Green Options

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While browsing the St. Lawrence Market last weekend, I was elated to spot the paisley-shaped heads of fiddlehead ferns. I won’t get into my love for the regional delicacy too much, as Jennie already posted a great recipe, but I felt that - despite their season of only a few weeks - the wild, gamey greens deserved more than one ode to their deliciousness.

Before I’d left the market, I’d snapped up two bunches of ramps and a bag full of stinging nettles among my regular staples. In fact, the stinging nettles purveyor was kind enough to write out a recipe for tea (pictured below). It was my first ever stinging nettle experience.

More on that and other recipes inspired by my wild green windfall after the jump.

When it comes to the commercialization of holidays, people tend to point most of their angst towards Christmas. And who can blame them, when it’s not just a day, but a whole season of consumption? I have a similar knee-jerk reaction when it comes to Cinco de Mayo.

A day that’s supposed to celebrate Mexican patriotism, instead conjures up images of frat boys in factory-made sombreros, red, white, and green beads, drinking out of plastic margarita cups. All of this festive decor will find itself in the dumpster tomorrow. (And we had just finished getting rid of all the plastic Easter eggs and St. Patrick’s Day streamers.)

This year instead of wallowing in holiday cynicism, I decided to let it inspire me to create a great meal. Luckily, my neighborhood has dozens of small Mexican shops and produce stands, where the veggies are a steal. (I bought my supplies for this entire meal for under $10!)

I decided, rather than serving up some seitan, or veggie crumbles, which are taco staples in my vegan household, to go with something a bit more authentic and light: black bean tacos with mango salsa. Here’s my recipe:

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.

When we had company unexpectedly this week, I had to think quickly of a dish to serve. Earlier that day, I made some of the raw beet salad that I wrote about last month. I had about two cups of leftover shredded beets + carrots. So I decided to pickle them in a combination of rice vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and honey for the rest of the day.

As a quick snack for my pop-over friends, I made a modified Bahn Mi sandwich (you know, those incredibly complex Vietnamese sandwiches of liver pate, chicken and pork pieces, and pickled veggies between crusty slices of baguette).

To take the place of the liver pate, I used homemade hummus. The beat salad stood in for the usual daikon-and-carrot mixture. Instead of meat, I used some extra-firm, marinated tofu (a.k.a. the best tofu ever). The crusty baguette, veggies and tofu are all locally grown/made and picked up at the farmer’s market. Recipe after the jump:

In my last post, I suggested that school lunches are a reflection of our society’s crazy relationship to food. And there is no doubt that evidence for what Michael Pollan has called our “national eating disorder” can be found in many school cafeterias. I stopped by my daughter’s school yesterday at lunch time to see what they were serving, and I felt discouraged. The noodle turkey bowl and cheese pizza options both looked creepy. At least they have a salad bar, and milk.

But just as awareness is growing about food issues in general, people all over the country are trying to change school food into something we actually WANT our children to eat. So far, these efforts are local, occurring mostly by school or district. But they show that change is possible, and provide some great inspiration to parents and others who want to make things better.

Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes
designed to showcase produce gathered
from local farms or grown in my own garden.

I tip my hat to the plate in the picture below - without it I likely wouldn’t have made cake with sweet little Purple Haze and Kinko carrots, making the best carrot cake ever thanks to the intense natural flavors of the farm fresh carrots grated right before I tossed them in the batter. I give the plate credit because looking at it sitting empty on my counter made me think of cake. With young carrots being one of the early birds to show up in the farmers market in spring, carrot cake makes a perfect seasonal dessert that a clever eater can justify as getting his or her daily dose of vitamin C.

Carrot cake’s nothing new or exciting for me, but I’ve usually “cheated” in the past by using the bagged shredded carrots from the supermarket since I’m a little lazy and usually pressed for time. I’ll not make that mistake again. If you haven’t tried getting local carrots to put in your cake, you’d be well advised to do so. The other key, of course, is the freshness of your spices. People, if you’re aren’t grating your own nutmeg by now, get yourself a microplane and see what you’re missing!

It’s springtime and love must be in the air! We’ve had a few wedding related posts lately around the Green Options Network. Check out some green wedding tips here on Feelgood Style as well as some sources for eco-friendly wedding bands on Crafting a Green World. My own green wedding took place last summer, and I return to writing about it now because my husband and I were honored with being featured in this month’s issue of VegNews Magazine.

The publication profiles several weddings every year. I highly recommend picking up a copy (because I also love their recipes and features.) If you can’t find it at your newsstand, here’s a scan of the article where I’m featured.

I’m not just posting this to brag (but seriously, squeeeeee!). I also wanted to point you towards some green catering resources. Whether you’re planning a wedding, a fundraiser, or any other special event, we all know that large groups of people can create a lot of waste. So choosing caterers who specialize in local, organic food is one way to lower your event’s carbon footprint.

When one stands before a hive of bees, one should say quite solemnly to oneself, ‘By way of the hive the whole cosmos enters man and makes him strong and able’

Rudolf Steiner

What is Happening to Our Honey Bees?
I have been fortunate enough to make friends with my local ‘bee lady’, Landi Simone of Gooserock Farm in Montville, NJ. Her place is magical and represents to me a sustainable lifestyle that is in harmony with nature. The flowers all around are of course amazing. She has helped to educate me and countless others about what is happening with the honey bees.

There has been a lot of concern for continued decline in honey bee populations. The Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) Survey found the colony losses continue and the effects of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) have not abated. There was a 14% loss over the last year and this represents an unsustainable trend.

A little perspective on how important honey bees are: According to the AIA, Honey bees in the US are responsible for pollinating more than 100 different crops worth $15 billion annually.

“It’s disheartening to have to report that the honey bee colonies continue to die at unsustainable levels,” said AIA president and Häagen-Dazs® Ice Cream Bee Board member Dennis vanEngelsdorp. “At least 70 percent of all colony deaths can be attributed to non-CCD causes, underlying the need for research, not only into CCD, but into pollinator health in general.”

AHHHHHH - don’t mess with my Haagen-Daz!!!!

We northern Midwesterners tend to be humble cooks. Too often we don’t view our everyday fare as anything special. As a born and bred Midwestern gal, I sometimes fall in line with my peers and lust over hip California cuisine, Big Apple restaurant trends or Food Network designer chefs. The greens may seem greener over the border, which unfortunately results in us under-appreciating how good we have it in the land of cheese, wild rice and rhubarb.

But I’m forever reformed and now proudly flaunt my Midwest roots after bonding with The Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook: Local Food, Local Restaurants, Local Recipes. A new release from Renewing the Countryside, a Minnesota-based non-profit organization that champions the positive stories of rural revitalization, this photography rich book is a love song for local food. Through narrating the stories of 31 of Minnesota’s chefs and restaurants, the Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook offers 100 recipes that celebrate locally grown, organic and sustainable cookery.

Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes
designed to showcase produce gathered
from local farms or grown in my own garden. 

I know that my timing might seem a little off for writing a post about soup in April when most folks are soup-happy in November.  But the way I see it, there are still plenty of reasons to talk about soup right now.  For starters, spring colds are common, at least at my house.   There are still some root vegetables languishing away, desperate to be used up before the onslaught of spring veggies.  However, that onslaught hasn’t come just yet so there’s all the more reason to use up the winter stores.   And finally, as the garden gets churning away again in the new season, it’s good to have soup at the back of your mind; I find it’s a good way to use up the bounty to freeze for winter. 

So, all that being said, let’s talk about the basic principles behind soup making.  I’ll be so bold as to call this a “blueprint” and promise you that you’ll be able to make just about any soup your little heart desires without so much as a recipe clipping or blog post print-out (excpet this one, of course; you’ll need this one).

I have to admit that my 3rd grader doesn’t eat school lunches. She has tried what the kids call “hot lunch” exactly 3 times in her entire public school career. She doesn’t like them. At all. Every morning, I fix her lunch, and although I sometimes grumble a little, I am glad to get to choose what she can eat for her midday meal.

But lately, I have been thinking a lot about those hot lunches. For one thing, they feed a lot of children. Many of my daughter’s friends eat them frequently or always. In 2006, more than 30 million children in the U.S. each day ate school lunches. And the school lunch program has been all over the news lately. From downer cows that end up in our kids’ lunches to efforts in districts across the country to combat obesity and bad eating habits in school cafeterias, school lunches seem to be a metaphor for all the bigger issues about food in America today.

Depending on who you talk to, school lunches might be described as anything from a program that nourishes our kids