The Weblog

We send out cool articles and farmer highlights using a different email program. You can see the archives of those emails here and through our facebook page! We use this “weblog” every Friday evening to let you know the market page is accepting orders (look for the little add to cart buttons next to products). Northeast Georgia Locally Grown was officially OPENED on Monday, April 26th, 2010 and we are so thankful that you are helping support fresh local foods each week.



 
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Locally Grown - Availability for April 10th, 2012


This post expired on April 08, 2023.

Hey Local Food Lovers,

What an incredible weekend. Beautiful springtime weather. I’m guessing many of you were like me and felt the compulsion to go out and dig in the dirt a bit. I myself continued planting a few more of the nearly 60 fruit trees we’re trying to get in the ground here at the last minute. UPS and Keep Georgia Beautiful awarded us a grant to plant 5 fruit orchards at our local Greenway and four schools in Habersham County (Clarkesville Elementary, Wilbanks Middle, 9th Grade Academy, and Fairview Elementary). Each school now has a handful of fig trees, asian persimmons, paw paws and even some blueberries. It will take a little time, but as these trees mature it will be a great way to expose kids to the benefits of local foods.

I had many a delicious meal this week with some of the incredible offerings from Locally Grown. I’ll be honest with you, springtime is my favorite local food season. I don’t know why but beets, carrots, cilantro, collards, spinach, and in just a few more weeks strawberries and asparagus are just so dang exciting after a long winter. Here’s my two tasty treats of the week.

First is a delicious BEET DIP. I took one order of beets from Mountain Earth Farms, chopped the greens off and sauteed them with onion and a little broth. Then the roots I boiled for about 20 minutes. Then slipped the skins off and put them in the food processor with a quarter cup of fresh spinach from Leah Lake Farms. I’d also sauteed some onions (half were for my beet greens the other half for the dip) and put them in. Then added about a quarter to a half cup of sour cream and turned the food processor on until it was all mixed. Then I toasted some bread from Habersham Bakers with butter and smothered it with the beet dip. YUM!

A few days later I took some collard greens from Leah Lake farms and a few more from Mountain Earth Farms and chopped them coarsely and added them to some onions cooking in oil and covered. Once cooked down I added a cup of white riced and cooked further, then added a cup or more of broth (chicken, beef or vegetable will do), two tablespoons of dried dill, some salt, some pepper and some fresh ground coriander, then covered and simmered for 15 minutes. KAPOW! That’s a hearty, nutritious dish right there.

Here’s one more tip from Sid Blalock from Burton Mountain Farms.

This is a simple salad, but totally incredible, doesn’t taste simple at all… the lemon juice kind of breaks down the kale in just a few minutes, and is is wonderful… works best with young tender kale (such as mine), (older kale would just have to sit a few minutes longer, I guess)…

Ingredients
4-6 cups kale, loosely packed, sliced leaves, midribs removed, juice of 1 lemon
3-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, mashed
salt & pepper, to taste
hot red pepper flakes, to taste
2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese, or Asiago
1/2 cup freshly made bread crumbs from lightly toasted bread, or Panko

Instructions
1. Whisk together lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and a generous pinch (or more to taste) of hot red pepper flakes.
2.Pour over kale in serving bowl and toss well.
3.Add 2/3 of the cheese and toss again.
4.Let kale sit for at least 5 minutes. Add bread crumbs, toss again, and top with remaining cheese.

This ought to inspire some of you to buy some greens this week! Feel free to submit recipes to us as we’ll post them to our FACEBOOK page and possibly even here if it sounds yummy enough.

AND BUY SOME PLANTS THIS WEEK! There are quite a few offerings of organic plant starts for your garden. Don’t waste your money on sorry starts from the hardware store. If you want to eat well from your own garden, get a head start with plant starts from local farmers here at Locally Grown.

See you on WEDNESDAY and ….

EAT WELL,

Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Rabun