Sunday, May 16
Weather.com Forecast: Clouds, some sun, more clouds, high 66
Accuweather Forecast: Clouds and sun, high 68
Logan Square Farmers Market, 3107 W. Logan Blvd., Chicago
9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
95th Street Farmers Market, 1835 W. 95th St., Chicago
8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Vegan Paradise, 1400 W. 46th St., Chicago
11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Wicker Park Farmers Market, 1425 N. Damen Ave.,Chicago
8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
In This Issue
• This Week’s Scenes from the Farmers Market
• Sipping Sunday: Citrus Syrup — Science and Magic
• Take a Quiz
This Week’s Scenes from the Farmers Markets
Lincoln Square Farmers Market
Tuesday, May 11
Andersonville Farmers Market
Wednesday, May 12
Division Street City Market
Saturday, May 15
The Lincoln Park Farmers Market
Saturday, May 15
Sipping Sunday: Citrus Syrup — Science and Magic
If you see lemons and limes growing in the Chicago region, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE BECAUSE GLOBAL WARMING HAS COME TO FINISH US OFF!
The point is that citrus is one thing we love that isn’t grown locally. So get organic or other sustainably produced citrus when you can. And to upcycle the peels that most of us have casually tossed in the trash, use them to make citrus syrup.
Lemon syrup or lime syrup (or a combo lemon-lime syrup) can substitute for simple syrup, aka sugar water, in cocktail or mocktails. The fastest way to become a home mixologist is to recognize that all of the basic sour drinks — whiskey sour, margarita, gimlet, daiquiri — are the same formula (on which you can riff): 2 ounces of liquor, 1 ounce of citrus or other acidic juice, 1/2-1 ounce of something sweet (depending on how much sweet you need to temper the sour).
Now here’s the cool part: There is a super-easy technique in which the lemons and limes just sit in a bowl and make the syrup themselves.
The other day, I cut up and juiced some lemons. I weighed the peels, put them in a bowl, and added half as much sugar by weight (based on a recipe I found online). The magic is that sugar pulls the remaining juices and essential oils out of the peels.
Go about your business, check back in two or three hours, and there should be some liquid in the bowl. If so, remove the peels and squeeze to make sure you extract every drop of the syrup (I use the same handheld juicer I use to squeeze the lemons). Strain if you want (other than looking for rogue seeds, I don’t) and put in the fridge, where it will keep for a while.
I then made lime syrup — the top photo shows the lime peels in sugar — using the same formula, except this time the sugar should be about a third the weight of the peels, e.g. 15 ounces of peels gets five ounces of sugar (again based on a found recipe). Then mix up some tropics in a glass.
We’re are cordially ecumenical at Local Food Forum, so if you don’t want to bother with the squeezing and the sugaring and the more squeezing, Twisted Alchemy and Appel’s Cordials are two local producers of excellent sweetened fruit mixers.
Take a Quiz
The Archies, named for the cartoon character of that name, were a music group that performed what came to be known in the 1960s as bubblegum rock. Which of the following caloric song titles was their biggest hit?
a) The Candy Man
b) Honey
c) Sugar Sugar
d) Cherry Pie
Answer: c) Sugar Sugar was released in 1969 and you could gain weight just listening to the chorus: Sugar, Ah, honey, honey, You are my candy girl, And you got me wanting you
The Candy Man, first performed in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, became a hit for Sammy Davis Jr. the next year. Honey was a maudlin song about love and loss that was a 1968 hit for Bobby Goldsboro. The raunchy Cherry Pie, released in 1990 by Warrant, is the opposite of bubblegum rock.