Locally Grown - Availability for May 13th , 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Hope everyone had a Happy Mother’s Day! For our family we had lots and lots of fun things to eat for this….our first mother’s day. It all started on Friday with the thawing of two pork chops from Wauka Meadows while we went for a quick jog before the thunderstorm came through. Once thawed I did my favorite pork chop preparation which is simply chopped fresh thyme and rosemary (it’ll be mainly the rosemary that carries through) rubbed on the chops with a little olive oil and then some fresh ground pepper. I let them sit that way for a half hour to let the flavors soak in. Then onto the grill for just a minute or so on high to sear the meat on both sides, then down to low for a nice long slow cook.

As a side we tried something new. We had beet greens from Trillium Farms (those came from the Clarkesville Farmers Market not Locally Grown, we like to get around to all the local food we can find if you know what I mean), beets from Mountain Earth, and oranges from …..o.k. from the grocery store….but what did you expect…..we can’t grow oranges around here. I had a vague idea of beet orange salad but had never had one. It’s so simple and beautiful it’s perfect. First, everyone should know how to properly roast a beet, and I don’t mean bake it to death where it’s all dried out. I learned this from Alice Waters. You simply take a baking dish or pan and put just a little bit of water in the bottom, enough to cover the bottom of the pan (.25 inch let’s say or a little more) then add the beet roots, then put foil over the top, bake on 400 for about 45 minutes. Beets will come out tender to the fork. You can peel if you like. I just ran cool water on them to cool them down fast chopped them up in a bowl, then parboiled the beet greens (that just means flash boil them for about a minute), chopped them up and added them. Then I zested an orange, peeled it, broke it into sections and actually I just pulled it apart into pieces (you could chop it just as easy). It all went in a bowl and got chilled for 20 minutes. Boom, beet/orange salad. You can add a fancy vinegar like a champagne vinegar, but we went without and it was great just simple.

Then for desert we had strawberries, wonderful strawberries. We ate them raw, then we also cut them into pieces and sprinkled with vanilla extract and sugar and let them sit. Then after 20 minutes some of those went into a blender with a few scoops of ice-cream and some milk to make a really good milk shake. The rest went into homemade popsicles. Half the popsicle was the strawberry/vanilla/sugar mixture with yogurt mixed in. The other half of the popsicle was mango mixed with mint and green juice (which is a vegetable and fruit juice blend).

As you can see it was a tasty start to the weekend. Also this weekend we had Leah Lake collard greens, some BG farms bacon, and lasagna made with BG farms beef, and a combination of beet greens and spinach. Sounds strange …..tastes amazing! And of course more strawberries.

Spring is my favorite time of year for eating local.

I hope it becomes your favorite time as well.

Two big announcements before I go.

We’re looking for some very important volunteers to help us with a few projects this year. And even if you don’t have the time I hope you’ll help us spread the word on these two great activities we have coming up.

The first is a brand new project for us. While we have FORUM communications helping us for two more months developing a wide range of marketing tools, we came up with the idea to begin compiling our own RECIPE BOOK with Locally Grown items, and dishes made by YOU GUYS our customers, also dishes by our FARMERS and even some CHEFS. If you would like to be involved in helping us compile recipes, collecting them from some of our friends, and possibly even taking photographs and other interesting tasks, we’d like to find one or two volunteers to help with this project. We will have a template for making the recipes look attractive so we can start to circulate them as we collect them. The long range goal though is to come up with enough (at least 40 or more) to compile into a Book, which should help to entice even more people to EAT LOCAL.

If you’re interested in such a task just send Andrew an e-mail Andrew.NGLG@gmail.com and let us know why you’re interested, and what skills, talents or interests you think you might be able to lend.

The second VOLUNTEER effort is helping out on some of our Locally Grown farms, and playing Farmer for a day. When polled farmers agree, the single biggest way that we could help them and make their lives easier (other than eating their food every week) would be to come out and put in a few hours of work during the crunch time of the season. We’ve never organized an event like this before and we’re pretty excited about being able to lend a hand. Details are still getting nailed down but the week of June 22-26 we’ll be helping at least one farm in a very significant way. In exchange you can get a pretty big discount (over 30% off) on your purchase of a FARM TOUR pass. More important than that, you’ll likely learn a lot about what organic farming looks like, skills that you can use in your own gardens. If you’re interested, please add “CropMob2015!” volunteer day to your cart this week. It doesn’t obligate you to anything….and it doesn’t cost anything. But it’ll give us an idea of how many folks are interested in lending a hand. And we can also coordinate the best dates and times based on who is most interested.

Thanks to you all for supporting Locally Grown foods in all the ways that you do. There are more opportunities every year!

Eat well,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew