Something You Might Not Expect
I typically try to make my Saturday morning trips to Green City Market in Lincoln Park early to avoid the crowds. There was a little added urgency today because the market was closing at noon, an hour earlier than usual, to avoid too much overlap with the annual Chicago Air and Water Show taking place nearby.
Most of my market haul above is exactly what you’d expect to see just past the midpoint of August. Clockwise from the left are nectarines from Mick Klug Farm (St. Joseph, Michigan); SunGold tomatoes from Tomato Mountain (Brooklyn, Wisconsin); and heirloom tomatoes, zucchini and shishito peppers from Nichols Farm and Orchard (Marengo, Illinois).
But wait… are those strawberries at the peak of summer growing season?
Yes, they are. These are a variety known as ever-bearing. Unlike most strawberry plants, which only produce fruit in the spring, the ever-bearing variety bears fruit at least twice a year. Only a handful of our regional producers grow this variety, but fortunately my friends at Mick Klug Farm are among them.
Says The Spruce, a gardening website:
The only thing better than strawberries eaten right off the plant is strawberries eaten right off the plant two or three times a year. That is what you get when you plant everbearing strawberries. Good for at least two harvests a year, some growers may get three in perfect conditions. Though a bit trickier to grow than the average strawberry plant, the abundance of fruit you get from everbearing strawberry plants (Fragaria x ananssa 'Quinault') is worth the effort.
If you happen to run into these at your farmers market, get some.
Meanwhile, tomatoes are everywhere and the ones I’ve eaten have been just delicious.
This past Wednesday (August 16), Naturally Chicago — the trade association for the consumer packaged goods side of the Good Food industry — held a dinner at Cultivate by Forbidden Root to celebrate its recently launched Locally Made program that connects Chicago-region brands with major retailers.
I am the communications contractor for Naturally Chicago and I helped plan and promote the dinner. You won’t be shocked to know that the menu was heavily focused on locally produced vegetables, fruit, dairy, bread, tofu, and meat, and paired with Forbidden Root’s delicious craft beers.
The first course was a sourdough tartine of big, round, juicy slices of Nichols’ heirloom tomatoes and locally produced Famiglia Andreotti stracciatella (a variety of burrata cheese) atop Publican Quality Bread sourdough. This pretty simple dish was powerfully delicious (actually so was everything on the tasting menu).
So I made sure to include some of those Nichols heirlooms in my market haul, and I wasted no time, creating a tartine of sorts myself with an Ezekiel flax English muffin topped with four-year-old cheddar from Stamper Cheese (Chicago); smoked ham from Jake’s Country Meats (Cassopolis, Michigan); and that gorgeous red Nichols tomato.
Disclaimer: I make an open-faced sandwich with varying ingredients for breakfast every morning.
Meanwhile, Right from the Farm
On Friday morning (August 18), I traveled up to Lake County (the northeastern-most county in Illinois) to attend the groundbreaking for the Farm Foundation’s new education and innovation center in Libertyville. After the event, I drove a few miles to Grayslake to visit longtime acquaintances Jen and Jeff Miller at their Prairie Wind Family Farm, which for a number of years has run a successful CSA subscription program.
Jen and Jeff suffered severe straight-line wind damage to their hoop houses in April. But as per usual, our generous local food community rallied and raised $62,000 through a GoFundMe campaign. It was gratifying to see their new hoop houses up and the ones that survived the storm turning out beautiful produce (I’ll go into detail in a full story coming soon).
The Millers have an honor system farm store in that white building behind them, and it would have been downright rude of me not to pick up a few things to bring home. Hence the market haul above of carrots, tropea onion, red Norland potatoes, and that ham from Jake’s that I mentioned earlier.
Tomorrow’s Local Food Forum will have this coming week’s regional farmers market schedule.