GEFA blog
by Good Earth Food Alliance grower, Amy Brucker
The parsley bundles that went out with this week's CSA shares might have seemed rather insignificant compared to the beautiful purple kohlrabi, but, for those still learning to cook with fresh herbs, parsley is a great place to start. This herb is appropriate in nearly anything savory. Use it to infuse stocks, flavor soups and stews, and add freshness to salads. Any idea why the curly leaf variety of this herb has for decades been used as a garnish? After a meal of spaghetti and garlic bread, chewing on a sprig of parsley helps neutralize breath odor.
Let me digress for a moment:
My husband's grandmother loved parsley. According to legend, she ate it every day. I never met her because she died before we were married but stories about Grandma Brucker still surface whenever my husband's family come for a visit. There's one particular story about Grandma that seldom goes untold when her name comes up.Today, many of us have stories about being stopped by airport security because we live in a world where tight security is necessary. However, airport security 30 years ago was not what it is today. A person had to be doing something REALLY wrong in order to get stopped by airport security in the '70's. Grandma Brucker was stopped from getting on a plane because she was thought to be carrying a "controlled substance." In her carry-on was a plastic bag stuffed full of freshly-cut parsley.
Nevertheless, Grandma Brucker continued to eat her daily supply of parsley. She lived to be 91 years old. Maybe she'd discovered something even more enticing in parsley - the Fountain of Youth.
For Good Earth Food Alliance CSA Members:
- Basil's Harvest is offering four varieties of stromboli this week with sausage and vegetables sourced right from Elmwood.
- Please note that we welcome returned egg cartons for recycling.
- Here's some ideas for using kohlrabi, if you haven't tried it before. It tastes mild and sweet, like a young turnip. Store in a plastic bag in the refrigerator until ready to use. Kohlrabi can be used similar to a turnip. Slice it or grate it into salads, Cook in quarters, rounds, or matchsticks. Steam or roast it. Kohlrabi goes well with butter, sour, dill, mustard, and horseradish. Check out our recipe for Kohlrabi Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette.
By Good Earth Food Alliance grower and producer, Leslie Schenkel
I always gauge the coming of spring by when the barn swallows move in. This year, as with last, it was the same day my parents came to help with the expansion of my black raspberry patch. Some things come full circle every year! The babies are now hatched and singing away when I go into the barn to retrieve eggs and their parents are on mosquito patrol over the garden. In the raspberry patch I have seen rabbits and other small rodents out of the corner of my eye and the new raspberry growth hosts a very small bird and its nest. My daughter, Sara, found a long black snake skin in the patch also - I'm hoping it's the harmless type.On the Good Earth Food Alliance website:
- New recipes and ideas for working with garlic scapes and spring greens including swiss chard and kale.
- Learn more about the Basil's Harvest story on our website. Basil's Harvest products may be ordered throughout the week with delivery the following Tuesday. Check the webstore on Sunday for new product offerings.
Fences
Some of us migrate from city life to farm life through the accumulation of animals. It usually starts with a few chickens and then possibly a goat or two and, before long, we're setting up elaborate, complex fencing systems to keep boys away from girls, bullies away from their victims, and everybody out of the garden. One topic that isn't typically covered in the Encyclopedia of Goat Nutrition or the Complete Chicken Handbook is how to build a good strong fence from leftover pieces of cattle panels, cinder blocks, t-posts, or whatever else you can find lying around the farm yard.
Erin Meyer, a Good Earth Food Alliance producer and Basil's Harvest head honcho, claims that her family are the wanna-be farmers who shouldn't. Sheep don't stay in their pastures on Erin's farm. Llamas can be found peeking through the kitchen window at times. And who knows what ever happened to the cows they used to have? Read Erin's blog here:
The Meyers: The wanna-be farmers who shouldn’t
May 27, 2009
Have I mentioned that we have sheep, and there are new lambs in our yard every spring? I say yard because I have deemend them my "free range" lambs. They wander here and there to eat all the lush grass and clover; not to mention my basil, chives, and parsley plants. The wanna-be farmers try to keep them in via fence panels. However, the lambs are able to crawl right under the lowest rail to enjoy what I thought was supposed to be my bounty. I will let the lambs enjoy the beautiful aromatics, while I resource the herbs needed for Basil’s Harvest through the local farmers.
Just a word of caution to the wanna-be's out there: bone up on your fence-building skills first!
To the Good Earth Food Alliance CSA members:
- Just a reminder that pick up times are from 4:30 - 6:00 pm at Hult Health, Wildlife Prairie State Park and Grace Anglican Church in Galesburg. Those arriving early will need to wait until 4:30 to pick up their share.
- Have you tried a new recipe that you'd like to share with other members? Let us know about it by responding to this e-mail.
By Good Earth Food Alliance grower, Amy Brucker
Monday evening the clouds rolled in, the skies darkened, the thermometer plunged and we knew we were in for something. I had just finished dropping off a friend when the rain started. By the time I arrived back at the farm the rain was in full force and I got drenched running from the car to the house. Within a few minutes, the pounding rain turned to pounding hail and we all covered our ears.....and then my heart sank. The next morning was harvest day for our CSA.
My planned list of items to bring for Tuesday's CSA (a vegetable subscription service which includes foods from 10 Good Earth Food Alliance growers and producers) included Swiss chard, spring mix, eggs, basil plants, and an herb called lemon balm. Mother nature had other plans. While the eggs and basil plants were safely tucked away during the storm, the lemon balm and greens were left out in the field seeking mercy - of which there was little.
Have you ever seen the movie Places In The Heart? I love Sally Field and the role she plays of a determined widow who is desperately seeking to save the farm and her family. She harvests cotton with her rag-tag group of friends like there's no tomorrow and brings in the crop just in time to make the mortgage payment. After Monday's storm, I sought inspiration from Sally and went to work salvaging every scrap of edible greens I could find, most of which was hanging by threads from its former lower half. Before long, the whole family was out there snipping, washing, spinning and bagging right alongside me. We worked until dark and loaded the bags into coolers. Those bags didn't contain tidy bundles of swiss chard, individually wrapped portions of gourmet loose leaf lettuce, and heads of black seeded simpson lettuce. Instead, they contained Mother Nature's recipe for a delicious tossed salad, complete with a little straw and dirt on the side!To the Good Earth Food Alliance CSA members:
- Check out Pam's recipe for Crispy Kale Chips on the website under "CSA/Products" and then "Recipes" She includes some pretty amazing nutrition information too!
- Several members have had problems with Google Checkout including bogus e-mail addresses and incorrect listing of charges on their credit card report. Please know that we will no longer be using Google Checkout but will ask members to bring cash or check with them along with their invoice when they pick up ala carte items at the drop sites.
TV Dinners
By Good Earth Food Alliance grower, Amy Brucker
For the past ten years, we have survived on rabbit ears. No, not real rabbit ears (our pet Flemish Giant rabbit, Norman, is listening intently right now) but the kind that sits atop our TV. When our children were young and I was a stay-at-home mom, satellite TV helped feed the kids during meal times, it helped soothe the savage beast during the bewitching hours of 4 - 7 pm, and it helped me grab a quick 10 minute doze on the couch when nature dictated. However, when the budget got tight and cable costs went higher, we cut the line. Wiggling antennae and applying supplementary balls of aluminum foil became the precursor to every family TV night. That activity, in and of itself, was part of the entertainment. Even when the budget loosened a bit, it never occurred to us to spend that extra money on more TV channels. Fuzzy pictures and sporatic dialogue on the TV screen had opened up the floodgates of creativity and actually taught us how to "fill in the blanks."
Living with little exposure to popular TV creates a rather large social knowledge void. I have, single-handedly, killed dozens of lively conversations that suddenly fell upon the rocky grounds of popular TV shows. If the blank stare on my face didn't provide enough clues about my utter confusion, then the abrupt changing of topic surely did. It was at times like those that I took the liberty of changing the topic to one I enjoy - and that would be food.
Being a member of Good Earth Food Alliance is a perfect fit for me because I am expected to talk about food. Food is universal. Food crosses cultural barriers. Food brings generations together. Food unites. What's more, the food I talk about is alive with colors, textures, nutrition, and flavors, unlike the "food-like objects" that permeate American cuisine. Sharing recipes, experimenting with new vegetables, adding a different herb to a favorite meal - these are the topics of the most memorable conversations, such as the one I had with Eleanor at the drop site on Tuesday (I am definitely going to try that tofu and mint recipe you mentioned!)
So what does our family watch on TV once the antennae have been sufficiently wiggled and the aluminum balls properly applied? The cooking and gardening shows, of course!
To Good Earth Food Alliance CSA members:
- Erin Meyer, of Basil's Harvest, suggests a light butter garlic sauce to top the Roasted Asparagus Shitake Ravioli. Her wine recommendation is a Pinot noir.
- New recipes have been added to our recipe page on the website. You can do a search for recipes the use a certain vegetable or add your comments about a recipe you've tried.
- Latecomer CSA Members should now be able to login on the Place An Order page. A mock free choice item can be ordered for $0 so you can try out and complete the ordering process.
- We recognize that the process for placing orders for free choice items has its limitations and we are working on some slight revisions. Look for more information in your Sunday morning CSA e-update.
What Do I Do With Lovage?
This week in our Good Earth Food Alliance CSA share we provided a vegetable called lovage. According to Old Fashioned Living, "Lovage is a very old herb with properties perfect for today's healthy lifestyles. It's unique flavor, which is a combination of anise and celery, can be used as a salt substitute, plus it gives extra flavor to vegetarian soups and stews as well. You can use it much like you would celery or parsley, but with a lighter hand since it does have a stronger flavor. Lovage works well in potato and tomato dishes, or anything in the starch category. Every part of the plant is edible!"
One part of buying into a share of the farm includes a willingness to sample the foods that the farm families have cooking in pots on their stoves. Although you won't find lovage at most grocery stores, three of the GEFA farms grow lovage and are accustomed to cooking with it this time of year. For starters, add a teaspoon of fresh minced lovage to your chicken soup recipe during the last 15 or 20 minutes of cooking. You can also add it to chilled tomato soups. Add one to two tablespoons of minced fresh lovage to your meatloaf recipes.
Check out our listing of recipes for Egg Salad with Herbs or Potato and Lovage Soup and see if you don't find that you, too, love that lovage!
“Eat Your Vegetables!” – Mother
By Good Earth Food Alliance grower, Amy Brucker
Mother’s Day began with the dog taking more than her share of the bed and, thus, my left arm hanging over the side. But I didn’t mind because the clock said 7:00 and my husband and three kids were in the kitchen making breakfast for me. Granted, I have taught my kids to cook so their homemade breakfasts are nothing to sneeze at: French toast with raspberries, farm-fresh scrambled eggs, and coffee. The best part actually came later, however, when I was “excused” to go out and garden while they cleaned up.
Gardening isn’t a chore to me. Every morning I get to go outside and see the changes taking place in my garden beds as well as the landscape around me. This morning, the purples, yellows, and greens of the lettuce leaves were showing. The potatoes outgrew the thick layer of straw mulch and were striving to be noticed again. Blossoms erupted on the blueberries. The June-bearing strawberries were a lush carpet of green with white flowers. Runners escaping from the pea plants caught hold of the fence and were determined not to let go. Everywhere I looked, I saw signs of growth and change.
Yet, this garden is a representation of many types of change. It represents a change in the way our family chooses to eat. It represents a changing landscape from conventional corn and soybeans to spinach and rhubarb. It represents new options for strengthening our local and national economies. To me on this day, however, it represents eating more vegetables.
There’s a possibility that most of us could attribute our love of vegetables to our mothers. My mother was the first to suggest to me that growing zucchini could be fun. We should have spent more hours together in the garden because, in doing so, she might have lived long enough to teach her grandchildren how to grow zucchini. On this Mother’s Day, in memory of my vegetable-loving mother, I will make soup – and, hopefully, let someone else do the dishes.
On the Good Earth Food Alliance website:
Our CSA is nearly sold-out. The Latecomer CSA program will still be available until May 22nd, 2009. Find out more here.
This week, CSA members will receive an informational e-mail and passwords to access the "Place an order" webpage where they will complete their Weekly, Weekly Half, or Bi-Weekly shares and purchase add-ons.
It's that time in central Illinois when the land offers up the most sought after bounty, Morel Mushrooms. Being in the right place at the right time can be tricky though, and it takes stamina and fortitude to find the these tasty morsels or maybe you know what all successful morel mushroom hunters know: location, location, location!
100% Chance of Mud!
By Good Earth Food Alliance grower, Amy Brucker
Although becoming a Good Earth Food Alliance CSA member means sharing in the thrills, adventures, and highlights of the season, growing foods the natural and sustainable way also has it's share of frustrations. As a part of the Good Earth Food Alliance family, how many of you have wondered what we growers think of this unusually cold and wet spring we’re having? Well, the answer is, we're tired of mud. Not only has the forecast predicted rain every couple of days, but Mother Nature keeps sprinkling the fields in between those rainy days just to tease us.
If the GEFA growers were working as individuals, this cold and rainy spring could really dampen plans to provide wonderful spring vegetables to CSA customers. However, as a collaborative, we’re pooling all our resources together to try to meet our original schedule of harvesting our first crop of CSA foods in mid-May. Those of us on higher ground were able to get some seeds into the soil the end of March and early April while others on low ground were not. Once those first seeds are ready for harvest, the CSA members will be the first to enjoy the fresh spring vegetables.
Good Earth Food Alliance news
Interest in GEFA has risen sharply since last Sunday when Clare Howard of the Peoria Journal Star wrote an article about our efforts. For those of you standing on the sidelines waiting to see what happens, know that we’re quickly approaching the maximum number of CSA shares available. Go here to get signed up.
Some folks have struggled with viewing pages on the website or placing an order. Know that we're working out the kinks in the website (what do you expect from a bunch of farmers?). Feel free to contact us with your questions or concerns.
Most frequently asked questions via the website:
- Which GEFA product (Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Half) would you recommend for my family? If this is your first time as a CSA member, I might suggest you start small, with a Half Share or a Bi-Weekly. Some of the foods you'll receive this season may be new to you, but know that we are here to support you on your journey towards better health with recipes and ideas for working with new foods. For more information, check out this page on our website.
- How much will be in each Tuesday delivery? The quantities of each of the foods are similar to grocery store quantities - a half pound of loose leaf lettuce, a pound of onions, a 5-lb watermelon – but the total weight of your CSA delivery will be less in the early summer than it is in the late summer, simply because a longer ripening time is necessary for heavier crops. If you’re as hungry as I am for garden fresh foods, assume your first few weeks of fresh vegetables will be eaten quickly. But by August, you might be overwhelmed by the abundance.
I LOVE EGGS!
By Good Earth Food Alliance producer, Kate Potter.
Two every morning, fried in butter, over easy. Sprinkled with sea salt. Soft orange yolk yielding to the fork. Mopping up that fluorescence with my toast. Life gets no better than this. And I get to have it every day!
I have 36 laying hens who eat a fair amount of “chicken food” - mostly sunflower seeds, millet, whole oats and wheat, organic cracked corn, barley - but they also have the run of our pastures, and they enjoy a good graze every bit as much as our goats and steers. Perhaps even more.
Chickens are incredibly omnivorous. If they had their druthers, they’d subsist on bugs, slugs, grubs, worms, mice (yes!) and some grass or nice dandelion greens. If they have those edibles in abundance, I cut my feed bill by 30 - 50%, and the yolks in your eggs change from a pallid yellow (“supermarket eggs”) to an orange so rich that it is almost red. This is due to the extra vitamin A that pasture affords a hen. Besides that, the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio is perfect: 1:1 These pastured eggs abound with CLA - conjugated linoleic acid - a powerful anti-carcinogen and antioxidant. And they’re really fresh. Eggs from a grocery store could have been sitting around 
in a case somewhere for a month before they even saw a carton. Our farm eggs go from the nest to your table in a week or less. This is the way my grandparents ate when they were little. Is it why one of my grandmas is 98 and the other is 94?
Enjoy your food: glowing orange egg yolks, pulsing green spinach, crisp peppery radishes on thickly buttered bread… . Oooh - I just read in Wikipedia that CLA survives the temperatures encountered during frying. Yay!
On the Good Earth Food Alliance website:
- Descriptions of Basil's Harvest products that will be available as add-ons to CSA deliveries.
- GEFA featured in the Peoria Journal Star this morning.
- GEFA director, Anne Patterson, and grower, Amy Brucker will be at Knox College's Green Solutions Expo Wednesday, April 22nd in celebration of Earth Day.