Can you eat too many greens? No way!

Hello Friends!

Last week’s Bloomington Farmers Market was the biggest we’ve ever had during the regular season! (We made more at the Thanksgiving Market, which was mind-blowingly great.) We aren’t sure what to attribute that to. We brought a lot more food, figuring that those 10:30 a.m. people (you know who you are!) need to have a bountiful display to draw them in. We’ve also heard some people say that the grocery store prices are now high enough that they’d prefer to spend even more money on truly local food. But who really knows. We just hope you all keep coming and buying the best local food available.

We had an interesting collard greens experience at the market as well. We actually sold out! It’s only surprising because people in B-N don’t seem to know how awesome collards are. We just love them. We had one customer stop by and say, “My brother in Minnesota told me I absolutely had to buy collards.” That’s pretty funny when you consider how historically southern collards are.

After the Bloomington market, we had another rainy/stormy harvest day on Tuesday. Preparing for the first Uptown market was a bit bogged down by the thunder/lightning/strong wind. I’m not one to attribute weather to the wrath of God, but some days do make you wonder. Bill’s rain gear is pretty much a Kleenex now – totally soaks through. Honestly, it stays dry for about half an hour and then Bill gets drenched through the zippers, pockets, etc. It’s kind of a good workout – he gets to bend over and pick veggies while wearing a 30-pound, water-saturated raincoat. Fortunately, after all of the harvesting drama, the first Uptown Market was quite good. We saw many old friends and made some new ones. We’re right next to the Crumps and the Ackermans, at the far east end of the parking lot.

The farmhands this year are particularly good-natured about the weather situation. Of course, even they have their limits. After several hours of picking spinach leaf-by-leaf and delicately transferring to plastic bags, the farmhands were sick-and-tired of spinach labor. So Bill decided to be a wise-guy and tell them that he had another cooler full of spinach for them to rinse and bag … Brian, a very nice guy, actually said, “I will kill you.”

Did you buy green onions last week? If yes, you may have noticed the residual skin of the onion set near the root. We intended to remove that, but the heavy rain made it impossible to focus on that type of detail. I tried to tell people at the market, but it seemed a bit unappetizing to use the word “goobery” when describing this onion set issue!

We have a new “corporate customer” – Ryan Fiala, the owner of D.P. Dough in Uptown Normal. His store has one main focus … the calzone. What’s not to like about ingredients wrapped in tasty bread??!! Seriously. So anyway, he really wants to have a calzone featuring local ingredients. He’s calling it the “LOCAZONE.” I love it. He visited Bill’s stand and promptly bought a variety of items, asking why it looked “so much better” than the stuff at the store. Bill answered, “It was hand picked about 3 hours ago.” I think Ryan was pretty impressed, and he told Bill that the first Locazone would be featuring Bill’s Spinach and Green Garlic. Whoo-hoo!

Before I tell you what we’re bringing to the market, I want to take a paragraph to describe a couple of lettuces that people have been raving about: Della Catalogna Radichetta and Cherokee Red Leaf Lettuce. The Della is an Italian heirloom lettuce with a delicate flavor and crisp texture. The Cherokee is new for us this year. It’s strikingly dark purple with a tightly wrapped, bright green head.

(I’m including some pictures of lettuce. The first is a lettuce bed prior to being transplanted. You can see the low, white cushion-on-wheels with a tray of lettuce off to the left. Bill made that so he could sit up and transplant rather than squat or bend over. The second photo is a bed of the Cherokee. I’m also including a photo of hard-neck garlic, which is from a bed that we have not been selling as green garlic.)

Our new item this week will be kohlrabi. I knew nothing of this vegetable growing up, but boy is it tasty sliced up and eaten raw. You can also do great things with cooked kohlrabi and bacon – just channel your inner German and get out a cast iron pan. We’ll also have more broccoli than we had last week.

We always have lots of greens. You know … radicchio, winterbor kale, lacinto kale, collards, turnip greens, radish greens, dandelion greens, and Red Russion kale. We’ve had a hard time describing it to customers, so we recently had an elaborate greens taste testing event in our kitchen with some friends. Bill sautéed the 8 different kinds of greens listed above with the following result: winterbor kale kicked butt. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most “bitter,” we found radicchio to have the most bite. I could go on all day about the American aversion to bitterness, but suffice it to say that a complex bitterness coupled with a good crusty bread with butter is one of life’s true delights. That said, our taste testing group most preferred the winterbor kale, finding it to be slightly (and pleasantly) tobacco-y in flavor with a hint of morel mushroom at the end. And this was simply sautéed in good quality olive oil with light salting. The turnip greens were also highly rated. The others were all tasty as well.

And one last thought … salad mix. It is simply one of our best items. Did you know how long the salad mix keeps in the fridge? At least a week if not two. Many people are unaware of this, thinking it’s like the “mixed baby greens” in the store from Earthbound Farm and Dole. I don’t want to sound too negative, but the Earthbound/Dole stuff is pretty pathetic compared with really fresh greens. It’s true of all the beautiful-but-tasteless greens sold in bags at the store. They may triple wash it for you, but you’re still not getting the real flavor and nutrition. These mega-salad companies grow the greens in extremely controlled environments (too much watering = too little flavor) and then bag them with a complex mix of gases that prevent everything from wilting in the bag UNTIL YOU OPEN IT. At that point, you have about 24 hours to eat it before it totally melts. Our greens grow outside where they can develop their true flavors, and then they’re picked within 24 hours of the market. No comparison.

We're looking forward to Saturday! Bill will be at the stand with his baby brother Aaron. I'll be in St. Louis at a wedding. Here’s what all we’ll have at the market …

Salad Mix
Spinach
Arugula
Head Lettuce
Baby Beets
Radish
Green Onion
Green Garlic
Kale
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Japanese Turnips

Random tidbit …

It’s become something of a joke to consider how many special days/months we have for various causes. (Fruitcake Toss Day, National Oatmeal Month, etc.) And then there are the associations to support these worthy causes. I recently ran across one that made me laugh periodically all day yesterday … the National Patio Enclosure Association. There it was … the NPEA … emblazoned across the mug that I had selected from the Inspections break room. Who would've thought patios (and enclosed ones at that) would have their own association. And the motto: “Help Keep the Patio a Patio.” It made me wonder if patios are under siege in some fashion. (It turns out they are – from the “3-season room”!) I’m always looking for a new source of anxiety. Why not incorporate enclosed patios along with conflict in the Middle East and the faltering U.S. economy?!


And we’ve finally delivered fresh veggies to Common Ground and the Garlic Press…

On Tuesday evening Bill delivered produce to Common Ground in downtown Bloomington and to the Garlic Press in Uptown Normal. So if you miss a market or just run out of veggies mid-week, head to Common Ground! And if you need the veggies prepared into a fabulous meal, Garlic Press is right down the road.

We’ll see you at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers Market on Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. – noon. NOTE THE TIME CHANGE!! We’ll also be at the Trailside Market in Uptown Normal, every Tuesday night from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Please pass along these emails to any friends that you may think would be interested. We plan to put out the email sign-up sheet during the market season again. Call us at 467-9228 if you have questions.

Thanks!
Mercy Davison