Haymarket Farmers' Market

(FYI: This post is not about our Farm Share, but it is about one of Boston's Farmers' Markets!)

Today was the first beautiful soon-to-be-Spring Boston day!  We don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, because we know there is more than likely some cold weather (and maybe snow) to come, but when the weather is nice this city explodes.  The excitement of getting out of the house and enjoying the beautiful day is contagious.

I took a trip to the Haymarket Farmers' Market after a fun day out in the city with friends.  Not all produce at this market is local, but it was fun to walk through and take in the atmosphere.  There was a buzz of excitement and activity as people took advantage of both the nice weather and good prices on produce and other goods (including fish, herbs, spices, and flowers).

3/3 Farm Share

My post is a couple days late, but here is this week's share:

Lovely!  Baby spinach, green chard, green leaf lettuce, lots of carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, Yukon potatoes, apples, grapefruit, and beets.  Excited!  In planning this week's meals, I'm going to candy those beets in the balsamic/orange reduction I mentioned before for salad (look for the recipe post), and I've already used an apple in oatmeal.  I'm thinking of using some potatoes for gnocchi, and we'll see where the rest of the week takes us.  Stay tuned!

Farm Shares Benefitting the Community

If you are thinking about becoming a member of a Farm Share, another thing to take into consideration is the amount of outreach the farm does within the community to provide healthy produce to those who may not be able to afford it.

I wanted to share this excerpt from our February 22, 2010 Enterprise Farm Newsletter:

Each increase in Farmshare membership enables Enterprise Farm to achieve larger goals related to sustainable practices and food distribution efficiency. ... We're also committed to providing healthy, fresh food to all people, regardless of socio-economic background.  We're very proud of our relationships with Food For Free (Cambridge, MA), the Survival Center (Northampton, MA), and the Brookline Community Foundation. ... Given the amount of food waste that occurs in the modern marketing system, this is incredibly satisfying.

Higher Costs?

I was recently talking to one of my best friends about our Farm Share.  She lives in the South and had mentioned that she looked into one (yay!), but was taken aback by the price.  There is sticker shock when you first start researching Community Supported Agriculture co-ops.  Some farms provide produce and you pay up-front for the entire year.  Other farms provide produce by season, so you pay maybe twice a year for a Summer/Fall and Winter/Spring share.  Regardless, depending on where you live and accessibility to farmers that participate in Community Supported Agriculture, you can expect costs of about $1,000/year (give or take). 

The sticker shock is absorbed, however, when you think about how much that is per week.  It comes out to about $20/week (and remember, deduct the cost of the Farm Share from what you would otherwise buy). 

With our Farm Share, we very rarely buy produce at the grocery store, and instead of shopping at the grocery store weekly, we might go once every two to three weeks.  Bills at the grocery store (and we're talking Shaw's, not Whole Foods) have fallen from $60-100 every time we shopped to $30-$60.  While we might just be breaking even by being Farm Share members, we certainly aren't spending more money. 

Just food for thought (no pun intended)!  Again, all this depends on where you live and how expensive your local Farm Shares are, but the costs are surprisingly reasonable--especially when you consider the local, mostly organic produce you receive.

Lunchtime Enthusiasm

I love it!  While at work today I received an email from my husband with a picture of the lunch he enjoyed: a sweet potato topped with wheat berries, pecans, a little butter and brown sugar.  Looks great, and in his words, it was "DELICIOUS."

Thanks again, Farm Share, for the sweet potato and wheat berries.

Sweet Kale

When we first started receiving hearty Winter greens we didn't know what to do with them.  We both had always eaten spinach and other lettuces, but we had never really purchased or consumed many dark leafy greens (with the exception of Collard Greens; we are from the South).

Once you have an understanding of how to cook Kale or Swiss Chard or Dandelion Greens, I feel like you can do a lot of fun experimenting and add favorite flavors or spices to make a dish all your own.

Here, I simply added Golden Raisins to the Kale sautéed in garlic and red onion.

Non-Recipe Recipe for Cooking Kale

Cut out stems from Kale leaves and set aside.  Cut stems in 1-inch pieces.  Roll leaves together and chop in 1-inch pieces.  In a saucepan, sautée onion and garlic in oil until onion becomes soft.  Add stems to pan and let cook for 3-5 minutes.  Add chopped Kale to pan, and begin sautéing.  Also add some water, enabling the Kale to cook through and become soft.  Cook for 10-15 minutes until Kale is bright green and softened.

From here, add whatever other ingredients sound good: pine nuts, raisins, peppers, chile powder, etc.  Adding a fatty meat to the onion and garlic before adding the Kale is a way to guarantee additional flavor, but you don't have to add fat to make a Kale dish delicious.

Beets and Turnips and Carrots (Oh my!)

I KNOW, cheesy title.  But we tried a couple recipes with beets and turnips this week--a challenge for me.




(Despite my lack of love for the beet, I can appreciate it's beauty.  Isn't a golden beet pretty?)


I'll be honest, I just really don't enjoy beets (red or golden, though golden are much milder and therefore, in my opinion, better).  And now I know I don't enjoy raw turnips.  I cooked a gratin using turnips (which I talked about in an earlier post), and they were great in that.  I have candied red beets in an orange/balsamic reduction to throw in a salad (which I found tolerable, thank you goat cheese).  But this week, before cooking the beets and turnips, we tried them raw in a salad.

So, since I promise to paint an accurate picture of our adventures with the Farm Share, here you go: it can sometimes be a challenge.

The other night we had a meal that consisted of a salad (raw carrots, turnips, and golden beets on a bed of baby arugula with balsamic dressing) and wheat berry pilaf (pilaf recipe in previous post).  The arugula, carrots, beets, turnips, and wheat berries were all from our Farm Share.


The salad was actually really good and I ate the whole thing, I just found myself eating the turnips and beets with as much arugula I could fit on the fork.

The carrots were, of course, delicious!  And the wheat berry pilaf was really good.













Despite my distaste for raw beets and turnips, all was not lost on the remainder of our beet and turnip supply.  Tonight we boiled the beets and turnips along with some potatoes.  Once soft, I puréed the turnips and beets in a food processor and added them to mashed potatoes.  The finished product was delicious!  And we used all the beets and turnips (and potatoes) we had from our Farm Share.

So, while turnips and beets are adverse to my personal tastes, we made it work--and enjoyed the challenge along the way (and the rewards at the end).

(My pictures all have a yellow tint...sorry about that!)