GEFA blog

Meet Your Good Earth Food Alliance Farmer - Lyndon Hartz

The second in a series of questions and answers highlighting

the GEFA growers and producers.

Lyndon Hartz was raised in a family where they always had a large garden and everyone helped out - and Lyndon's parents and grandfather are still helping out.  After graduating from Western Illinois University in 2004, Lyndon planted vegetables and fruits on 2 acres of his grandfather's land.  His production has since grown to 10 1/2 of his own acres which include the winter production of greens in his hoophouses and perennial plants.  Says Lyndon

• In a few days we'll be sending you a survey and asking for feedback about the CSA.  We want to know what is working well for you and what isn't so we can better plan for next year.
• Linda Prescott is putting together some salsa and sauce kits.  Look for those to be uploaded to our webstore Thursday.
• Basil's Harvest will be offering lamb cuts another week.  Don't miss out.  Once they're gone, they're gone!

First it was the chocolate zucchini bread.  My 8-year old daughter had made the mistake of telling the kids at the lunch table that she was eating something with a vegetable in it. Then it was the catastrophic strips of green pepper discovered only days later.  Before long, she was begging me not to put any vegetables in her lunch box and would only allow a short list of fruits.  It wasn't that she didn't like eating them.  It was that the other kids didn't like her eating them.

It seems that kids and vegetables part ways when school starts up each fall.  School lunch programs offer the obligatory vegetable and fruit (in my day, ketchup was considered the vegetable!) but Mom isn't standing there to make sure it goes down.  The busy-ness of the school schedule and the parent's work schedule often set the stage for meals of convenience in the evening.  I wonder how many meals consumed by busy families each week actually contain the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables?

I don't remember as far back as elementary school, but I do remember vegetables being served at the dining hall in college.  Broccoli, in particular, was the color of faded army-green pants and it flopped over double when the food service employee picked it up with tongs and placed it on my plate.  It usually landed in a clump.  It's no surprise, then, that my love affair with vegetables didn't start until many years after college.  In fact, it didn't start until I began to plant seeds in my backyard, tend to my own plants, harvest the fruits crisp and juicy, and quickly devour them.  Fresh vegetables, especially those just picked, are the means of change for those who loathe anything green.

The Illinois State Board of Education came up with a great idea.  Through their Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, elementary schools can receive funds to purchase FRESH fruits and vegetables that are offered at times other than meal times.  So, when the kids come in from recess in the morning, they can grab an apple or a pear to eat.  As they line up for music class in the afternoon, they can snack on some carrots.  Some of us are hopeful that kids will eventually try some lesser known veggie snacks like edamame and grape tomatoes.  What's the next step after that?  Teach the kids to grow their own!

My daughter started at the community college this week and guess what she packed for a snack?  Fresh sweet pepper strips from the garden!  Some things never change - thank goodness.



to Good Earth Food Alliance CSA Members:

• arugula, edamame, tomatillos - lots of new foods this week means lots of new recipes.  Check out what's been recently added to the recipe page.
• Basil's Harvest will be selling cuts of lamb this week.  Because the packages are of varying weights, the invoices will only be approximations of the actual cost.  So, hold off on writing out your check until you pick up your order on Tuesday, September 1st.  The Place An Order webpage will be open again Thursday evening for business.

Meet Your Good Earth Food Alliance Farmer - Kate Potter

The first in a series of questions and answers highlighting

the GEFA growers and producers.

Kate Potter of Cramer, IL grows laying hens and goats on her farmette. She and her son moved back to central IL a year ago after many years on the East Coast, where she studied German literature, worked as a natural foods chef, was a secretary in the Empire State Building and a caretaker of a colonial mansion, all the while learning about grass farming. Kate lets her broody hens hatch their own chicks, but there are plenty of extra eggs from her bug-eating, no-soy-consuming, pasture-roaming mixed flock of old-fashioned breeds for the Good Earth Food Alliance CSA.  Kate's other passions include traditional foods and dairying.

1.  How did you choose the name Kate’s Cottage Farm?   I love the phrase “cottage industry”, the idea of people living and working at home, intensively caring for a little piece of land that feeds both family and customers. I wanted people to know it’s a small farm with a lot of diversity.  I also do live in a very little house.  And I’m a hopeless anglophile; someday my cottage will be rose-covered! 

 2.  Where is your business located?  In Cramer, a tiny place between Trivoli and Farmington in Peoria County.

3.  How long has Kate’s Cottage Farm been in business?  One year.

4.  What products do you grow?   Eggs, chickens, goats, cows, raw milk, onions, potatoes, kale, beans, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, corn, peas…

5.  Do you have a signature product?  Mostly I sell eggs to the Good Earth Food Alliance.  I love my chickens, but my passion is dairying.  Right now I milk one jersey cow and make lots and lots of butter as well as every other dairy product you can imagine.   I also milk goats and make chevre.  Some day the dairy here will be a commercial enterprise.

7.  What do you enjoy most about running Kate’s Cottage Farm? Well, it’s thrilling to be making some money at farming!  And I like doing a lot of different things every day.  I love animal husbandry. My farm is grass-based, meaning my goats, my dairy cow, the steers I raise with my dad, eat only grass, no grain.  So I have to think a lot about our pastures, how much forage is available, how long the grass needs to rest before I put stock on it again; that’s mentally challenging and really fun for me. I get an immense amount of satisfaction when I sit down to a great dinner and realize that every single thing on the table, from the milk to the meat to the vegetables - everything except the salt - was grown right here. 

8.  What do you find most challenging about your work?  Just the amount of work there is.  It’s truly never-ending, and it’s hard to stop thinking about it.  If I’m playing with my son, I’ve always got one ear cocked for the sound of a chick in distress; if a storm blows up in the middle of the night, I awake and go down the list of who might be in danger:  Are the goats in?  Will the cow be struck by lightning? Are the broilers in their pasture pen sleeping under the roof of their pen, or are they getting rained on?

9.  What is your philosophy/perspective on farming, agriculture, and sustainability  Well, I think sustainable agriculture is the future.  We just can’t keep going with the big industrial farms, and I think they are on their way out.   I actually think the future of the human race depends on small farms.  We have to take care of our soil; that’s what sustains us.  Farms that depend on a lot of inputs and can’t produce their own fertility can’t make it in the long run.  Small and local is where it’s at. 

10.  Is there anything else you'd like others to know about Kate’s Cottage Farm? Just a recent joy I’d like to share:  my 3-year-old son is getting into milking.  Because I’m a single mom, he’d go out with me to the goat barn, of necessity, when he was only two months old.  For a couple of years I think he’s resented the attention I have to pay to the animals.  But now he wants to milk with me!  Sometimes he sits on a bucket in the corner of the cow shed and talks about whatever (there’s a great spider web on the gate that we observe and discuss every day), but more often than not lately he’ll stand between my knees and milk one teat, while I milk another.  That’s bliss for me.

to Good Earth Food Alliance CSA members:

• for those of you wondering how to use those fresh aronia berries - try adding them in small amounts to existing recipes. Freeze them and add a tablespoon of berries and a few drops of lemon juice to your next fruit smoothie.  Add a cupful of berries and a few tablespoons of lemon juice to your next berry cobbler.  Add 1/4 cup to your next loaf of sweet bread.  The aronias are naturally tanic so adding lemon juice will help to counteract this.  Try them in pancakes, muffins, or as additions to your grape jelly and let us know how it goes.
• Linda passed along two recipes for lemon balm.  Try some new lemon-y beverages!
  

Eating Organic Produce is About More Than Just Nutrition

By Anne Patterson, Director of Good Earth Food Alliance

Owner of Living Earth Farm, Farmington, Illinois

(Following this article is another about the herb, lovage, and its many uses as well as a recipe for lovage soup.  Finally, we list some new Basil's Harvest products and a link to an article featuring Good Earth Food Alliance grower, Lyndon Hartz.)

There has been a lot of buzz in the media with regards to a recent published scientific paper titled, "Nutritional quality of organic foods: a systematic review," written by a team led by Alan Dangour, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, funded by the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency (FSA).   The study was published in the September issue of the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition."   I couldn’t help but notice how most of the headlines I heard and read touted the findings of this review as though they were the last definitive study on the question of nutritional quality of foods.

The FSA London based paper downplayed positive findings of organic food even though, in several instances, their analysis showed organic foods to be more nutrient dense than conventional foods.  However, it lacked quality controls like those contained in a competing study released in March, 2008, by The Organic Center.  One of the main differences was the FSA-funded team used data from very old studies – going back over a 50 year-period.  Most of the older studies used plant varieties no longer in use and did not measure or report total phenolics or antioxidant capacity, nutrient classes which are very important for human health.  These nutrients were just being discovered at that time. In addition, the older studies used analytical methods that are now considered inferior compared to modern methods. 

New studies support greater nutrient density in organic plant-based foods.   Since February, 2008, the cut-off date for the London study, some 15 new studies have been published, most of which use superior design and analytical methods.  These studies indicate that Vitamin C, total phenolics, and total antioxidant capacity are typically higher in organically grown foods.

 The Organic Center review focused on nutrient differences in "matched pairs" of crops grown on nearby farms, on the same type of soil, with the same irrigation systems and harvest timing, and grown from the same plant variety. It also rigorously screened studies for the quality of the analytical methods used to measure nutrient levels, and eliminated from further consideration a much greater percentage of the published literature than the FSA team.

As more research studies are published we hope to learn more about the nutrient quality of organic fruits and vegetables. In the meantime, there are so many other reasons to be eating fruits and vegetables grown using organic systems.

Why support conventionally grown fruits and vegetables knowing the U.S. Department of Agriculture has found them to contain on average more than three to four times more pesticide residues than organic produce? The chemical cocktail of multiple pesticide residues increases to eight to eleven times more than corresponding residues in organic samples. Do our taxes need to continue to subsidize non-organic U.S. farming practices which release more than one billion pounds of pesticides into the environment each year?

Lovage – A Little Goes a Long Way

Anne Patterson, Farmer and Lover of Food

It is always good to have a change in our personal culinary world. Who says we have to spend time sitting on the couch watching others have fun with food on the television food shows when we have something like lovage coming into our kitchen?  Although I wasn’t surprised many CSA members asked about what do with lovage, I was surprised no one asked about its name.

This herb has been grown since antiquity. It has been used for just about anything from medicinal to culinary.  It was once used to lighten freckles and it was often used to relieve indigestion, sore throats and rheumatism.  During the Middle Ages lovage was also called “love parsley” for its reputed aphrodisiac qualities. At inns lovage leaves were laid in the shoes of weary travelers to provide rejuvenation for tired feet.  Inns also served a popular cordial made from lovage leaves.  During this time the emperor Charlemagne so revered the plant that he issued a decree that it be grown in all his gardens.  Appalachian people used lovage as a tobacco substitute. 

Because it has a relatively strong flavor, use a little caution when adding lovage to any dish. Remember, you can always add more herbs to a dish but it is nearly impossible to remove them. Use chopped leaves in stews, salads, soups, rice or potatoes.   

Try doing what I did the other night. Chop two lovage leaves and cook with some diced fresh vegetables, along with a little water and white wine for 7 minutes. Place a lovage leaf on the top of a fish fillet (Jim usually brings home a few fresh bass from our lake) set the fillet on top of the lightly sautéed vegetables, cover with buttered aluminum foil and pop into a 375 oven for 8 minutes.  You have a  meal in less than 20 minutes, well, not counting the fishing time.

Here is an easy soup recipe.

 Lovage Soup

• 1oz. butter
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped
• 4T lovage leaves, finely chopped
• 3T all-purpose flour
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup milk
• salt and white pepper to taste

Melt butter in a saucepan and gently sauté the onions for 5 minutes or until tender. Add the lovage; whisk in the flour and cook at medium heat for one minute, stirring constantly.

Gradually whisk in the broth, cover and simmer gently for 15 minutes. Add the milk, salt and pepper. Bring to a gentle simmer. Do not boil the soup or it will curdle.

Good Earth Food Alliance CSA Members:

• Granola has arrived!  Basil's Harvest is offering two varieties of granola using local honey.  Erin's 100% Whole Grain Hearth Bread was a hit last week and she has decided to offer it again this week.  A wonderful complement to her White Bean and Italian Kale Soup.
• Good Earth Food Alliance grower, Lyndon Hartz, was featured on Mother Nature Network's "40 Farmers Under 40" recently.  Read about it by following the link here.
  

I spent the afternoon and evening at the Knox County Fair.  I didn't go there to ride the ferris wheel (I'm too old), or to eat funnel cakes (they're too greasy), or to listen to the band (it's too noisy).  A small but significant group of people in Knox County believe more folks need to understand the importance of developing a local food system.  We were at the fair today promoting the concept of buying locally-grown fresh produce and supporting local processors of food products.

Passers-by got a chance to win a prize by spinning a number wheel and answering the food fact question associated with the number at which the wheel stopped.  The answers were surprising, even to a foodie like me, and I wondered how many of our Good Earth Food Alliance mailing list members might get them correct.  Give it a try:

1.  True or False.  The nutritional value of freshly picked produce increases with time after harvest.
2.  The number of states growing strawberries for Illinois markets (A-2, B-5, C-7, D-9)
3.  The number of miles most broccoli travels before reaching an Illinois plate (A-50, B-100, C- 1000, D- 2000)
4.  Where does 1/3 of all asparagus sold in Illinois comes from? (A- Arkansas, B- Mexico, C- Canada, D- China)
5.  How many US states produce grapes for retail markets? (A-1, B-4, C-5, D-12)
6.  For a typical Illinois meal, from how many countries to the ingredients come? (A-2, B-3, C-4, D-5)
7.  The percentage of Illinois' agricultural food products sold directly for human consumption (A-50%, B- 25%, C-10%, D-0.2%)

• What I've been waiting for:  whole grain bread from Basil's Harvest.  Erin's got a fabulous white bean soup to offer too.  Click on "more info" to see some ingredients grown and produced by GEFA members.
• there's a lot of vegetables coming your way in August.  Let us know how we can help you use or preserve them.  You won't be the first to ask, "What is this......?"

Participating in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is one of the best ways to support local farmers, to minimize your carbon foodprint, and to live a healthful lifestyle.  But, about the time when July starts to run into August, one begins to wonder what to do with all those vegetables.  Stretch your food dollars and lengthen the garden-fresh-eating season by freezing excess produce. 

When faced with an overwhelming amount of any vegetable, I always ask myself, "Can I freeze it?"  Pulling out a frozen bag of garden green onions or sugar snap peas in the middle of winter turns any old meal into one fit for company.  Many of the vegetables coming from central Illinois gardens right now can be frozen so if you find it's a struggle to get through all the vegetables before the next pick up day, help is here.  Let's go through the list of vegetables for Good Earth Food Alliance CSA members this week and see what we can do with them.

• Beets - leave on tails and 1/2 inch of stem so their juice won't bleed out while boiling.  Boil until tender, about 45 minutes, cool quickly, slip off skins, cut into slices or cubes and freeze.
• Green beans - cut in 1- or 2- inch pieces, blanch in boiling water for 3 minutes, cool immediately, drain well, and freeze.
• Sweet corn - blanch in boiling water 4 minutes, cool ears immediately, drain, cut from cob about 2/3 the depth of the kernels and freeze.
• Summer squash - can be cut into slices, blanched for 3 minutes and frozen.  However, zucchini is best shredded and frozen for use in baking.
• onions/leeks/green onions - chop and freeze in small quantities for additions to winter soups
• potatoes - do not freeze well but will keep for quite some time in the refrigerator or in the pantry.
• kale/swiss chard/beet greens - trim away tough stems, cut large leaves in pieces, wash, blanch in boiling water for 2 minutes, cool immediately, drain and freeze.
• sweet peppers - no blanching necessary, just chop and freeze.
• basil - make into pesto and freeze in small quantities.
• tomatoes - can be frozen whole but will take up a lot of freezer space.  I recommend stewing them by peeling and quartering them into a pot, cook gently in their own juice until tender - 10 - 20 minutes, set the pot in cold water to cool the contents and freeze.
• cucumber - eat fresh and enjoy.
  
• red onions - slice into the cucumber, top with your favorite dressing and dig in.
• cantaloupe - check out our recipe for Cantaloupe Soup and try something new today.
• parsley - dry this by hanging, crush and put in an empty spice jar.

• Basil's Harvest has some Pesto to offer this week as well as a Ham and Potato Gratin.
• Lamb cuts will be available soon as ala carte
• Petal Song Apiairies Honey is still available as are farm fresh eggs.

Bee Happy!

By Good Earth Food Alliance grower and producer, Linda Prescott

The bees have been very busy collecting nectar between rain showers and we finally are going to have a chance to reap the benefits.  This early summer honey was collected from blossoms in the orchards, from spring wildflowers, from the blossoms of black locust trees and other flowering trees and of course lots of clover.   It is a light colored honey and the favorite of many people. 

Honey is primarily composed of fructose, glucose and water.  It also contains other sugars as well as trace enzymes, minerals, vitamins and amino acids.  Bees may travel as far as 55,000 miles and visit more than two million flowers to gather any nectar to make just one pound of honey! 

Tips for baking with honey

• Use pure honey for up to half the granulated sugar in a recipe
• Reduce oven temperature by 25 degrees to prevent over-browning

For each cup of honey used:

• Reduce any liquid called for by ¼ cup
• Add ½ teaspoon baking soda

Because of its high fructose content, honey has a higher sweetening power than sugar.  This means you can use less honey than sugar to achieve the desired sweetness.

Store honey at room temperature.  Honey should not be given to children under one; everyone else enjoy!

To Good Earth Food Alliance CSA members:

• Linda's honey will be available as ala carte this week.
• Erin Meyer of Basil's Harvest shares some dishes she cooked up with the GEFA vegetables this week.  Read on to find out about her Garden Meal!
  

From Erin:

As the GEFA group finished cleaning up and putting everything away from Tuesday’s pick-up, I was trying to determine what to prepare for dinner when I got home.  My husband was in a meeting, but promised to be home by 7:00 so we could eat together.  The produce that  I brought home  included, tomatoes, garlic, golden beets, corn, squash, and onions; along with a couple extra loaves of Foccacia bread.  What to do?

I came up with two dishes to share.

Zucchini, Corn, & Beets dressed with Balsamic

Sweet onion                             ½ cup

Garlic, minced                          2 cloves

Zucchini, med. Dice                  1 medium

Corn, Fresh                              4 small ears

Cracked red pepper                 pinch

Salt                                          tt

Pepper                                     tt

Basil, cut into thin strips 1 T.

Parmesan cheese, shredded      ¼ c.

Balsamic Vinegar                      2 tsp.

1. Heat pan with oil.  Add onion and sauté until soft, 3 to 5 minutes.  Add squash, garlic, cracked red pepper, salt, and pepper.  Cook until soft 5 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, shuck and clean corn.  Cut off of the cob.  Add to veg. mixture to cook through.
3. Turn off heat, add basil and parmesan.  Adjust seasonings.

Preparing the beets:

Beets                                        3 bunches

Water                                       enough to cover beets

Basil, cut into thin strips 1 T.

Parmesan cheese, shreeded      2 T.

Salt                                          tt

Pepper                                     tt

1. Cut beet stems, leaving 1.5 inches.  Save greens for later use.
2. Wash beets, place in pot and cover with water
3. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cook until tender.  Approx. 10 minutes.
4. Test with fork to make sure beets are tender
5. Drain water, peel skin off of beets.
6. Cut into wedges

Place zucchini mixture on plate, place beets on top and around.  Sprinkle with basil and parmesan.  Drizzle balsamic over beets.  Enjoy

Garden Frittata

Turn broiler to high
Eggs                                                                 6

Onion, small dice                                              1/4c.

Garlic, minced                                                  2 cloves

Beet greens, thin strips                          ½ cup

Tomato, chopped                                           1

Basil, minced                                                    1 T.

Parmesan Cheese, shredded                             ¼ cup  

Oil                                                                    1 T.

1. Saute onion and garlic in oil until soft.  Add beet greens, let cook 3 to 5 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, whisk eggs, basil, salt, pepper, and cheese together.
3. Add tomato to vegetable mix.
4. Pour eggs into pan with vegetables.  Let bottom set.  Place into broiler on high heat.  Eggs will brown slightly.
5. Remove and plate
6. The eggs will be slightly runny.  This is great place to use toasted bread to mop up your plate

A few years ago I was introduced to ORAC, oxygen radical absorbance capacity, otherwise known as the antioxidant capacity of foods.  Although no scientific study appears to be completely definitive on this subject, many studies have identified foods with a high ORAC value.  In 2007, scientists with the United States Department of Agriculture published an updated list of ORAC values for 277 foods commonly consumed by the U.S. population (fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, spices, grains, etc.).  One website I found suggested that these ORAC values appear on nutrition labels.  Although understanding antioxidant capacity provides more insight into how food choice is related to the aging process, most of us just need to know that foods with a deeper or varied color often have more antioxidant strength and thus a higher ORAC.  For me, that means eat a lot of berries!

June and July are the best months of the year for stocking up on berries.  Right now, blueberries, one of the highest ORAC values for local berries, are at peak production in central Illinois and are ready for picking.  My husband and I visited a blueberry U-Pick on Saturday and were able to fill the freezer with enough blueberries for the year.  Wild black raspberries can be found along the roadsides or on the edges of wooded areas.  Be sure to wear long sleeves and pants when you tackle these thorny gems.  On our land, wild gooseberries grow right next to the wild black raspberries so we pick them both into one bucket.  A hint about gooseberries:  most people think a gooseberry should be green but, if you leave them on the bush a little longer, they turn purple and taste much sweeter.  In the garden, we've got some red raspberries ripening up right now.  The recent rain and a little more warm weather will bring them on full force.  Within a week or two, the blackberries should be ready for picking.  These also grow wild along roadsides.  They differ from the wild black raspberries in that they are larger and the core remains with the berry when it is picked. 

Cultivated and wild berry picking time only comes once a year so don't miss out and, as always, make sure you've received permission from the land owner to pick any wild berries you may find.

On the Good Earth Food Alliance website:

• a new recipe for Beets with Toasted Walnuts from Erin Meyer.

Fabulous Featured Foods from the Field

By Anne Patterson, Good Earth Food Alliance farmer, director & registered dietitian

“I learned….that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner off a dish of purslane (portulaca oleraces) which I gathered in my corn field,” Henry David Thoreau in Walden (1854) “yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.” 

It’s hard to imagine what Thoreau would think of a present day purslane dish on a fine dining menu fetching fifteen dollars. Purslane has too often been considered nothing more than a weed in one’s garden, cast aside with little thought. It is been reintroduced into the American culinary world.  The purslane some of you received this week was harvested from Kate Potter’s market garden. It is wild purslane, not cultivated purslane.  I enjoy the crisp and succulent mild flavor.  Some think it has a more peppery tart flavor; however, I have not picked up on that in the crop picked yesterday.

Purslane was harvested by Ancestral Puebloans and was considered one of their most important wild plant foods. It has a culinary history worldwide in places like India – thought to be its birthplace - Africa, Australia, China, Europe, and Central America.  Although others have continued to use purslane over the centuries, we may need an introduction.

The plump stems are edible as are the fleshy leaves. There is minimal to no waste in this food crop.

STORAGE AND PREPARATION: Spread in a basket and refrigerate. It will last for a week. Be sure and cut off any roots, if any. Snip branchlets from the heavy main stems. Rinse gently, pat dry and cut into bite size springs for use in raw preparations. 

Be sure and try out the purslane recipes posted on the web site. It is especially good with a crisp cucumber (these are coming on at Lawrence Meyer’s farm), diced bell pepper and a little sweet onion. We are hoping Lyndon’s beets are coming along in the field because the crisp purslane pairs well with sweet-earthy beets roasted, cooled, peeled and quartered. Why not try an early Sunday morning purslane frittata? Gently cook a couple of chopped green onions in butter. Add chopped purslane sprigs and toss to barely wilt. Add beaten eggs and bake in oven until not quite set.

Anise Hyssop, A Little Known Herb

This is not a common herb grown in gardens; however, it is one of my favorites. It is one of the best herbs for the teapot and honey bees love it. It is often called licorice-mint for its distinctively licorice flavor and scent. Rinse and throw a handful of leaves into a teapot of hot water, steep for 10 minutes and enjoy.

The following recipe is from the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Fluffy Anise Hyssop Marscapone Frosting for 4^th of July White Cake

• 1 pound Mascarpone cheese
• Anise Hyssop infusion/syrup (recipe below)
• Slowly stream in 1 cup of Anise Hyssop infusion/syrup until smooth and fluffy (like whipped cream).

Beat mascarpone until smooth.

Anise Hyssop Simple Syrup

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 10 fresh sprigs organic anise hyssop, leaves and flowers removed (this should be about 2 cups loose stack of a mix of young and mature leaves and purple flower clusters)

To make anise hyssop infusion/syrup bring water and sugar to a boil and add anise hyssop leaves and flowers. Stir to coat. Remove from heat and let cool stirring occasionally. Strain out leaves and squeeze to get all remaining liquid out. Makes about 1-1/3 cups.

Save the candied pulp and gently tease the leaves and flowers apart. Spread on a cookie pan lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle with granulated sugar. Air-dry for several days or in a convection oven set at lowest temperature (130 degrees) until crispy dry.

Chop the dried candied anise hyssop leaves in an electric food chopper until they resemble medium ground pepper. These have a lot of flavor and can be used to decorate the frosted cake or for other recipes.

Any leftover syrup can be refrigerated for up to 3 months. It’s really good as a flavored sweetener for hot or cold drinks.  

FROM THE FIELDS

For most of us the past ten days have been an opportunity to do some heavy duty weeding split by another heavy rain for some of us. All the rains and inability to get into planting beds and fields provided more opportunity for weeds to grow like crazy last week when it turned so warm. This means every thing from tractors and field cultivators, wheel hoes, hand hoes and just about anything to rid weeds from choking out crops is being used round the clock. You saw the first signs of summer crops yesterday with limited cucumbers, zucchini, and a very few of our first tomatoes. If ever there was a season for one to be patient and work with Mother Nature it is this one.

On the Good Earth Food Alliance website:

• Recipes for Garlicky Greens and Purslane and Parsley Salad.

• Smooth Carrot Soup With Ginger from Basil's Harvest, "This soup is beautiful served cold or warm.  Add a dollop of crème fresh or sour cream to top it off. This could also be used as a sauce for white fish."

• and Vegetable Lasagna "This is a twist on the classic.  We have joined organic swiss chard, organic carrots,  local asparagus, with a classic Béchamel sauce.  This mixture will be in between layers of our homemade lasagna pasta."
• available as ala carte for July 7th.