Breaking News… Paid Subscriptions are Open!
Dear Friends… Since some of you have been so kind to say that you are eager to be a Local Food Forum subscriber, I’ve decided not to wait until the official April 1 launch. So I welcome you to be the first one on your block to show your support for this old dog’s new trick.
I’ll keep it short so you can get on with the fun content below. On March 31, I am leaving my full-time job to see what I can do flying solo. I am 100 percent dedicated to making Local Food Forum the best possible platform for the local food community. The more subscriptions the newsletter attracts, the more I can focus my attentions on it, and the less time I’ll have to spend noodging local food friends about whether they know of any available gig work.
By getting a paid subscription, you can fully participate in this little community project; share your comments, thoughts, photos and recipes; and be eligible for subscriber-only benefits, including… brace yourself… a farmers market tour by yours truly. Sounds like a win-win for just $5/month or (preferably) $50/year.
You in? Please click the button below with my ginormous thanks….Bob
In this issue:
Delicious Local Popcorn? I’m All Ears
Sunday: Join Cedar Valley’s Online Farm Dinner
Farmers Markets: It’s Always Darkest Before the Season Starts
Take a Quiz
Delicious Local Popcorn? I’m All Ears
For years at Green City Market and since last year by home delivery, Three Sisters Garden in Kankakee, Illinois has been my seasonal go-to for sweet corn. It’s not a bit surprising that owner Tracey Vowell also produces some of the region’s best popcorn.
The following article, contributed by Tracey, explains why:
One of our foundation crops is popcorn. Over the years we have developed quite a following with everybody saying the same thing: It is delicious, and it all pops.
We take our dry goods/staple crops very seriously at Three Sisters, working to grow, harvest and store to the product’s best advantage. Seeds are what all our dry goods are, and the plant takes care of bringing those seeds to the perfect state for storage.
When it comes down to it, this is the plant’s greatest responsibility, making every effort to ensure success for the next generation. We work diligently to preserve all that effort until the moment that those seeds do actually become food, ensuring the highest possible quality in all our dry goods.
The technicalities go something like this. The corn plant grows, produces a tassel for pollen, and that pollen drops onto the silks of the future corn ear down below, just as those ears are emerging and will host the seed. Those pesky silks that we all work to pull off of our sweet corn are the vehicles in corn to get the pollen where it needs to go.
Without them, there would be no corn. All going well, the corn is produced on the cobs assisted by the plant, which provides moisture and nutrients as the seeds develop.
Here is the fun, and convenient, part. Once the corn kernels have fully developed, the plant is signaled to begin drying down. All that moisture being circulated through the plant and to the seeds actually changes direction, as the plant itself begins the process of extracting moisture from the seed to stabilize it for winter storage. We watch this drop in moisture especially closely with popcorn, because a tiny bit of moisture is necessary for the kernels to pop, ideally between 13 and 14 percent.
We harvest and try to work quickly to process and put away the kernels, protected from excessive heat and air, so as not to lose that last little bit of moisture.
When the corn is quickly heated, that moisture turns into steam and expands, very rapidly, causing the corn to pop. Too much or too little moisture, no pop.
We grow the Robust hybrid pretty exclusively and have for many years. A simple old school hybrid, not mutilated or tampered with but traditionally bred to be a strong, flavorful popcorn that grows and pops well.
We played around with some of the more exotic and heirloom popcorns in the past, but did not find such a strong reliability in those varieties. After having customers come to us at market and say that they had a fire in their microwave trying to pop those varieties, or burned them on the stove without more than a few kernels popping, we decided to move away from the more exotic popcorns and work with a variety we could rely on producing a delicious, and in this case, a fully functional, consistent product.
A few years ago, I developed a recipe for a vegan friend who was missing cheese popcorn. Is it cheese popcorn? Not at all, but it does come close.
Vegan “Cheese" Popcorn
For the spice mix:
2 T nutritional yeast (I prefer the larger flakes but the finer will work too)
1/4 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t salt
1/2 t sugar
Mix well in a small bowl and set aside
1/2 C popcorn
3 T Oil (Coconut oil is my preference, but use a high temperature oil for sure)
Set a good-sized heavy pan with a tight-fitting lid on the stove and heat over fairly high heat, until thoroughly hot. Reduce the heat to medium high, add 1 tablespoon of the oil. When you see the first wisps of smoke, add the popcorn, put on the lid, and shake the pan in 15 to 20 second cycles. Continue this shaking as popping is well under way, and listen. When the popping audibly slows down, turn off the stove and continue shaking the pan. Within a few seconds, the last of the popping should die off. Pour the popped corn into a large bowl and stream in the other 2 tablespoons of oil, and then sprinkle on the flavoring mix, either stirring with a spoon or vigorously tossing to completely coat the corn with the mix. If necessary, add a touch more oil to ensure good coverage of the seasonings.
Three Sisters Garden popcorn makes for a lovely still life. Photo: Grant Kessler
Sunday: Join Cedar Valley’s Online Farm Dinner
We’re at least a few weeks away from a new normal that will permit a robust menu of farm dinners. But thanks to the miracles of modern technology, some of our creative farmers are staging DIY farm dinners online.
You can experience one this Sunday (March 28) from 5-6 p.m. central presented by Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm, a livestock operation in Ottawa, Illinois; the event is hosted by owners Beth and Jody Osmund. Purchase the following ingredients (or pull them from your pantry) for the super-easy sausage-and-beans recipe and cook along with Beth as she does her demonstration on Zoom.
You can mix and match the proteins, beans and other ingredients, so bring your scratch cooking game and show off. Click the button below to learn more and attend the online event.
Ingredients:
· ½ - 1 lb sausage (Italian, Chorizo or any kind you prefer)
· 1 – 2 cans beans (Beth likes Great Northern)
· 1 can diced tomatoes
· onion
· garlic
· spices*
· wine (optional)
· corn meal or premade polenta
* Select 2-3 seasonings that complement your sausage. For example, with Italian, Beth likes parsley, oregano,and basil; with chorizo you might use paprika, bay leaf and cumin.
Photo courtesy of Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm
It’s Always Darkest Before the Season Starts
This is it, folks: Logan Square Farmers Market is holding its last indoor market of the season this Sunday (March 28), 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at 3029 & 3031 N. Rockwell St. Logan Square is the only major farmers market operating in the immediate Chicago area this winter due to COVID social distancing restrictions.
Green City Market had to scrap its usual Saturday winter indoor market at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. But its year-round pickup and home delivery e-commerce option through the WhatsGood app has continued through the off season.
With a market-less April, whatever will we do? Count the days til the market season officially opens — on time this year, by all appearances — in early May.
We’re waiting anxiously for Green City Market to reveal whether it will join the Downtown Evanston Farmers Market in kicking off the season on the first Saturday in May (which this year is May 1). In the meantime, a few Chicago-area markets have posted their opening dates:
Saturday, May 1
Downtown Evanston Farmers Market
Sunday, May 9
Saturday, May 15
Saturday, May 22
Tuesday, June 1
SOAR Farmers Market (Streeterville)
Thursday, June 3
Sunday, June 6
Sunday, June 13
Jefferson Park Farmers Market (tentative)
Friday, June 18
Gary Comer Youth Center Farmers Market
At least it’s finally spring…
Soon...
Take a Quiz
Answer at the bottom (no cheating!)
The ramp is a wild-growing, foraged member of the allium family that typically is the first popular edible to emerge from the ground in the early days of spring. Historians believe that the city of Chicago gets its name from Chickagou, the American Indian word for the plant.
According to some histories, Chickagou literally translate to
a) little leek
b) stinky onion
c) earth apple
d) spring fertility goddess
Answer: b). Other versions say it means onion field or just wild onion, but even if you love Chicago like I do, isn’t it more fun to think that you live in Stinky Onion, U.S.A.? Ramps are loved, sought after or foraged with cultish intensity by chefs and home cooks during their short growing season. In a normal year, they make a cameo appearance at the very start of farmers market season in May.
Next issue: What is a weaponized parsnip and what do you do with it