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 July 17th, 2013


This post expired on July 14, 2023.

Hey Local Food Lovers,

I’m posting this message from Taiwan where I just returned from an all you can eat steakhouse where I gorged myself on more meat, seafood, and ice cream than you can imagine. Food is central to life here and its probably one of my favorite things about Taiwan. It’s very much like the New Orleans motto where they Live to Eat rather than Eat to Live. It’s a little bit dangerous for me b/c I could gain a lot of weight if I’m not careful. That’s why I’m headed off on a 3 day bicycle ride tomorrow….so I can earn my right to eat as much as I want.

So you can get a feel for my challenge I’ll just describe today for example. We started the morning by looking for my all-time favorite food in Taiwan called fantwan, or sticky rice ball. This is primarily a street vendor dish made in the mornings that consists of a layer of sticky rice (the purple variety is my favorite as it has more fiber and flavor), pickled cabbage, pickled radish, fried donut type stuff for crunch, dried pork (its very common to have this type of pork that is like jerky but shredded very fine, almost fluffy), then it’s all rolled into a ball that sticks together.

For some reason my wife took us from the fantwan stand to another place for wonton soup and shalom boa which are these little steamed dumplings stuffed with pork. Now keep in mind it’s 9am and I’m having pork dumplings to help wash down my fontwan, with a little wonton soup to help. But wait, then we had a side of dry tofu and some soy milk. Just to be fair, we saved most of our fantwan for later in the day.

So off we went to explore some of Taipei’s oldest markets….by scooter. Scooter life is quite amazing and something I fell in love with last time I was here. Because there are so many people and so little space, there are many more scooters than cars for the simple reason that you can find a parking space so much easier for a scooter…and it’s cheaper and more convenient to get around. It’s not uncommon to see a mom with one baby strapped to her chest and a 5 year old on the back of a scooter zipping down the road faster than you.

Our first snack at the old market wasn’t that unusual. An ice cream cone. As you walk down the road there are dozens of foods and drinks that look delicious. Our next treat was fresh pressed sugar cane. I’d never had this before and I have to say, it’s amazing. It’s sweet to be sure, but it tastes like juice. It’s a dark green color, and my guess that unrefined it has some nutritious value, maybe from fiber, or even the still living chloroplast that you obviously don’t get from processed sugar. We should look it up. My guess is it’s good for you.

It was scorching hot so about 30 minutes later we were ready for something else to cool us down and there was a lady cutting open fresh cocunuts pouring the juice into bottles and putting the bottles in ice water to make it cool and delicious. It was!

Next we hopped back on the scooter and headed to a little village known for ceramics. Ching-Yu got an iced coffee but I wanted something better. It’s simply called shaved iced and it puts our snow cones to shame. Rather than just pour colored sugar water over ice this treat gives you the following options for toppings on your shaved ice: green jelly, tapioca balls, pudding, taro, then many different types of sweetened beans, then your option to have condensed milk or a sweetened syrup poured on top. This makes it all more like a lite ice cream than a snow cone. It’s the perfect snack on a hot day and other than a little extra sugar, it’s mainly good for you.

I could go on for pages re: food if I let myself, but that’s probably good for now.

Before I wrap up and plug a few items I’ll just mention that one thing that has really impressed me here is that everyone is incredibly thin despite these rich, delicious foods. Only thing I can figure is they are just so physically active. Each day involves lots of walking, riding bikes, or scooters, or taking trains or buses to get to work, school, markets, etc. People are moving, moving, moving non-stop. I’ll admit, it can be a bit exhausting at times, especially given the heat, but it keeps one fit. One of the most impressive things I’ve noticed and enjoyed since arriving here is every river has a trail next to it creating these extensive greenway networks that allow people to get all over the place via pedestrian means without traffic. Most people use these for recreation more than for commuting, but I’ve been very impressed with not only how many of them there are (miles upon miles – 50+), but how many people here are utilizing them. Taiwan, and especially Taipei is known in Asia as being one of the best cycling cities. Lucky for me as other than language lessons and eating, that’s been the other focus of my trip so far.

Ok, time to move on to what’s going on back in Georgia. I know it’s still been raining non-stop and your all about sick of it. We just had a Typhoon here in Taiwan and the price of vegetables is super high this year due to bad weather. Maybe our local growers should be charging more too since obviously there will be less of everything with the mildew and rot that is no doubt going on.

However, even with all these challenges I noticed there are tons and tons of cucumbers and beans this week. It’s pickling season and I really encourage folks to try their hand at making pickles if you haven’t before. Ching Yu started making pickles a few years ago and I don’t care if I never have another store bought pickle. They just don’t compare. If anyone has a great pickling recipe please post it to our recipes section or to our facebook page and maybe you’ll inspire somebody.

I said I was gonna plug Lake Rabun Hotel and Restaurant and I am, but not today. I’ve got to get up early and hit the bike. However, to insure you don’t miss any good eats opportunities I’ll continue to post their schedule here until I do get around to talking about Jamie Alred and all the good he does for our growers and our stomachs by cooking so dang good.

You can see the schedule of farmers for Featured FArmer Thursdays by visiting
http://www.soque.org/pdfs/Featured_Farmer_2013_flyer_one_page.pdf

or click here

Thanks for shopping local and

EAT WELL,

Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Rabun