Green Options

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Happy Holiday Weekend coming up! This week, I want to share with you some of the words from our weekly CSA letter (we do both a CSA and I shop the market). This letter is from our family farm supplier and keeps us up-to-date with all that is happening at the farm. The paragraph sums up so much about why farmers pursue a difficult livlihood, often working a second job just so they can continue farming.

“I have been thinking a lot this week about growing things and how lucky we are to live in a place where it is possible to see nature in all its forms. As pissed off as I get about the deer eating produce, it still takes my breath away to see a doe and her baby standing by the side of the road. I love to watch the dragon flies dive boming over the plants in the field and just have to search for the nest of a quail who is frantically trying to call me in the opposite direction. It never ceases to amaze me that a seed no bigger than a pinhead can create a plant that is over 12 feet tall and will produce a two-pound tomato. What a wondrous world we live in.

Post for this week follow the jump.

Spring finally exploded here, and my market haul took two trips to the car. For a mere $40.00 I came home with peaches, two bunches of asparagus, 2 lbs. of collard greens, 2 heads of lettuce, a huge head of Savoy cabbage, cilantro, amaranth leaves, spring onions, kohlrabi, strawberries and blueberries, 2 bulbs of garlic, and 2 lb. green beans. I don’t even want to guess what the same stuff grown “no spray” at the market would have cost me in the “organic” produce section of the store. Many of the farmers I know are not certified organic, but practice sustainable methods, so I look for people I trust, not USDA logos. I like it that way.

The two “experiments” in my haul are, of course, kohlrabi and amaranth. I heard more than one remark, “But what do you do with it?” over these items. I am determined to find out. For the kohlrabi, which is a combination word from German and German Swiss for “cabbage” and “turnip,” the mild radish-like flavor and crunch lends itself to a tangy kohlrabi slaw recipe.

For the rest of the carnival, entries from all of you include some great recipes and advice this week. Reader posts after the jump.

This week’s market fare is a short one, must be the busy start of summer! I am definitely with Joy in celebrating the fact that fresh berries are now in season. Really looking forward to a trip to the U-pick farm and the arrival of blueberries and blackberries as well. It’s a favorite time of year around this kitchen.

Posts follow the jump.

This week marked our first CSA pickup of the season. The bag contained spinach, scallions, strawberries, asparagus, bok choy, and lettuces. I go to the market as well as the CSA each week, though it sounds odd, and there I buy other items that our CSA does not grow. So, I added more herbs like dill and some baby arugula and purple asparagus to the mix. Spring is finally here!

Submissions for this week follow the jump.

While I missed a week’s posts due to a family emergency, all of you have been writing some amazing posts. Thanks for keeping at it and keeping me inspired. Great tips, photos, stories and recipes after the jump.

Now, you would think on the first weekend of May, we would not be shivering from cold while we gathered fresh produce at the market, but its been a different season here, and weeks in, we are still lagging in temperatures and abundance. I keep hoping for a beautiful spring day to enjoy outside at the market, and well, I am still hoping.

In the meantime, we dress warm and console ourselves with purple and green asparagus, arugula, spring onions, herbs, lettuces and spinach.

Around the country, other markets are filled with spring’s freshest. Entries for this week’s Farmers Market Fare after the jump.

Headlines from today’s White House press conference included a quote from President Bush encouraging Americans to eat local. It caught me a bit off guard.

Putting the comment back into context, however, there are a few problems with the logic of this suggestion, and not just that he, Bush, was the creator of the “eat local” concept.

The statement was made in response to a question on the relationship between ethanol and food price increases: (quote from press conference after the jump).

Welcome to this week’s Farmers Market Fare Posts! We gathering more posts in this second edition, and I hope that continues to grow as the Eat Local season really gets started for most of the country. Perhaps not so much for my neck of the woods where we had snow and cold. Then spring arrived the following afternoon. Just to mock me, or to cheer me up. Or both.

Given that this coming week is Earth Day, and April is poetry month, here are a few words from Kahlil Gibran’s poem, “Earth:”

“How beautiful you are, Earth, and how sublime!
How perfect is your obedience to the light,  and
how noble is your submission to the sun!

How soothing is the song of your dawn, and how
harsh are the praises of your eventide!
How perfect you are, Earth, and how majestic!”

Here are your blog posts for the week (after the jump).

© Janpietruszka | Dreamstime.com

I don’t need any more reasons to eat my blueberries. I love them. Even so, here’s a bit of good news. University of Reading and the Peninsula Medical School in the South West of England researchers have found that the luscious little berries are effective at reversing age-related deficits in memory.

The study showed that a regular diet supplemented with blueberries fostered improvements in spatial working memory tasks in [...]

I was not born in the country. When I arrived, I had already been uprooted seven times before. I was on my fifth family dynamic and sixth school. I was ten years old.

My father had always wanted a farm, and he and my step mom decided that life in a smaller community would be just the place for a child to grow up. And so I was transplanted.

Growing up on a farm gave me a safe place to roam the woods with several pets in tow. It gave me a small classroom, too small for me to remain the quiet “smart kid” in the corner. It gave me peace, and a sense of place — a feeling of belonging that seems to take its deepest hold in those who grow up in the country. You can wander across the world, and I have, but it never leaves, this sense of place. My roots.

Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, tells the story of how she and her family lived for a year eating only food they grew themselves or that they purchased from local food-growers.

She was generous enough to take time from her book tour to answer our questions on the importance of keeping in mind that we are what we eat.

Why is buying and eating locally-grown

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