July 5, 2011
P.O. Box 1146 Marblehead, Mass. 01945 877‐FDC‐FARM www.farmdirectcoop.org [email protected] Supplying local produce and supporting local farmers for 19 years. FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Silk brand, which produces a variety of
alternative milks, including soy and
almond, recently announce that all its
products have been verified by the
Non-GMO Project. The company
hopes the move will win back
consumers who left after the company
came under harsh criticism in 2009 for
changing its soymilk from organic
soybeans to “natural” soybeans. The
“natural” soybeans were farmed
conventionally, but the company used
virtually identical packaging after
changing the product and made little
efforts to notify consumers of the
change. The company also offers a
traceability website, so consumers can
track origins of soybeans down to the
country level.
Free Fun Fridays!
The Highland Street Foundation has
teamed up with Massachusetts cultural
institutions to offer free admission to
select museums, concerts and even
plays! No registration or tickets are
required. This Friday, July 8th, the free
offerings include Plimoth Plantation,
the Worcester Art Museum, the Cape
Cod Museum of Art and the New
England Historic Genealogical Society.
Next Friday, options include the
Boston Museum of Science. For more
the full list and more details, visit
http://bit.ly/l8Xtup
More Bad News on Roundup
A review of existing data released by
Earth Open Source has found that
industry regulators in Europe are
aware that glyphosate, the main
ingredient in Roundup, causes birth
defects in the embryos of laboratory
animals. Their findings are just the
latest in a growing body of research
showing concerns about the chemical.
“Our examination of the evidence
leads us to the conclusion that the
current approval of glyphosate and
Roundup is deeply flawed and
unreliable," wrote the report’s authors
at Earth Open Source.
An article in the Huffington Post
notes that, while human studies are
few, there is some evidence that
Roundup can kill human embryonic
and placental cells. And there are some
concerns that a large increase in the
planting of Roundup-ready soy in
Argentina led to an increase in birth
defects and certain kinds of cancers.
Read the full story at
http://huff.to/mEyZgv
Vacation Swaps
Going to miss your FDC goodies?
Email [email protected]
with your depot, the day you will be
away, your contact details and share
type. We’ll run an ad to see if anyone
wants to swap days.
By Operations Manager Julie PottierBrown
I got the call that the squash are coming on
strong, so it feels like summer is finally here.
Before we know it, the tomatoes and corn will
be here. If Monday's calls work, we should
have raspberries. I will have a chat with Nate
Nourse of Nourse Nurseries about the best
date to do a bulk berry order. For now, hold
your bulk requests. There should be an online
berry order form up soon. Last year, around
this time we offered bulk blueberries, red and
black raspberries; red, white and pink
It’s zucchini season!
currents, and red and green gooseberries. We
will send an email when the order form is up and ready. I think the
berries are behind by a week.
Please continue to post what you made with your FDC share on
Facebook, or on our recipe blog. If you haven't joined us, it is a great
timely way to see how other members used their bounty. And a good
place to get questions answered about unusual veggies or cooking ideas.
We have a pretty active Facebook community – 145 members and
growing.
Thanks to those of you who put checks in the payment box or mailed
your installment in. Our growers really like to work with us, because we
buy what is in abundance (oh you have too many
cucumbers/eggs/radishes? We'll buy those!), we are accomodating
(Riverland Rob, please don't buy all those waxed boxed at $1.75 each, we
will help you buy more of those green plastic cajas (spanish for box)—
and we pay quickly. They really like that (Yeah for Tamara!) That puts
us at the top of the list! Want to know much we are supporting local
farmers? Just last week, June 28 and 30, we paid more than $9,700 to
seven different farms, two bread makers and one dairy!
For those of you who ask to pay for eggs or a cookbook at the depot,
we don't take cash at the depot -let me explain. We do not secure a
vendors license from the town or city where your depot is. We tell them
we do not vend. So, you may give us a payment for your share, even
cash if it is in an envelope with your name on it, but you may not walk
up to us, take some eggs and hand us $4, because that is not part of your
share. However if that money were in a sealed envelope with your share
name on it, eh, that would be OK. Get it?
Our farms this week: Riverland (cukes & more), Atlas (zucchini and
more), Enterprise (lots of choices), Nourse, hopefully raspberries,
Appleton farms, and maybe Czajkowski Farms. Herb shares are getting
lemon thyme and mint. Again, if you don’t use up your herb share over
a couple days, the lemon thyme is especially nice dried.
Julie
Ways to Connect with FDC
We at the Coop have been hard at work
introducing a variety of new ways to connect
with the FDC community. In case you haven’t
explored our new web site, it’s got a lot of cool features– from a Google
map that pinpoints our farmers, to a chart showing when foods will be
ripe, and of course news and recipes from our member community. It
also connects to our blog, chockfull of recipes for what’s in your share
right now! Thanks to Dan Collis-Puro, our web guru, for putting
together a really great site. And as Julie mentioned, we are also building
a community on Facebook. Post questions about veggies (what is this
funny-looking vegetable my spouse picked up? What’s your favorite
way to enjoy scapes?) or news about community events, thoughts about
farming, food and food politics. Staffers are monitoring the site and will
jump in with answers – as will our knowledgeable foodie community!
FRESH ZUCCHINI© Peter Kim |
Dreamstime.com
Silk Joins Non-GMO Project
FDC Fresh Ideas
Strawberry Thumbs Forever
By Linda Malcolm, Melrose Depot
Ed. Note: we just finished off the last of our spring
strawberries – and we’re already nostalgic for them! If you
still have a few around, Linda’s piece will help you
treasure them! And if you have a special food memory
you’d like to share, email [email protected]
“Do we have to take the strawberries? Can we
substitute something else for them?” Ahh, the
zucchini of early summer. They are lovely to see on
those June CSA tables: summer’s first fruit.
Strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberries.
My thumbs wince when my eyes connect to those
pints and quarts of red gems. Thirty-some years ago,
Mom’s strawberry patch in Iowa yielded 50 or more
quarts of strawberries every summer. And when it
came time to
“do
strawberries,”
our summer
tutorial in fine
motor skill
manipulation
began.
If you were
old enough to
Thanks to Katy Elliott for the
say “strawberry,”
photo. She blogs at
with or without the
www.katyelliott.com/blog/
“s,” you were given a
little bowl for the
stems, an empty big bowl for the stemmed berries,
and a quart of strawberries. Your stemming tools:
your thumbs and thumbnails. The first quart was fun
with a one-for-me, one-for-the-bowl rhythm. Second
quart, belly full, thumbs red. Third quart,
uncomfortable. The skin under the nail starting to
separate from the nail. After that quart, stinging until
we convinced Mom the pain was too much to
continue.
When we around eight or so – and despite Mom’s
grimace – Grandma showed us how to use a little
paring knife to stem the strawberries. The whitehandled Pioneer corn seed knife was to me what the
wheel was to the cave man. Mom’s idea of using
thumbs was to salvage as much strawberry as
possible from little stemmers. I’m sure safety was a
concern, but I think freezing 95 percent of each berry
rather than 50 percent was a higher priority. This is
the same reason why none of the kids were sent into
the patch to pick berries – the risk of tramped-on
casualties was too high.
With all strawberries stemmed, Mom sprinkled
on a little sugar, gave them a quick stir, then
spooned these little summer delights into pint bags,
and slipped them into the deep-freeze in the
basement. Year-round, no birthday celebration
would be complete without strawberries over ice
cream.
At the first CSA pick-up, I was reminded again
what a fresh strawberry really is…picked ripe. Like
Mom’s patch, from the CSA table, there is no need to
drill out the core of the strawberry with a paring
knife. The fruit is ripened all the way up to the stem.
So, this week I washed the berries and put them on
the table. I didn’t encourage my kids to stem with
their thumbs, but told them, “That’s the handle. You
can eat it right up to the stem.” But they didn’t, so I
carefully removed the stem with a paring knife so
they would eat 95 percent of the berry versus 50
percent. The strawberry doesn’t fall far from the
plant.
As I approach the CSA table, the strawberries
brighten the tables of green, and my thumbs beg for
a substitute. Although the little white paring knife,
Mom’s strawberry patch, and an endless sea of red
quarts are far away in time and space, strawberry
thumbs are forever.
Oregano Fettuccini with Lacinato
(Dino) Kale
By Stefanie Timmermann, Salem Depot
I picked up lacinato kale on Tuesday, and rather to my
surprise, a simple
pan-searing brings
out wonderful
flavors. Of course,
adding garlic
scapes didn’t hurt...
A lot of storebought pasta is
extruded, and
somewhat dense as
a result, whereas homemade noodles are mostly rolled
and cut like in this recipe. The fettuccini are incredibly
light as a result – I think it’s worth the extra effort for
the texture alone.
Because this recipe uses rye and whole wheat, more
liquid and salt are needed than in a regular pasta
recipe.
For the Pasta
½ cup rye flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs
About ¼ cup water
3-4 large sprigs fresh oregano, strip and finely chop
leaves (about ¼ cup)
3/8 to ½ teaspoon salt
Pepper
1) In a large bowl, mix flour, eggs, salt and pepper by
hand until a dough forms. Add only enough water to
make the dough lightly sticky. Knead the dough on a
flat surface for five minutes, adding flour if necessary.
It should come off the surface easily and only feel
“grippy” in your hands, not really sticky anymore.
Knead or roll into a flat shape, distribute oregano
evenly on top and roll up, knead to evenly distribute
the oregano.
2) If using a pasta maker, roll out to the finest setting
and cut into fettucini strips. Liberally flour both
surfaces whenever the dough gets too grippy. Most
rollers won’t cut if the dough is too sticky or the rollers
are moist. You can also roll out the dough by hand
(this takes time but is a good workout!). The dough
should be so thin as to be translucent before you cut it
into long strips with a sharp knife. Dry the fettucini by
draping them over an oven rack or pasta drying rack.
You will get about 6 servings of pasta. Once dry, the
pasta can be kept in an airtight plastic storage
container in the fridge for a couple of days. Because of
the eggs, I would freeze it if I wanted to keep a portion
for longer.
3) Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water
for 3-4 minutes. Coat the pasta very lightly in olive oil
or rinse in cold water to prevent sticking.
Topping
The veggie topping is much less time-consuming. For
two portions:
1 bunch lacinato kale, cut into ¼ inch strips
4 garlic scapes, cut into ¼ inch pieces
2 tablespoons extra-vigin olive oil
Salt
1) Heat sharply and sear all ingredients in a large
skillet, reduce heat and cook until scapes are tender
but firm, about 10 minutes. Toss with the pasta.
I grated a generous helping of the wonderful
fiddlehead fern cheese from the cheese share on top.
Add a tossed salad and it’s a complete dinner meal.