t be in until September, according to the crop calendar put out by the Boulder County Farmers Market. This is why my blog says “Dispatches from a (progressively more) local kitchen.” If I ran an exclusively local kitchen, my family would have spent this past winter eating lots of storage onions and pinto beans.
But back to the story. It’s now dinnertime and my kids are happily sucking on artichoke leaves, thrilled to be eating with their fingers under Mommy’s watch. Suddenly my two-year-old announces she doesn’t want to eat anything on her plate except the artichoke, to which my rule-enforcing four-year-old replies: “But then you don’t get dessert. Oh, these artichokes ARE dessert.”
In reality, we had yellow cake. But isn’t that the tension of trying to eat locally and seasonally? I say no to so many things my kids see at the grocery store (not those grapes because they’re from Chile, not those strawberries because they’re not organic). How can I resist these seasonal but not local artichokes? Especially now that I know how highly esteemed this thistly green vegetable really is.
The beauty of this dish is that it’s more of a technique than a recipe. In place of precise amounts, I have listed steps so you can tailor it to fit the number of people you are cooking for and how you want it to be (i.e., lots of sausage on a small bed of noodles vs. mostly noodles with green flecks, etc.). Turnip greens are hard to find, but if you can get your hands on them, go ahead and use them here. Their peppery bite is a great accent to the other flavors.
1) Boil salted water and add whole wheat pasta, cooking according to package directions.
2) While the water is boiling, pan fry one or two Italian sausages (or use leftovers from last night’s dinner on the grill), then remove them from the pan and cut into slices.
3) Clean several large handfuls of turnip greens and chop coarsely (remember that greens cook down greatly in size). If you have baby turnips attached, cut them off and save them to eat as snacks, in salads, or however you would eat a radish.
4) Add one or two cloves of minced garlic to the same saute pan you fried the sausage in, and a swirl of olive oil, if necessary. Cook over medium heat about 30 seconds to a minute, then add in the turnip greens, partially cover, and cook for a few minutes. If the pan seems dry, sprinkle in some water with your fingertips so there’s enough moisture to cook the greens.
5) Drain the pasta when it’s done, then add it to the saute pan along with the sliced sausages. Toss everything together and season with parmesan, kosher salt and pepper.
Not even the brisk morning air could dampen my excitement as I headed to Boulder for my first farmers’ market of the year. Walking the aisle, I felt as if I were welcoming a dear friend who had been out of the country. “How good to see you,” I felt like saying. “We are all so glad you are back.”
Others felt it, too. Around me, customers greeted favorite farmers, full of questions about how their winter had been, how the wife was, what was new for this season. Talk about a difference from summer when corn and peaches take center stage and crowds grow so thick you have to elbow your way to the front to pay. But on this day, under a damp, iron sky, we weren’t just at a farmers market, we were at a reunion, and people had time to talk.
Still, it was chilly, and since my two-year-old had refused to wear her coat, I finally accepted the fact that I had to stop chatting and start shopping. Not that I minded. After five months of storage crops and root vegetables, the abundance of so many tender greens was a welcome sight.
Beet greens! Turnip greens! Mizuna! Rainbow chard! All called out for my attention, asking me to take them home. I ended up with turnip greens from Jay Hill Farm, with plump jewels of baby turnips dangling from the bright green leaves; my son chose carrots, greens still attached; and my daughter picked … a cinnamon roll. Not as healthy, but still local and yummy. She obviously felt an affection for the greens, though, because she fussed until we let her hold the bag and then chanted happily the whole drive home, “To Market, to Market,” (as in Mother Goose’s “To market, to market, to buy a fat pig, home again, home again, jiggity jig”).
Turnip greens are tender and, like beet greens, highly perishable, so I cooked them up straight away for a hearty lunch. Just what we all needed after a chilly morning with an old friend.
Coming later this week, the recipe for Garlicky Pasta with Sausage and Turnip Greens.
When I was in high school my parents started eating the way many people do now, which is to say, more vegetables than meat, and sometimes no meat at all. What we didn’t know at the time was that as we swapped sloppy joes for brown rice, we needed to be mindful of what else was on our dinner plates.
Alone, vegetables or grains do not constitute complete proteins in the way that meat and eggs do. But they can when eaten together.
One of my favorite veggie protein combinations is black beans and corn. When the weather is warmer, I’ll take a corn-and-black bean salad any day, but in cooler weather I love black bean soup with a side of corn. Normally I buy Cascadian Farm, but this time I remembered I had a bag of frozen organic corn (steamed and sliced off the cob, then frozen in a Ziploc) left from my farm share last summer.
Having been part of a CSA for a year now, I know about the wow! factor in farm-fresh foods. But really, how much difference could there be in frozen corn? Turns out, quite a bit. Let’s just say it was so good, you’d never have known it came off the cob eight months ago. Local sweet corn won’t be around for a few more months, but when it does come in, remember to buy extra ears and freeze it. Next winter, you will be so glad you did.
PS As consolation until the corn arrives, try this delicious recipe for black bean soup from Bon Appetit, and don’t forget to eat it with cornbread, corn tortillas or frozen corn to round out those amino acids.
Click here for the recipe for Quick Black Bean Soup from Bon Appetit, June 1999.
This story is part of an ongoing series to introduce our community to the local farmers growing food for farmers’ markets and CSAs. For more profiles, click on the Personalities category at right.
As more people look to eat local and decrease their carbon footprint, interest in farm shares has skyrocketed. “Now so many people know about CSAs, I don’t have to explain so much,” says Jacquie Monroe, co-owner of Monroe Organic Farms. But things were different in 1993, when she and her husband launched their CSA. Back then, she first had to start with the reasons for eating organic before moving on to the how’s and why’s of a CSA.
Over the years, her farm share has expanded according to members’ interest. About a decade ago Monroe added eggs; fruit was added about five years ago, in partnership with another grower; pork was added last year and lamb will be added this season. Vegetables come and go, too, such as daikon radishes, edamame and white carrots, which were added in recent years based on customer feedback.
Monroe is a family operation, with husband Jerry running the fields; Jacquie handling bookkeeping and marketing; and their grown children Alaina and Kyle helping out from time to time. Son Kyle intends to take over the business one day; for now, you can usually find him “running around on the four-wheeler,” she laughs.
There’s more to organic farming than just avoiding pesticides. Take crop rotation, for example. Jacquie says that cucumbers do well after strawberries, and garlic does well after the cucumbers. After four different crops have been grown in one area, a crop for animals is planted in that space and the vegetables are moved to a piece of land that hasn’t had crops in it for awhile. “If you move the garden to a different area,” she says, “you stump diseases and bugs.”
This season, members can expect approximately 100 varieties of 30 or so kinds of vegetables, including six types of tomatoes and 4 types of hot peppers, all grown on the 175-acre farm in Kersey, which has been in the family since 1936. Week by week, that translates to an enormous bag of produce, but Jacquie encourages members to think beyond weekly consumption. “Our goal is to tell people how to freeze it as they go. That extends their food dollar into the winter.”
