Keeping Produce Cool in a Heat Wave
And Green City Market's cozy West Loop satellite opens for the season
In This Issue
• Keeping Produce Cool in a Heat Wave
• Green City Market’s Cozy West Loop Satellite Opens
• Wild Trillium’s First Harvest is In The (CSA) Bag
• Take a (West Loop) Quiz
Keeping Produce Cool in a Heat Wave
In most years, the tips for preventing a produce meltdown can wait until closer to official summer. The average high temperature for June 5 is 77 degrees. But here we are, an early heat wave, with high temperatures forecast around 90 through Monday. So let’s scramble out a few quick tips for a happy though hot farmers market experience.
I learn a lot from my mistakes, a good thing because I make a lot of them. One of them is what I call “The Instant Peach Compote Incident.”
I haunted the DuPont Circle Farmers Market in Washington, D.C. for some time before we moved to Chicago 10 years ago. One Sunday about 20-ish years ago, I drove the four miles from our apartment. It was a very hot summer day (though “very hot” and “summer” are rather redundant in D.C.).
It was peach season and I bought a big bag of beautiful fruit. But the car, sitting in the sun during my market stroll, was like an oven. Though I went max on the air conditioning and scooted home as quickly as I could, the peaches had actually cooked, and my bag contained nothing but a big, soggy (and pretty expensive) mess.
Here are the key ways to learn from Bob’s mistakes:
Shop early on hot days. The forecast temperature at 8 a.m. today was 73 degrees; at noon, 84. Vendors do their best to keep produce cool, but heat is not a friend to produce, especially when it is very ripe and/or delicate.
If you have insulated bags, use them. They keep the cool in and the heat out.
Bring cold packs, especially if you have a long walk or bike ride home, or have to put your fresh food in a hot car. (Or if you are an omnivore, buy some meat. Meat can only be sold frozen at farmers markets in Chicago, the rest of Cook County and many other regional jurisdictions. A frozen roast will surely keep the rest of your purchases nice and cool.)
Bring an insulated bag with cold packs? You get an A+.
If you have other ideas that work well for you, please share in the comments.
Green City’s Cozy West Loop Satellite Opens
Green City Market’s West Loop location, which opened today (Saturday), is a cozier version of the flagship Lincoln Park market. Green City West Loop has plenty of anything a “buy local” shopper could want: super-fresh produce, meat, cheese, bread, flowers. Just fewer vendors and smaller crowds.
And that is a big part of its charm. Mary Bartelme Park, located between Monroe and Adams Streets at 115 S. Sangamon, accommodates 11 vendors compared to 47 at the original site, which takes up a wide swath of the south end of Lincoln Park.
At the center of Mary Bartelme Park are five metal archways, or gates, that serve as a misting fountain when there aren’t people selling food all around them. The landscaped park even has a small rise, with the Jacobson Family Farms stand occupying the high ground.
Green City Market West Loop is open Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Here are some photos to whet your appetite
Wild Trillium’s First Harvest Is In The (CSA) Bag
Congratulations to our beginner farmer friends at women-owned Wild Trillium Farm in Richmond, Illinois, who on Friday delivered the bounty of their first spring harvest to their CSA customers in Chicago.
Lifelong friends Christine Johnson, Katie Szymanski and Emmy May segued this year from urban growing to their farm, located close to the Wisconsin border about 65 miles northwest of Chicago.
Christine — an advocate for young farmers who I’ve known since my FamilyFarmed days — is an eloquent writer who contributed the first article to our Seasons of Change farmer series in April. She has subsequently done two more; the most recent, focused on climate change and the challenges it puts on farmers, was published in the Wednesday, June 2 issue of Local Food Forum.
The Wild Trillium trio’s first CSA drop was in the Lincoln Square neighborhood at Eco and the Flamingo, which describes itself as a “Zero Waste General Store.” I caught up with them at their second stop at Big Kids, a chef-driven sandwich shop in Logan Square.
While we have often been in contact electronically, it was great to see Christine and meet Katie and Emmy IRL. We wish them the best in their bold farming venture and look forward to future Seasons of Change stories.
Take a Quiz
Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood, home to Green City Market’s satellite farmers market, includes Restaurant Row on Randolph Street and another concentration of chef-driven dining spots a few blocks north on Fulton Market Street. Before its recent economic boom, the area was food-centric in a much more rough-and-tumble way. What was the West Loop previously best known for?
a) Stockyards
b) Whiskey distilling
c) Meatpacking
d) Poultry farming
Answer: c). The West Loop encompasses what long was one of the city’s main meatpacking districts. The neighborhood’s transition was sparked by the popularity of The Oprah Winfrey Show, produced at her Harpo Studios on North Carpenter Street from 1990 to 2011; the live audiences that Oprah drew into a neighborhood that had been largely avoided by outsiders played a role in the rise of Restaurant Row. The studios were torn down after the show ended its run and were replaced in 2018 by the headquarters of the McDonald’s fast-food empire.