Locally Grown Availability for May 7th, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

It’s an exciting food week. We have a new farm joining Locally Grown this week, Taylor Creek Farms near Toccoa. They’ve been farming for at least 4 or 5 years and Chuck and Michelle Taylor are good friends and great farmers and we’re hoping they enjoy selling to Locally Grown so we get to see them every week. They have 4 items listed this week, red russian kale, concept lettuce, sweet valentine lettuce and one of my favorites Kohlrabi. I have some nordic roots so cool season crops like cabbages are right up my alley and Kohlrabi is one of my favorites both because it is so unusual and so versatile. In addition to eaten raw in salads, roasted in the oven, or cut up and put in soups as a more nutritious and tasty potato substitute, I also started grating them a few years ago for cole slaw. You could just forego cabbage all-together and use these with some fresh radishes this week, and chopped spring onion for a non-traditional cole slaw. I like to make my own mayo using simply an egg yolk and oil. Add fennel seed to really blow your mind.

I also want to talk this week about how lucky we are to have an incredibly diverse GLUTEN-FREE Bakery here on Locally Grown. Christy Bowen of Keep It Simple has a whopping 27 products listed this week that make it possible for those avoiding or reducing their gluten intake to enjoy a different delicious product every day of the week, breakfast, lunch and dinner. She makes granola bars (I love that their called “Crazy Good”…..and I agree), muffins, 4 different breads, cinnamon roll bread, bagels, hamburger buns and pizza crust just to name a few.

One of the things that makes this bakery unique is that in addition to providing finished products, she also understands that baking for oneself and being able to add a few extra ingredients that suit your unique tastes can really make your day. That’s why items like the pancake mix, muffin mix, brownie mix, biscuit mix and flour make it possible to take some credit for the finished product. As you bake these gluten free mixes up you can throw in some blueberries to your muffins, or some flax seed in your bread mix allowing you to make it just the way you like. As more and more people realize that unfortunately our bodies have not adapted well to the changes we’ve made to wheat and other flours over the decades, it’s great to have such alternatives being developed by cooking innovators like Christy. Even if you’re not gluten-free try one of her products. And if you know of others who are on a gluten-free diet, do something nice for them and buy a couple of Christy’s mixes to give them as a gift. Nothing beats the thoughtful gift of fresh local
food.

Before we go we just want to give a quick update on our Gainesville expansion that’ll start up in about a month. We went and met with some of our partners last Friday and did a practice setup at the new Market Location at the Northeast Georgia History Center. We couldn’t be more excited about this expansion and the location is just perfect. Over the next several weeks we’re going to start recruiting new customers to sign up so if you have friends in the Gainesville area encourage them to sign up now. We’re hoping to have at least 40 people signed up over the next month, with at least 15-20 customers for our opening day. That should be very easy to meet that goal, but word of mouth is always the most effective means of communication so talk us up.

Here’s what our new pickup site looks like. And meet our new market manager for the Gainesville Pick-Up, Andrew Linker.

We got to know Andrew really well last year when he shot the video for our Georgia Mountains Farm Tour (which is a really great video). This is the part of the message where I realize we have more going on than I have time to talk about but we have scheduled this year’s farm tour for June 28th and 29th and tickets are on sale. It’ll be a few more days before we’ve printed the brochures that describe all the farms but if you want to pre-order we’ll mail you the brochure when it’s complete. We’ll also sell brochures right here on Locally Grown. Here’s a link to where all the tour information will be posted.

http://georgiamfn.blogspot.com/

Ok, I’d better go. Don’t forget to…
EAT WELL,
Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Raubn