Locally Grown - Availability for December 10th, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

We only have two more markets until Christmas! Shop local this year and buy some gifts for family, friends and your own self right here. There are some brand new and very exciting items again this week.

First off, we’d like to welcome long time customer of Locally Grown Jamie Alred to the market this week as a vendor. Those of you who don’t know Jamie, I often call him the biggest purchaser of local foods here in the mountains. He serves it up at his new and highly acclaimed restaurant in Clayton called FORTIFY (opened up back in March). If you can’t get all the way up to Clayton for an awesome meal at this tremendous farm to table experience, no worries, Jamie can send it to you! This week he’s offering BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP made with Mountain Earth Farms butternuts and apples, and even comes with 2 ounces of roasted pumpkin seeds to drop on top. YUM! Sold by the quart, and you should just go ahead and buy two and freeze one to break out over the holidays. You’ll be glad you did.

If one reason you love Locally Grown is to learn how to cook good local foods, from hip local farms, you’ll also love Jamie’s Cookbook available for sale on the market for the first time this week called Field Kitchen: Farm Fresh Food from the Northeast Georgia Mountains. It features 9 farms (2 of which sell here on our market) with 3 recipes featuring products from each farm. What better way to enter the new year with great new recipes. And obviously a perfect gift for other local foodies! Buy two, one to keep and one to gift.

And there are even more exciting items this week both for gift giving and for personal enjoyment. Sylvan Mills Falls has brought back their Christmas Specialty the Buche de Noel, which is a french style sponge cake that comes in two flavors, chocolate or almond. I had one of these and it blew my mind! Don’t buy a crummy supermarket cake, do it up right with organic water wheel ground flour cake with just the right amount of Gran Marnier to make it punch.

One last cool holiday item is the Christmas Cactus mugs. Everyone needs a Christmas Cactus, so anyone you know who doesn’t have one, this is a very cute gift. And if they are just incapable of keeping it alive then they can still use the cute mug for morning coffee. Also available are hibiscus tea mugs, and tulsi tea mugs.

Before I wrap up I’ve been on a greens kick this week. Long stewed kale is my standby straight out of Alice Waters cookbook. The recipe is posted on our recipes section. Don’t forget to use our Recipes link and post your own recipes too please. I get bored making the same things, but I never tire of the taste. I also made a swiss chard gratin, also an Alice Waters creation. If I had a clone I’d ask him to post that recipe too, but alas my free time is gone for the night.

God Bless and EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew