Local Mint Hits Market in Time for Derby
Get Ready to Julep It Up: A Three Sisters Garden Seasons of Change Story
In This Issue
• A Pre-Derby Mint Primer
• Get Scrappy for Earth Day
• Take a Quiz
• Today’s Lake Shore View
A Pre-Derby Mint Primer
So I was looking over Three Sisters Garden’s delivery menu for the week, looking for any new early-season crops hitting the market, and there it was: Cherokee Sweet mint. I use a lot of mint during the local season, mostly in hot or iced tea, so I added it to my virtual cart.
Then it occurred to me: Isn’t the Kentucky Derby coming up soon? A quick Google search confirmed that the Derby is in fact on Saturday, May 1, so I quick asked owner Tracey Vowell if she could share a Seasons of Change story about mint in advance of the famed horse race — for which the mint julep is the odds-on favorite cocktail.
Tracey, who has family ties in Kentucky, agreed, and here it is: your mint primer.
————————-
It is funny the things we get excited about. When our mint emerges, one thing always comes to mind for me. It is almost time for the Kentucky Derby.
Having family in Kentucky, that race holds a special importance. Family members have attended, and the stories they told about the day, mostly about hats and Mint Juleps, will long be remembered.
Although I am no big fan of horse racing, I do take the time to watch the Derby and fantasize about being there someday, usually standing in front of my TV in my work clothes and headed right back out the door when it finishes. After all, it may be the Derby, but it also takes a place at a critical moment in farming, where every single minute counts.
We offer three mint varieties that are wildly different from each other, and are still considering adding a couple more. The problem with most mints is that they will take over the world if left to their own devices. To that end, we attack that stuff every fall, beating it back into its row, then we come back and attack it again, about mid-summer.
The Apple mint is particularly aggressive in its spreading habit. A row three feet wide can become 12 feet in the course of one season.
First up this year is Cherokee Sweet mint. This very upright and non-spreading variety is quite civilized, and garnishes our favor because it is an indigenous New World mint.
Leaves are long and narrow and beautiful, and fragrant white clustered flowers come about mid-summer. The flavor is different from traditional mints, more of a menthol type thing, with darker notes. I love this stuff for cooking with things like lamb or mushrooms, adding a big handful at the end of cooking.
Also, what a great tea, hot or cold. Again, not the typical minty flavor; more complex, and very familiar in fragrance, smelling just like Doublemint gum.
Apple mint is, far and away, our most popular. Leaves are very large, and a little bit fuzzy.
The flavor is more subdued than common mint, and although I cannot say I really taste any apple type flavors, the overall profile is less sharp, brighter, without being hot or overbearing. I use it by the handful for spring salads, iced tea, and cooking with spring vegetables — asparagus, peas, even rhubarb — and fish.
The last to show up for us, unlikely to become cuttable before Derby Day, is our Chocolate mint. The leaves are smaller and quite dark. This one does have a little bit of that mint heat, and a prevalent group of dark complex flavors.
I find that the flavor falls off very quickly in cooking, so I tend to use this one almost exclusively raw, except for hot tea, which is much more complex than with common mint.
Any of these would make a great Julep. The Apple mint will come across as the most traditional, but the other two will offer something of a spin on the traditional cocktail.
———————-
Check your inbox Saturday when Local Food Forum will run recipes for mint juleps — and variations on the theme — for you to, um, practice on before the Kentucky Derby on May 1.
Get Scrappy: Fighting Food Waste on Earth Day
Happy Earth Day, or as we call it at Local Food Forum, Thursday. Because if you’re a member of the local food community and prioritize food produced organically/sustainably/regeneratively, every day is Earth Day.
One of the best, easiest ways to be kind to the planet is to cut way down on food waste, which according to research amounts to roughly 40 percent of the U.S. food stream. And one of the best, easiest ways to cut food waste — and stretch your food budget in the process — is to repurpose food scraps and trimmings.
One great idea, especially going into the season when we’ll be buying and trimming lots of delicious local produce, is to put a container or bag in the freezer and load it up with washed vegetable trimmings. When you’ve achieved critical mass (whatever that is for you), toss them in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, then simmer for a half hour or so.
Voila! Vegetable broth and better than what you typically get at the store.
This batch I did this week has all kinds of stuff in it: woody asparagus ends, trimmings of mushrooms, carrots, green onions, green garlic and onion skins.
Here is the broth that resulted, in all of its beautiful brown glory.
Then I used the broth to make about the greenest soup ever. I thawed the last two pounds of local (Mick Klug Farm) asparagus that I froze last spring and added it to sautéed green onions, green garlic, pea shoots and microgreens, all from Three Sisters Farm. Added kosher flake salt, a pinch at a time and tasting, brought to a boil, simmered for 20 minutes, and pureed with the immersion blender. Came out great.
Other ideas to cut food waste:
• Buy only what you need, especially fragile stuff with shorter shelf life.
• Buy root vegetables such as carrots, radishes, turnips and beets with their greens on… then use the greens! They are delicious and nutritious.
• Compost. Even if you re-use those scraps, eventually they’ll go in the trash. If you have a garden, you can compost your own soil supplements. If not, there is a growing number of companies and services that do pickup or allow dropoff of food scraps.
Have other ideas you would like to share? I’m opening the comments to everyone for this (or you can email bob@localfoodforum.com).
Take a Quiz
I have an eclectic range of interests, one of which is that I’ve been a weather junkie since I was a little kid. I might have grown up to be meteorologist had it not been for the sad fact that I sucked at math and science.
Nonetheless, I’m still fascinated by weather trivia, so over the next three issues, I’ll have a series of questions about the temperature range on May 1 — this year the kickoff day for the 2021 farmers market season.
Today’s question: What is the historic average high temperature for May 1 in Chicago?
a) 55
b) 60
c) 65
d) 70
Answer: c) The average high temp for May 1 is a comfortable, spring-like 65. That average is the result of a wide range of temperatures, though. Tune in tomorrow to see what the highest May 1 high has been over the past 10 years.