Tag Archives: CSA

Food Safety

Posted on May 10, 2016 by AnnieRie

Raise your hand if you were one of the millions contacted that you had bought possible listeria contaminated foods. That would include me. The ORGANIC edamame from COSTCO. Bought in 2014. Yep, it took two years for them to figure out they had a problem.

And people wonder why I stopped buying as much processed food. Why I run from my CSA to Friends and Farms to get most of the basic food we cook and eat. Why I do pick your own farm food, and process it myself.

We have seen three different recalls in May. CRF frozen vegetables and fruits from everywhere, it seems. Rice from Trader Joes and “pictfresh” veggies at Harris Teeter. Nature’s Promise at Giant Food. Around here these stores provide most of the pwople who live in the area with their weekly groceries.

I wonder why we have all these regulations driving our small local farmers crazy, while we allow mega producers to go TWO YEARS with possibly contaminated food.

Thankfully, that edamame didn’t make us sick. And, we haven’t bought grocery store frozen food in quite a while.

I have become convinced that the closer we remain to the source of our food, the better we have it. Since that “organic” label isn’t a guarantee that you get better quality, I think I will rely on knowing where my food originates.

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The Amish cooperative that gives us much of our food has that motto. Along with this philosophy.

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If we support our local farms and farmers, who feed their families with the same food they sell us, we wouldn’t have to worry about the industrial processing which may or may not contaminate our food.

It’s not as easy to take time to buy from small farms and producers, but at least you have a face to match to the food you buy.

Join a CSA if you want to take more control of the vegetables you get. Find a local meat producer to have fresher meat without hormones, antibiotics or questionable handling. Pick your own, at places like Larriland.

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And, by all means, don’t just assume because it’s organic, that it’s better. Farms around here take great care in growing food without undue use of harmful pesticides. They are an affordable alternative to mega-company organic stuff that costs more without being any better.

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Shopping at Friends and Farms

Posted on April 28, 2016 by AnnieRie

Somewhere along the line, we reduced our reliance on grocery stores and increased what we bought from our CSA and our regional food bag.

Like our combinations at Friends and Farms.

The Protein and Dairy bag.

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Today we got monkfish, ground chuck, eggs, cheese and turkey filets. Instead of milk, I pick extra produce. Today it was arugula.

Arugula was also in my sample produce bag, which I went on line to choose. My CSA doesn’t start until next week so I went on line to order a produce bag.

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One with a protein option. Shrimp.

You can customize all kinds of combinations with this company. And buy extras at the warehouse.

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Like yogurt and ice cream and apples and rice. Meat options too, which I saw on the blackboard. Whole chickens. Beef brisket. Specials every week as they try to keep the inventory in the freezer at a minimum.

Most of our food comes from here, and our CSA. No recalled foods from small local suppliers. No vegetables with possible listeria contamination. No meat products with wood, metal, plastic or whatever in them. I am a true believer in buying from small local companies, and knowing who processes your food.

Just to show how easy it is to come home and make an awesome dinner.

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I sautéed that monkfish. Added it to a skillet of rice and vegetables.

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Made a fish stew that will go into my regular rotation. It was that good.

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This was simple. Yesterday I made a couple of cups of rice in my rice cooker. The leftovers from dinner become an addition to tonight’s dinner. I sautéed onions, garlic, and asparagus in olive oil. Added a container of crushed tomatoes. A container or spicy kale and bean soup. A teaspoon of sugar. A half teaspoon of salt. A splash of wine. After sautéing the monkfish I finished it in this mix.

Served with this.

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A locally produced merlot.

Between the local markets, farms, CSAs and Friends and Farms, I don’t need to go to grocery stores. Unless I need toilet paper.

Yeah I forgot to photograph the final dish. It was served over arugula. Which was in my produce bag and my sample bag.

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A double dose of arugula.

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And The Winner Is …

Posted on April 13, 2016 by AnnieRie

… carrots. Yep, carrots. Well, tied with mushrooms, but they needed three varieties to match the two varieties of carrots in eight weeks. Out of the thirteen week Community Supported Agricultural winter share.

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We got orange carrots six weeks. Yellow carrots, two. We got mushrooms eight weeks. A combination of shiitake, cremini, and portabella.

All together, our 13 week CSA gave us 45 varieties of vegetables. Doing some math to compare the $330 price against buying in Wegmans (the best prices for organic), we would have spent at least $380 there. We did have to fudge a bit as Wegmans does not sell strawberry popcorn or garlic greens. I had to use farmers’ market pricing for those items.

My favorite this winter.

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Watermelon radishes. Sweet. With a slight hint of sea salt. A perfect appetizer.

We have a couple of weeks off before our spring/summer CSA starts. I will have to hit the local farm stands for vegetables.

No matter what. We will still support our Amish organic CSA, because they bring us awesome vegetables at less than store pricing, and only one or two days out of the fields.

Want to join us? 40-50 people hang out in a garage in Braeburn, picking up fresh foods. Check out the sign up page.

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Perfecting the Pork Chop

Posted on April 11, 2016 by AnnieRie

Really. A post about a cut of meat. One that we never bought, but now that we get them in our Community Supported Agriculture meat share, we have grown to like them. And, I learned the absolutely best way to prepare them.

In 15 minutes, you can have a dinner on the table that looks like this.

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Pan fried. Minimal seasoning. Salt, pepper and sage. A searing hot cast iron skillet with a slick of olive oil.

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Simple to cook. Incredibly flavorful.

Also, simple to keep that cast iron pan clean.

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Screaming hot water. An abrasive sponge. Nothing else. My pan, purchased years ago from Baughers in Westminster, has been seasoned with oil, occasionally a new slick added, and warmed in the oven. No soap. Never in the dishwasher. This pan is ten years old, and absolutely a joy to use. It sits on the stove, all the time.

Used for fritters. Frittatas. Bacon. Hash browns. Greek chicken. Sautéed greens.

Today, like many other days, it made perfect pork chops.

Our winter CSA ends tomorrow. For the summer, I cut back and didn’t order meat or cheese. With local farmer’s markets, I don’t have to do that. But, in the winter, Lancaster Farm Fresh gives us awesome choices. like those pork chops.

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Survey Says

Posted on April 3, 2016 by AnnieRie

Ok. I know I don’t have a huge amount of readers just in Howard County, but for those who live here, could you help with a simple survey?

Local Food Survey

If you click on the link highlighted above, it will take you to Survey Monkey. A class at University of Maryland, taught by one of the cofounders of Friends and Farms, Phil Gottwals, is looking to find information about whether people make food buying choices based on some definition of “local”.

It’s an interesting survey, and you don’t have to answer the personal questions.

For other local Howard County bloggers, on the hocoblogs website, let me know if you want to help Phil’s students and spread the word using our social media contacts. The more people the students get answering their survey, the better.

Any other questions, add a comment below. And, I promise, this isn’t a click bait thing. No advertising or harvesting of email addresses.

Just students who are learning what is important to consumers. Like really good food.

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Garlic Greens

Posted on April 1, 2016 by AnnieRie

What are they? How are they different from scapes? What can you make with them?

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A bunch of them in our CSA share on Tuesday. I actually swapped my popcorn for a second bunch of garlic greens. It is sometimes called spring garlic. I intend to fully embrace springtime, even if they are calling for snow flurries this weekend.

I have rockfish sitting on a bed of them, in the oven right now. I added a few of them, chopped, to the basmati rice in my rice cooker. I made a quartet of meatloaves to use one this weekend and freeze the rest. Some of them ended up in there.

As for the rest, there will be pesto. I will use my scape recipe.

I had considered using some of them to sauté the greens we got in our basket, but they just smell so good. They have to become pesto.

Anyone seen ramps in the markets yet? Then, I will know that spring has arrived in central Maryland.

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Even More Carrots

Posted on March 24, 2016 by AnnieRie

Friends and Farms must have been spying on me. They knew I liked carrots and gave me more of them in these week’s Protein and Dairy bag. Why are there carrots in a protein bag? Because we don’t do milk, and I substituted produce.

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For us, this $43 a week food source provides us with almost all the meat, fish, and eggs that we use in our cooking. They have expanded this option, giving us 5-6 pounds of premium fish and meat every week.

I like having local sources. Not getting irradiated or artificially colored beef.

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It’s a good deal for the money. Today we got a T-bone steak.

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Country spare ribs.

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Split chicken breasts.

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Bacon.

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Eggs.

If you are “less meatarians” like we are, you can feed two people with this option. Easily. I try to make meat be a small portion of the plate.

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We do so many things differently these days. We make egg salads, chicken salads, process the bacon to be used on multiple meals.

Consider what we do. Protein, one quarter of the plate. Carb, one quarter. Vegetables, half the plate.

And look into Friends and Farms, if you live around here. They are flexible with lots of options to choose.

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Going for the Greens …

Posted on March 16, 2016 by AnnieRie

… inspired by our CSA basket, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day.

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That lacinato kale made me think once again of colcannon. So I decided to go looking for a truly Irish interpretation of the dish, one that I have made countless times and blogged about, almost as often.

I never knew about the Halloween connection, or the prizes inside. Amazing what we can find here on the internet, isn’t it?

But, getting back to the CSA basket, the kale and parsnips both made me think of making my version. I have to use the techniques from the web reference, as it hasn’t been the way I’ve finished mine.

As for the rest of my weekly Lancaster Farm Fresh delivery, picked up at my friend’s home near Robinson Nature Center, there were other real favorites this week.

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Five of the seven vegetable items came from the LFFC “brand”, which is what they sell to restaurants, stores and buying groups, like Friends and Farms. Two of the items were attributed to individual farmers. We knew that in the winter we would be getting some of the vegetables bought through the cooperative, to supplement what is grown on the local farms year round. Let’s face it, with a CSA that tops out some years above 4000 members, you can’t always get the local farms to have enough every single week. Or, that the small farms can provide enough of one item, so some of our items have the LFFC tag on it, meaning it’s an aggregate of many of the farms’ provisions.

This week we got zucchini. Five absolutely lovely green zucchini. A joy to get them in the dead of winter, and we had been told that farms south of us were being used to supply some variety in our baskets. I have plans for those zucchini. My store in the freezer of zucchini fritters is gone. Done. Inhaled. I love the Smitten Kitchen recipe for zucchini fritters and make dozens of them in the summer, gently layered in parchment and placed in the freezer. We used our last ones a week ago.

I will be grating zucchini and making a nice replacement batch. I have to pick up some plain yogurt at Friends and Farms to make tzatziki in order to enjoy some this weekend.

As for those sweet potatoes on steroids. I have plans for them. They were in the swap box, and I just decided I was tired of beets and sunchoked out, so I put the bags of each of them into the box and brought home those two behemoths. I want to make hummus with one, and bread with the other. Never made sweet potato bread and since I am a prisoner in my house while work is being done (still not finished after four weeks), it’s a good time to try a new recipe.

As for the rest of my stuff yesterday, here are the bread and cheese.

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And, the meat delivery of the week.

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Yep, bison is back. Along with chicken thighs and bacon. Not what works for tomorrow, but welcome additions to my freezer.

As for tomorrow there will be sausage for dinner. With colcannon. Bread. Cheese. Guinness. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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The Dirt List

Posted on March 14, 2016 by AnnieRie

Just up the road a bit, in Philly, there is an amazing restaurant called Vedge. I’m not sure when I first heard about it, maybe one of my magazines, or Chopped, or a random blog post somewhere.

I do know I love their recipes in their book. Like this one. I stumbled across this article recently and ended up buying the book online. For $9.99, it now resides on my iPad to inspire me when my CSA box comes.

Why? Because our Amish food cooperative CSA supplies restaurants, hospitals, schools and grocery stores within a 150 mile radius of the 100+ Amish farms who are members of this organic cooperative. I viewed, a while back, the Penske video by the general manager of Lancaster Farm Fresh, Casey Spacht. Casey had this vision, and worked with a small number, at the start, of Amish farmers to make it come true.

I also found, while reading my cookbook that the “dirt list” at the restaurant is inspired by those same vegetables that come in my weekly CSA. Baby Hakurei turnips. Chinese broccoli. Salsify (I am bummed, we haven’t gotten salsify in ages, it all must go to the restaurants).

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Other local restaurants use the coop too. Like Woodberry Kitchen, in Baltimore. And, probably Great Sage, since the coop delivers to Roots. We are lucky that our CSA is supported year round, even when we don’t get the minimum 30 members in the winter. Why? Because the truck also delivers to Roots, MOM’s, Friends and Farms, to name a few of their local wholesale customers.

I do love this CSA for its uniqueness. They offer some really off the wall vegetables. It isn’t a CSA for the carrot, corn, romaine crowd. You have to want escarole, watercress, purple kohlrabi, bitter fruit, and other exotic things. You have to learn to be creative. You have to have a passion for discovery, and you have to love vegetables enough to want to use large amounts of them in your cooking. Even the smaller shares give you a great variety. You certainly get your money’s worth.

a medium summer share

a medium summer share

I just signed up for my sixth spring/summer share. I dropped back to a medium share, as the large was giving us as much as 25-30 pounds of organic vegetables weekly. The variety was great. And, at $31 a share, it was an immense bargain. The medium share is about $22 a share and will give us 7-9 different items, and about 15 or so pounds a week. Sure beats grocery store pricing for organics.

There are lots of choices for CSAs around here. I just happen to be committed to this small, focused, adventurous group of people who are willing to take on these and more.

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And, it all comes down to that dirt list on the Vedge menu. Named because of the freshness, the seasonality, the joy of eating food that was just harvested. The typical turn around time from ground to table for this cooperative is two days.

Check out the book from Vedge. And check out our CSA. If you really love cooking and want a challenge, this is the place to find it. Great vegetables. A book of amazing recipes for inspiration.

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The CSA Update

Posted on March 9, 2016 by AnnieRie

The warm weather makes us all think it’s spring. And with spring, our thoughts turn to fresh vegetables and fruit. Here in the heart of Maryland we have so many options for Community Supported Agriculture and they are evolving to make them more adaptable for our needs.

I wrote about Breezy Willow the other day. Besides them, there are lots of options around here. Love Dove Farm. Gorman Farm. Clark’s Farm. One Straw Farm. TLV Tree Farm. Zahradka Farm. All fairly local.

For us, we still like our Amish option, with all the exotic vegetables. We know it isn’t for everyone, but we like it. I still can buy from the local farms at the markets all summer and fall.

Happily, the CSAs around here are allowing you to choose options. For meat. For eggs. If you haven’t considered buying locally and helping a farm get money early in the year, keeping them from having to borrow money early in the season maybe you should check out the options and help them stay healthy. If you don’t live around here, you can check out Local Harvest and find one near you.

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You too can get wholesome food, fresh from the fields, and know the farmers who grow it.

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