Landisdale Farm CSA, week 12

Saturday, August 23, 2008

There’s irony afoot this week.  Convinced that I wouldn’t be getting tomatoes through the CSA share, I ordered a 25 pound box of plum tomatoes from the Fair Food Farmstand a few days ago.  And now tomatoes were included in the share this week.  Granted, not enough to make sauce from (as I will with the plum tomatoes), but still.

The share contained the following:

• Two giant heads of lettuce.  Seriously...no more freaking lettuce.  Enough!  My compost heap runneth over, people.  At the very least, I found a vegan who offered to take my lettuce.  But I would rather have no lettuce in the share at all.  I’m sick to death of even looking at it.
• One spaghetti squash.  Something different, so that’s great!
• Three cucumbers.  Good, good.
• Two heads of garlic.
• A small flat container of basil
• Two handfuls of red potatoes
• A pint of plums

When we picked up the share, the ladies at the stand informed us we were allowed to pick out four heirloom tomatoes.  As I was doing so, I heard some guy next to me mention Farm to Philly.  I forget sometimes that people do, indeed, read the blog!  Happily, I didn’t act like a wanker and yell, “Hey, that’s my blog!” I just picked out my tomatoes (which I am super glad to have and hope that more are included in next week’s share) and left.

For the sake of comparison, you might want to check out what was in the Lancaster Farm Fresh share at this time last year.

I still have every single last plum from last week’s share.  With another pint on hand, I figure I have to do something with them now.  I have options, happily.  I can put my dehydrator to use and make dried plums.  Or I can make plum sauce of some sort, which sounds more interesting to me.  I like the idea of making plum barbecue sauce.

Alternatively, there’s plum granita or plum sorbet.

Bo Peep

I really like lamb.  Mostly I buy the loin chops from Hillacres Pride or Bixby’s Farms, but last weekend I bought a pack of rib chops from the vendor at Clark Park from Rome, PA.  Wow!  They were super meaty and very thick.  And very, very tasty.  I brushed each chop with egg white and pressed a mix of bread crumbs, shallots, garlic, and parsley into each chop, and then baked them.  A good lamb chop can take being barely cooked, so we ate them rare and it was one of the most delicious things I’ve had in a while!

Accompanying the chop was green beans sauteed in butter and leftover spaghetti squash with collard pesto.  It really seems more like a Winter or Fall meal, but was still very good!

Where it all came from:
pork, that farm from Rome - 150 miles
egg white, Natural Acres - 100 miles
bread crumbs, made from Le Bus bread - 15 miles
shallot, Landisdale Farms - 100 miles
garlic, my garden - 0 miles
parsley, my garden - 0 miles
green beans, Landisdale Farms - 100 miles
butter, homemade from Dutch Way Dairy cream - 100 miles
spaghetti squash, Urban Girls - 29 miles

Baba ganoush

Friday, August 22, 2008

Unless it was in the form of Parmesan hoagie, or otherwise battered and deep-fried, smothered in sauce or cheese, or roasted and hidden with a million other ingredients, I disliked eggplant. I never purchased it in its natural state, substituting squash if a recipe called for it, and couldn’t understand what so many people tasted in it. 

When I joined a CSA three years ago, this eggplant avoidance couldn’t continue.  Eggplant, in several different varieties, started showing up at the farm:  long skinny pale purple Asian eggplant; fat, squat deep purple Italian eggplant; bulbous, variegated striped heirloom eggplant; creamy, white, tender eggplant. 

Yet, although I couldn’t get away from them as they made a home in my kitchen, I realized that I actually could, still avoid them.  The first couple eggplants ended up in the compost pile, a bit deflated and wrinkled from two weeks in the fridge.  This went on for a bit until, eventually, I decided that I’d have to at least attempt preparing one into something edible.  I mean, this sort of challenge was supposed to be one of the benefits of belonging to a Community Supported Agriculture program, right?  You know, “having the opportunity to try new things” and all that jazz.  So, I embarked on a mission to make peace with the eggplant.

Stir fries are a staple in my house, especially during the spring and summer months, so this seemed like a logical place to start.  I pulled an eggplant out of the crisper along with some other in-season veggies, chopped them, stir fried them, added a bit of teryaki sauce and served it atop brown rice.  The eggplant was mushy.  It was slimy.  It was disgusting.  I picked it out.

Next up was the grill.  We love throwing a pile of fresh vegetables—carrots, corn, squash, onions, tomatoes—on the grill, dabbing them lightly with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and eating them outside on the porch with a side of hummus or grilled tempeh.  Surely, I thought, eggplant will taste good off the grill—everyone raves about grilled eggplant!  So, I added a sliced eggplant, and served it mixed in with the other veggies.  The eggplant was mushy.  It was slimy.  It was disgusting.  I picked it out.

I thought a sandwich would end the nonsense.  Anything smothered in sauce and hugged by freshly-baked bread can’t be wrong, right?  I lightly fried some slices of eggplant, added a bit of tomato sauce and place it into a yummy sliced bun from the local bakery.  I made a fresh, crisp salad to compliment and balance the sandwich.  The eggplant was mushy.  It was slimy.  It was disgusting.  I picked it out.

Feeling slightly defeated, my determination waning, I happened to mention my eggplant efforts to a neighbor one night while we were chatting over our shared railing from our respective porches.  She, on her Adirondack chair, looking over her gorgeous, wild and native front garden, sipping tea; me, damp with sweat from living with no air conditioning during the latest heat wave, limbs hanging limply from a thrift store swing. 

She:  “Well, did you salt it?”
Me: ...
She:  “You have to salt it—you always salt eggplant.”
Me: “Salt...?”
She:  “Yes. Dice it, salt it, then roast it with other vegetables in the oven on a sheet of parchment paper.”
Me:  “Parchment paper...?”

In the end, she lent me her roll of parchment paper and gave me explicit instructions, which I dutifully followed:  dice the eggplant, put it into a bowl, sprinkle a little bit of salt on it and stir it up; let stand.  Preheat oven to 350-degrees, cut up other vegetables, combine everything, along with fresh chopped herbs, and spread onto some parchment paper on a cookie sheet, and roast them for 15 minutes.  While that was roasting, I also made some stirfry, just in case this whole salting thing was bogus.  In the end, the roasted eggplant was… not so bad. 

Actually, it was pretty good.  I even blogged about it, though I wouldn’t say I was exactly enchanted by, let alone had made peace with, eggplant.  I made it through that first, and then last year’s CSA season by dicing and roasting, but also by always making sure my sister had first dibs (we split our share).  I still wasn’t in love with eggplant, and preferred to leave it rather than take it. 

Naturally, once again, eggplant started arriving a few weeks ago.  And naturally, once again, I pawned them off or “forgot” about them until they were no longer worthy of more than being shipped to the compost pile.  Although I can get behind the roasted vegetables, I much prefer to consume fresh produce either raw, steamed or stir fried.  I didn’t like the idea of roasting everything just so that I could tolerate the eggplant.  I needed a new strategy. 

I thought on it for a bit, read about eggplant in my From Asparagus to Zucchini book, then thought some more.  I decided that it was really the texture that I couldn’t stand about eggplant.  How could I take that mushy texture and format it so that it was pleasing to my palette?  Could I add something starchy to give it some more substance?  Or maybe something creamy to give it a smoother taste?  And then it dawned on me—baba ganoush!  Of course!

I searched online for some recipes, settling on this one, from Food Network:

Babaganoush
2006, Ellie Krieger, All rights reserved; Show:  Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger; Episode:  Thrill of the Grill.

1 large eggplant (about 1 pound)
1 glove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, plus more for garnish
2 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Prick eggplant with a fork and place on a cookie sheet lined with foil. Bake the eggplant until it is soft inside, about 20 minutes. Alternatively, grill the eggplant over a gas grill, rotating it around until the skin is completely charred, about 10 minutes. Let the eggplant cool. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise, drain off the liquid, and scoop the pulp into a food processor. Process the eggplant until smooth and transfer to a medium bowl.

On a cutting board, work garlic and 1/4 teaspoon salt together with the flat side of a knife, until it forms a paste. Add the garlic-salt mixture to the eggplant. Stir in the parsley, tahini, and lemon juice. Season with more salt, to taste. Garnish with additional parsley.

Both parsley and garlic were in recent share pickups and therefore available in the kitchen.  I also had leftover lemon from my mom’s wedding and tahini from a hummus recipe.  Clearly, it was fate.  I would finally, after all these years, meet an eggplant that I couldn’t resist.

And I couldn’t!  It was divine!  My boyfriend and I devoured the bit I made in two sittings.  I declared all future incoming eggplant baba ganoush-destined, vowed to always stock fresh pita for prime ganoush-noshing, and haven’t looked back since. 

Some other baba gnough recipes I’m hoping to try:

• FatFreeVegan’s cumin-sprinkled version.
• Bon Appétit’s (at epicurious) with olive oil.
• About.com’s “eggplant hummus” version with chickpeas.
• Mastercook’s (at RecipeSource) with tons of extras like sweet red peppers, chili powder and cilantro.
• RecipeZaar’s no food processor required version, served with olives.

Whatever kind you try, I’ve learned that fresh eggplants are key; older ones can lead to a bitter baba ganoush batch that is nearly impossible to salvage.  Be sure to drain all the liquid off after roasting the eggplant, and if you think your eggplant might be beyond its freshest, rinse it under running water.

Served

I generally do all the cooking around the house, mostly just because I really like to cook.  But I have a funky schedule these days - three or four dragon boat practices every week and a Pilates sessions.  It definitely cuts down on the amount of time I have to cook.  My husband, Craig, generally won’t cook a complete meal of his own accord, but he can cook.  The other day I purchased one of the amazing chickens from Pennypack Farm, and didn’t have time to cook it within what I consider a safe period of time - so I asked Craig to make dinner Monday night. 

It’s so nice to come home from practice and have dinner waiting for me!

Craig roasted the chicken with herbs from my garden stuffed in the cavity and he basted it with our homemade butter.  To that he added some corn picked up on one of those tiny roadside stands in Jersey, and roasted fingerling potatoes from the CSA share (I meant to make potato leek soup out of them, but I was glad to sacrifice my plans in exchange for dinner cooked for me!).

Where it all came from:
chicken, Pennypack Farm - 31 miles
butter, homemade from Dutch Way Dairy cream - 100 miles
rosemary and thyme, my garden - 0 miles
corn, unknown roadside stand in Jersey - 25 miles
fingerling potatoes, Landisdale Farms - 100 miles

Mr. Yuck doesn’t live here anymore

I’ve always been afraid of sumac.  My mother instilled the fear of it into me, lest I come down with some crazy poison sumac infection.  Little did I know that my mother taught me to be afraid of the wrong thing - the sumac she pointed out was not the poisonous variety.  And so for most of my life I’ve avoided sumac trees...when, in fact, I should have been running toward them to harvest the sumac.

The variety pictured is, I think, Staghorn sumac.  The Fair Food Farmstand is selling sumac right now (although I’m not sure who the supplier is), so I was compelled to pick up a bit of it.  As you may know, Sumac is native to our area and grows like a weed.  In fact, you’re likely to see sumac growing wild on the side of the road.  And sumac is, of course, edible - it tastes kind of lemony.

Sarah, the Farmstand manager, told me about one her customers that brews tea from sumac, but I also found recipes for sumac lemonade and sumac wine..

But sumac can be used for more than just beverages.  I found some amazing-sounding recipes incorporating sumac, including scallops with sumac and pomegranate molasses.  Yes, please!  Some other yummy recipes:

Sumac chicken with bread salad
Sesame sumac pesto
Tomato and sumac salad
Sumac crusted lamb
Sumac and onion relish
Couscous with sweet potato and sumac

There is a great tutorial on how to identify non-poisonous sumac and how to harvest it and a suggestion on how to preserve it here.  There’s also some good advice here.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with my sumac, but it’s just nice to have something different to play with!

A mushy meal

Thursday, August 21, 2008

I finally got around to making gnocchi over this past weekend, although you wouldn’t know it from looking at this photo.  See, that’s the problem with homemade gnocchi: even one second too long in the water and it turns into mush.  Tasty mush.

For this batch, I used only Yukon Gold potatoes (roasted and then put through a ricer) and flour.  I won’t bore you with the finer details of making them - both Kevin and I have talked before about our preferred methods (although I will say that I took the time to make fork lines in the gnocchi this time instead of thumb dimples).  My only advice for fresh gnocchi is this: be Johnny-on-the-Spot with a slotted spoon when you’re boiling them!

I really wanted to use up some of the swiss chard in my CSA share, so I sauteed garlic, shallots, and chopped chard stems in butter for a few minutes and then added in the chard leaves and a bit of white wine.  And when it was all ready to go, I combined it with the mushy gnocchi.  Despite the mushiness, it was still delicious!

Where it all came from:
Yukon Gold potatoes, Landisdale Farms - 100 miles
Flour, Daisy Flour - 60 miles
Swiss chard, Landisdale Farms - 100 miles
Garlic, my garden - 0 miles
Shallots, Landisdale Farms - 100 miles
Butter, homemade from Dutch Way Dairy cream - 100 miles

Not local: wine, salt and pepper

One Local Summer - Week 11 - South

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Sorry for the late report this week.  I teach community college, and the semester started, and all of a sudden, it was Thursday - I’m not quite sure how that happened. 

There wasn’t any cooking at the Garden Apartment this week, but there was a lovely sounding visit to a restaurant featuring local foods, described here.

This week, Foodie Tots talks about peaches and using up produce.

Melissa at Bridgman Pottery fixed amazing looking steak, potatoes, and veggies.

Capturing today featured a whole week’s worth of delicious looking local cooking.  Those meatballs look great!

Over at Outpost 505, this week produced grilled bourbon bison sausage and roasted veggies.  Noms.

Vegetables were featured over at Our Greener Pastures this week.

This week at Barn Raising saw gazpacho, roasted potatoes and beets, and fried okra.

And finally, at Simple - Green - Frugal, they feasted on green beans, potato salad, and vegetable bean soup.

CSA Report: Blooming Glen Farm

(Click photo to read notes at flick’r regarding names/quantities of share.)

I normally split my share with my sister.  This week however, she’s out of town and I’m left with ALL of this.  Yikes!  I think this may be the first week that I’ll immediately have to preserve a portion of the pick up.  String beans are an easy freeze, so they’ll probably go into the FoodSaver, as well as most of those cherry tomatoes after I roast them.  Any ideas for the rest of the loot?  I’m now up to ten beets, three watermelons and one-and-a-half cantaloupe; any ideas for these specifically is greatly appreciated!

One Local Summer - week 11: International

Sally didn’t have time to post yet, but her OLS meal from last week was, well, I’ll let her tell you:

Here’s what we had - on Monday, we had the most amazing lamb and rosemary sausages from the Chipping Sodbury famers’ market I visited last weekend, served with cauliflower cheese; and on Tuesday I reverted back to good old local poached eggs with home made chips...er, I mean fries

One Local Summer, Week 11: Mid-Atlantic Region

Maryland

Danielle served up a zero-mile breakfast this week. They feasted on an omelet of home-made fresh mozzarella and garden puplette onions and sungold tomatoes. With a side of quick potatoes– a delicious, speedy way to make hashbrowns you’ll have to see for yourself.

Finding herself flush with tomatoes from the farmer’s market Ami sauced them up along with garlic, basil, zucchini, red peppers and hot Italian sausage then served it over couscous. Then she made an heirloom tomato salad which she drizzled with olive oil and vinegar and sprinkled with garden-fresh purple basil.

New York

Meghan gathered up friends and family for a much-needed rooftop feast culled mostly from her own garden and the local farmer’s market. They started things off with some fresh veggies and a mozzarella, basil and tomato salad. This was followed by a bacon, kale and ricotta frittata. On the side they enjoyed roasted beans and a BLT salad (what a great idea). And the dessert just sounds incredible: peach goat cheese ice cream with roasted, salted pistachios drizzled with a balsamic and bay leaf reduction.

Local turkey burgers flavored with garlic and chives and topped with cheddar cheese was on the menu at Mia’s. She whipped up some more cucumber salad then grilled some eggplant and sautéed some swiss chard. To finish it all off she made a fruit crumble. Her CSA, garden and her farmer’s market supplied the ingredients.

Pennsylvania
Sausages and peppers at the beach with a side of corn was enjoyed by Robin and family. A local bakery supplied the rolls.

New Jersey

I was all about the eggplant this week. I sliced it up and fried it then layered it with some local mozzarella. Then I made a quick, fresh tomato sauce to drizzle on top. A few minutes in the oven and it was just divine.

-this section of Mid-Atlantic updated posted by Elizabeth of Seedling.
__________________________________

Pennsylvania

While battling the usual CSA zucchini overload, Mikaela has been shredding and freezing - and also making her OLS meal.  Last week she made aquash stuffed with onion, garlic, herbs, seitan, and bread crumbs.  And if you’re counting, that’s only seven ingredients!

Buzz and Pat had a Philly favorite: sausage, peppers, and onions.  The peppers, onions, and tomatoes were from their garden...which just goes to show that someone is having tomato luck, even though many of us are not.  I suspect it’s all the love in their house.

The lovely ladies from Philly Farmers yanked basil, tomatoes, and some white eggplants out of the garden and then had dinner: fried eggplant rounds, sliced tomatoes, and zucchini ribbons with cheese, along with french bread drizzled with olive oil.  Delicious!

Naomi cooked up zucchini, half a giant green pepper, onion, garlic, a bit of hot pepper, plus an egg - sort of a cook ‘em if you got ‘em situation.  Whatever it is, it looks yummy!  She also made a corn and a pepper/cucumber salad.

And me, well, I had two OLS meals.  The first was honey roasted pork chops with lacinato kale and lima beans, and the second was duck breast with roasted golden beets and swiss chard.

New York

Rabi cooked up a bunch of local meals last week.  There were a bunch of salads: a salad from her garden, pickled cucumber and beet salad, and a crunchy salad.  Another meal included fish, beets and beet greens, scallions, and herbs.

Julia was busy last week with three OLS meals!  For the first meal, she came, she saw, and she conquered...grilled pizza, that is.  Sadly, her dog ate one of the pizzas.  Bad dog!  Buoyed by her grilled pizza success, she made another pizza of arugula and goat cheese.  And then she went all crazy one night and cooked for nearly three hours - bruschetta, ice cream smoothie, salad, caponata, beets and beet greens.  Wow!

Peg is back on the OLS wagon and talking about the really cool starter kit Vermont locavores have put together.  Very excellent!  For her OLS meal, Peg made pizza with the scads of cherry tomatoes she’s got coming out of the garden.  Really, I’m about to start breaking into gardens and stealing tomatoes.

This part of the OLS report by Nicole.

One Local Summer, week 11: Midwest

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Anne of Green Leanings:  “This week’s meal featured pole beans from the garden, chicken wrapped in bacon, corn on the cob (we aren’t tired of it yet!) and the cutest little baby red thumb potatoes.”

Karen of toteleeding:  “One the menu was potato, tomato, mozarella casserole, fresh green and wax beans, and garlic bread.”

Joy of Spiral of Seasons:  “Accompaning our local chicken (Farrar Out Farm, Kirkwood Farmers Market) tonight were two new vegetables to us, both from our CSA, delicata squash and edamame.”

Anna of twelve22.org made a lovely potato and onion soup and served it with fresh corn.

Jenny of The Nourished Kitchen:  “This week we enjoyed pot roast (recipe coming so stay tuned) with carrots and onion garnished with wild chives over rustic sourdough noodles, braised turnips with parsley and the simple green salad that always graces our table.  And one of the last cherry clafoutis (recipe coming so stay tuned ) of the season finished our meal.”

Sirena of Swimming in this Sea of Life made pasta with her tomatoes, mushrooms, sausage and local pasta!

Becke of Columbus Foodie:  “This week, I give you something that takes advantage of all of the lovely potatoes and onions at the farmers market. I’ve made it local by serving it with sausages and sauerkraut from Thurn’s, potatoes from the Worthington Farmers Market, bacon from Thurn’s, and onions from Wayward Seed Farms. ... This potato salad is like the ones I grew up on - very vinegary and smoky but a tad sweet at the same time. I probably should have grilled the sausages but I ended up just cooking them in the sauerkraut. Enjoy!”

Debbie of Rites of Passage had another undocumented meal of a “stir fry” with various varieties of squash, green pepper, tomatoes, green beans, onions, and dried mushrooms, served over quinoa.

One Local Summer, Week 11: New Engand

We finally saw the sun around these parts!  I hope everyone had a chance to get out and enjoy not only the sun, but the good stuff that’s ripening now that it’s finally back.

NH

I’m requiring my meals to contain a minimum number of veggies right now, in order to use up the bounty.  We enjoyed salad along with pasta with a tomato fennel sauce and managed to use up no fewer than 10 separate veggies!

MA

Erica had fresh local halibut and Connecticut Blue Point oysters to work with this week!  She made a gorgeous chowder with the halibut, and narrowly avoided an ocular emergency while shucking the oysters.  Check out her post for a step-by-step account of the chowder.

A cornmeal crusted, roasted ratatouille tart certainly must use up a whole bunch of those veggies you’ve got!  Laurie enjoyed this recipe from Ellie Kruger, along with a tossed salad.  Looks fabulous!

Finally, Leslie has overcome pneumonia and a broken toe to get back to posting (feel better, Leslie!).  She not only posted a Greek meal of zucchini, eggs and onions, but she points out that anything that uses up zucchini is a welcome food this time of year.  She includes a bonus recipe for a zucchini appetizer which I think will be on my list of things to make this week.  Thanks, Leslie!

Have a great week, everyone!

One Local Summer-week 11: Western Region

Colorado & California:

Summers in San Francisco might not be as hot and predictable as they are other parts of the country, but if they lead to dinners with names like Braised Lamb with Young Vegetables, they can’t be all bad. Anita took advantage of the need for a sweater to make a light summer stew that makes my mouth water!

She’s still waiting for baby girl to appear but she’s cooking up a storm while she does. Momaste featured two local meals this week. The first was a summer vegetable and barley soup that featured meatballs from the freezer and ingredients from the CSA box and front yard garden. With whole oats in the pantry, she decided to put them in the slow cooker and add milk, cherries, cinnamon and vanilla - and it sounds as good as I bet it smelled!

Ellen continues to experiment with raw foods. This week’s adventures included raw gazpacho with heirloom tomatoes, cucumber, garlic and Brazil nuts as well as green smoothies featuring a variety of green ingredients.

While spending the afternoon making a summer saison on homebrewing day, Lauren turned her attention to dinner and decided on chili in the slow cooker. Dinner not only was delicious, but writing about it marked her 100th post!

Oregon & Washington:

Making use of the Summer Corn Salad recipe she picked up in her “dog days dinner party” cooking class, Joan made a dinner perfect for those too hot to cook days. It featured corn salad served with cheese, tomato and jalapeno quesadillas.

In a clean out the fridge before going on vacation all local dinner, Donna featured BLT sandwiches, corn on the cob and carrot sticks. Enjoy your vacation Donna!

Worried that local salad and water wouldn’t cut it, JM also made a honey rhubarb betty for dessert (and dinner) as well as a zucchini ricotta savory cheesecake. Mmmm, both sound excellent.

I’m assuming they’re not surviving on fruit alone (but you never know with those crazy Shibaguyz) while they preserve up a storm. Last week featured fresh jam, canned berries and peach jam as well as peach salsa, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, tomatoes and peaches. They’re putting us all to shame, or at least me anyway…

Monica had a busy week but still found time for dinners of bok choy and chicken as well as pasta with lentils and arugula. The second recipe could use some changes to make everyone in the family love it - swing by her blog if you want to help her out.

Kimberly was busy this week. Her featured dinner was designed to avoid cooking in the heat of the afternoon and included a “height of summer salad” and homemade sourdough english muffins. She also made raspberry syrup for use on pancakes and as a soda base. And finally they had homemade mixed berry sorbet for dessert. Yum!

Here at The Hennery we went super local with a dinner of Coq au vin brought to us by the sacrifice of a couple of extra roosters. Not my favorite way to arrive at a local dinner, but well worth the effort. We used Anita’s recipe and combined it with a summer veggie salad, steamed broccoli and greenbeans and a raspberry tart brought by a friend.

The 320 Market Cafe

Monday, August 18, 2008

I’m always on the lookout for places to pick up locally grown foods, whether it’s in the city or the burbs.  Lately, I’ve been finding more little gems in the burbs!  My latest favorite is the 320 Market Cafe in Swarthmore.  They keep a nice stock of locally grown fruits and vegetables.  Over the weekend they had local squash, corn, tomatoes, peaches, and a whole host of others.  They’ve also made a pledge to only carry mushrooms from Chester County (according to their newsletter, ChesCo mushroom producers are facing stiff competition from Chinese producers - who charge less, but also produce an inferior product).

Additionally, 320 stocks Birchrun Hill cheese, Seven Stars yogurt, and Natural by Nature milk, and coming this Fall you’ll be able to pick up local, organic, pastured chicken and local grassfed and pastured beef.

I should also mention that they have stellar pico de gallo.  The avocado may not be local, but the tomatoes are.

It’s really great to see the 320 Market Cafe making an effort to support local farmers and our local economy.  I’ve heard reports that many other small markets in the vicinity (not just Delaware County, but throughout our region) are moving toward this model, In increasing numbers, people care about where their food comes from and have the desire to keep small farmers afloat. 

The $75 tomato

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Sometimes all the effort, locally sourced seedlings, good intentions, and compost in Greater Philadelphia will not make for a good crop. Here’s a photo of only part of my heirloom tomato jungle. Big healthy plants, organically fed (easy on the nitrogen—I was careful about that), appearing to the casual observer as one heck of a tomato wonderland.

This little guy is the first one this summer. Halfway through August. Not exactly $75 tomato—the squat patio tomato plants have been producing, thank goodness, but still.

In early July when I should have been seeing lots of little green gumdrops and did not, I did see that lots of flowers had fallen off. I hit the books and the web for the solution. My guess is that the extreme heat caused them to drop because the night temps stayed in the high 70s and low 80s for weeks. Now, my plants are flowering again, it’s cooler outside, and I’m hoping for a late bumper crop. So hang in there to all of you who set out on the path of locavoracious righteousness and have yet to reach the mountain top.