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 24th, 2013


This post expired on July 22, 2023.

Hey Local Food Lovers,

So this message is coming to your from Chiang Mai Thailand. Before I describe the local foods I’ve been enjoying let me start by plugging all the incredible food that has landed on Locally Grown this week. It’s an 11 hour time difference here so the first thing I did upon waking up was scroll through this week’s offerings. I have to admit that even though I am greatly enjoying the food here, it made me a tad homesick to see what I’ll be missing.

The first thing I noticed that made me smile is we have so many new farms and food producers this year bringing a wider diversity of crops. That’s a trend I expect and hope will continue b/c as they say (and I embrace) diversity is the spice of life.

The things that caught my attention were: CORN! We’ve always had an underabundance of sweet corn so it’s great to see Oakcrest Farms with one of the best tastes of summer. Melon Head’s chinese noodle beans look great, and i love that they are mixing their greens and their reds for nice color on the plate. There are tons of cucumbers and garlic and quite a few flowers. There are also the seasons first peppers and…….just in case you didn’t notice….TOMATOES. That’s what I’m really jealous of. I guess I’ll have to wait until I return to have my first heirloom tomato sandwich.

Ok, I’ve only got a few minutes so let me tell you just a tiny bit about my food adventures. Street vendor food is a way of life in Thailand just as it was in Taiwan. Last night Chiang Mai had a night market that was attended by thousands. If I had to guess I’d say there were close to 100 different street food vendors scattered all over the city. For those who haven’t experienced this I’ll try and describe it. Usually vendors will be clustered in certain areas so that people can wander around and see what they would like. We can’t read a word of Thai so we have to look and watch what each vendor is making and then point when we see what we’d like. We’re slowly picking up a few words like “moo” for pork. Most vendors cook either cook over a grittle built into the cart, or more frequently a wok that they set up over a gas flame slightly away from the cart. Depending on how popular that cart is they may have a help who is handing them the cut up ingredients for each dish as the orders come in. The owner is always the one standing over the flame. It’s quite fun to watch them whip up your food right in front of you.

We don’t know all the names of the dishes we’ve had but here’s some quick descriptions:
Pad Thai – you’ve probably had this – it’s a peanut flavored noodle dish we’ve had served with chicken, or shrimp, pork and cabbage which is cooked in a pot rather than a wok and served with a spicy sauce, stuffed fried peppers with chicken (this was one of our favorites), chicken noodle soup (that had a mixture of regular and fried noodles), papaya salad (papaya, carrots in a spicy sauce), roasted chicken and pork (the pork is especially amazing because of a sweet sauce they drizzle over it). Then there are tons and tons of juice and smoothie stands where you can get fresh mango, passion fruit, papaya and a dozen other fruits. Best smoothies I’ve ever had I think. Mango mojito which is without the rum but with the mint is my favorite.

One of the coolest local foods is this thing called Roti which is dough that is fried on griddle with banana inside and then drizzled with condensed milk. That is a heavenly dessert!

I don’t think there is such a thing as organic street food, so it’s not perfect in that way, but the exposure to all these dishes is pretty amazing. We are going to a Thai cooking school next week that is on an organic farm, so maybe I’ll have some healthier things to describe last week.

Time to get on the motorbike and head into the mountains for a few days.

Hope you enjoy all the local food back home and …..
EAT WELL,
Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Rabun