Arthur Keyes (the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Manager) and Alison Arians (the Market Reporter) are thrilled to announce the launch of the only year-round CSA produce box program featuring Alaskan vegetables!

How would you like to pick up a box full of beautiful fresh, local vegetables when you need produce? Subscribers to our Glacier Valley Farm CSA program aren’t limited to our short farmers’ market season to get Alaskan vegetables--we’re loading boxes with Alaskan produce year-round! Each box also includes a newsletter packed with delicious, healthy recipes specifically tailored to the vegetables of the week! The weekly update also includes vegetable storage tips and news about the local farms that contribute produce to the boxes. While you’re enjoying delicious, economical Alaskan produce, you’re also supporting your local farmers! You can sign up to receive a box of produce once a week, twice a month, or more sporadically—you choose the dates! You pre-pay $30 for your box, then pick it up at a pre-determined location.

Check out our brand-new website for more information!

http://glaciervalleycsa.com/

cinnamon rolls!
If you got to the market early last Saturday, you might have been lucky enough to get one of Mary Jane’s luscious cinnamon rolls! Baked fresh in Palmer at Slack’s Sugar Shack Bakery in Palmer (they were voted number one bakery in the Valley), they went fast, so you might want to get there early to make sure she still has some left!! She’ll also have all kinds of breads, croissants, palmiers, and macaroons from the French Oven Bakery.

where to find Alaskan produce after the market ends!
1. Alex Davis, of A.D. Farms will be selling his ORGANIC VEGETABLES on Wednesdays at the Northway Mall from 11am to 6pm. He’ll also be selling shares of pigs. Contact Alex at 746-0038 or aktruckfarmer@hotmail.com.
2. PRODUCE BOXES from Glacier Valley Farm CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). Starting on October 22nd, you can get a weekly produce box filled with Alaskan vegetables! You can sign up for boxes every week, every other week, once a month—or more sporadically. You decide! You’ll be able to pick up your produce boxes at several locations around town, including Tap Root Café on Huffman Road. If you have a good location in mind, please let Arthur know! Email Arthur Keyes at for more information!

bread
Rise & Shine Bakery is taking a week and a half off, before starting our wintertime routine. Starting on Friday, October 17th, I’ll send out our first weekly Bakery Bulletin to our bakery email list, which will list the breads we’re baking for the following Wednesday (October 22nd).  Our bakery is now on the internet so you’ll be able to go online at riseandshinebread.com to order your breads.  Pick up your loaves on Wednesday either at Tap Root Café (on Huffman Road, across from Carrs’) from 3-6pm, or at Side Street Espresso (410 G Street, downtown) from 8-11am.  If you didn’t receive the bakery bulletin last year, and you’d like to receive it after the farmers’ market ends, please sign up online at riseandshinebread.com.

Alison’s Lunch
You might have read about my new website/blog already, and checked it out at AlisonsLunch.com. But did you know that you can subscribe, to get the posts over your email, or through a reader? I’ll be posting stories and recipes to this website all winter, so you can get the information automatically if you’d like. If you have trouble signing up for the email post, just email me at .

seafood
Arctic Choice Seafoods will have all kinds of fresh, delicious, Alaskan fish! Here’s a list of what they are likely to have.

fresh king salmon | fresh sablefish | fresh rockfish | fresh halibut | fresh clams | fresh oysters | halibut cheeks | king crab | snow crab | spot shrimp | side stripe shrimp | Dungeness crab | scallops | smoked salmon bellies

Saturday South Anchorage Farmers’ Market
Dates: October 11 & 18
Hours: 10am-2pm
Location: behind the Dimond Center, in front of the Dimond Center Hotel

Please pass this email along to anyone you think might be interested in receiving the weekly market news—they can email me, Alison Arians, at if they’d like to be added to our newsletter list.

For more information about the market, contact Arthur Keyes, South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Manager, at 907-354-5833, or at .

Please respond to this email if you’d like to be removed from the newsletter list.

Cheers! And see you at the market!
Alison Arians
Farmers’ Market Reporter

Start time of the market will be no earlier than 10 AM.  The farmers will keep coming as long as they can—it will truly be “weather permitting.” Bad signs (i.e. probably no more market) will include deep snow or extremely cold temperatures.

cinnamon rolls!
If you got to the market early last Saturday, you might have been lucky enough to get one of Mary Jane’s luscious cinnamon rolls! Baked fresh in Palmer on Saturday morning, they went fast, so you might want to get there early to make sure she still has some left!! She’ll also have all kinds of breads, croissants, palmiers, and macaroons from the French Oven Bakery.

where to find Alaskan produce after the market ends!
1. Alex Davis, of A.D. Farms will be selling his ORGANIC VEGETABLES on Wednesdays at the Northway Mall from 11am to 6pm. He’ll also be selling shares of pigs. Contact Alex at 746-0038 or aktruckfarmer@hotmail.com.
2. PRODUCE BOXES from Glacier Valley Farm CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). Starting on October 22nd, you can get a weekly produce box filled with Alaskan vegetables! You can sign up for boxes every week, every other week, once a month—or more sporadically. You decide! You’ll be able to pick up your produce boxes at several locations around town, including Tap Root Café on Huffman Road. If you have a good location in mind, please let Arthur know! Email Arthur Keyes at for more information!

bread
Rise & Shine Bakery is taking a week and a half off, before starting our wintertime routine. Starting on Friday, October 17th, I’ll send out our first weekly Bakery Bulletin to our bakery email list, which will list the breads we’re baking for the following Wednesday (October 22nd).  Our bakery is now on the internet so you’ll be able to go online at riseandshinebread.com to order your breads.  Pick up your loaves on Wednesday either at Tap Root Café (on Huffman Road, across from Carrs’) from 3-6pm, or at Side Street Espresso (410 G Street, downtown) from 8-11am.  If you didn’t receive the bakery bulletin last year, and you’d like to receive it after the farmers’ market ends, please sign up online at riseandshinebread.com.

Alison’s Lunch
You might have read about my new website/blog already, and checked it out at AlisonsLunch.com. But did you know that you can subscribe, to get the posts over your email, or through a reader? I’ll be posting stories and recipes to this website all winter, so you can get the information automatically if you’d like.

seafood
Arctic Choice Seafoods will have all kinds of fresh, delicious, Alaskan fish! Here’s a list of what they are likely to have.

fresh king salmon | fresh sablefish | fresh rockfish | fresh halibut | fresh clams | fresh oysters | halibut cheeks | king crab | snow crab | spot shrimp | side stripe shrimp | Dungeness crab | scallops | smoked salmon bellies

Saturday South Anchorage Farmers’ Market
Dates: October 11 & 18
Hours: 10am-2pm
Location: behind the Dimond Center, in front of the Dimond Center Hotel

Please pass this email along to anyone you think might be interested in receiving the weekly market news—they can email me, Alison Arians, at if they’d like to be added to our newsletter list.

For more information about the market, contact Arthur Keyes, South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Manager, at 907-354-5833, or at .

Please respond to this email if you’d like to be removed from the newsletter list.

Cheers! And see you at the market!
Alison Arians
Farmers’ Market Reporter

brrr!
Did you notice that little nip in the air last Saturday at the market? Not me! I was wearing my down parka! Ha! The weather is getting a little nippy for the vegetables (not to mention the farmers!), so some of the vendors will be ready at 10am on Saturday, rather than 9am. This gives you an excuse to sleep in a little!

market extension
The last day of the Saturday market at the O’Malley & Old Seward location (the Cellular One arena) is this Saturday, October 4th, since the hockey arenda gets very busy after that. But for two more Saturdays (October 11 & 18), the Saturday market will move to the parking lot behind the Dimond Center (in front of the Dimond Center Hotel).  Start time of the market will be no earlier than 10 AM.  The farmers will keep coming as long as they can—it will truly be “weather permitting.” Bad signs (i.e. probably no more market) will include deep snow or extremely cold temperatures.

cinnamon rolls!
If you got to the market early last Saturday, you might have been lucky enough to get one of Mary Jane’s luscious cinnamon rolls! Baked fresh in Palmer on Saturday morning, they went fast, so you might want to get there early to make sure she still has some left!! She’ll also have all kinds of breads, croissants, palmiers, and macaroons from the French Oven Bakery.

recipes
I’m linking to two fantastic recipes this week!  One, for those yummy Brussels sprouts with my ubiquitous mustard & caper sauce (if you haven’t tried it yet, you really need to), and one for roasted parsnips, which are showing their beautiful white roots at the market! You’ll find photos of the recipes on the website: http://www.SouthAnchorageFarmersMarket.com.

where to find alaskan produce after the market ends!
1. Alex Davis, of A.D. Farms will be selling his organic vegetables on Wednesdays at the Northway Mall from 11am to 6pm. He’ll also be selling shares of pigs. Contact Alex at 746-0038 or aktruckfarmer@hotmail.com.
2. Produce boxes from Glacier Valley Farm CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture). Starting on October 22nd, you can get a weekly produce box filled with Alaskan vegetables! You can sign up for boxes every week, every other week, once a month—or more sporadically. You decide! You’ll be able to pick up your produce boxes at several locations around town, including Tap Root Café on Huffman Road. If you have a good location in mind, please let Arthur know! Email Arthur Keyes at amkeyes@mtaonline.net for more information!

Read On »

french fries
You probably know already that I love garlic-roasted potatoes. If you haven’t already made that recipe, you can find it here on the website. But when I was at the market on Wednesday, Mr. Stockwell asked if I’d ever made French fries, and if not, maybe I’d better try making them with his French Reds. He says they are crispy on the outside, and creamy on the inside.

Well, one of my favorite pastimes is reading cookbooks. So I’ve read more than my fair share of recipes and treatises about “how to make the perfect French fry.” Three sources I can think of, right off the top of my head are Jeffrey Steingarten’s chapter in The Man Who Ate Everything, a chapter in the book about food and cooking called How to Read a French Fry, and a long and involved recipe and chemistry lesson in a recent Cook’s Illustrated magazine. I’ve read that French-frying potatoes can be quite challenging—frying them twice, at different temperatures, picking the right oil, not overloading the pan so the oil stays hot and doesn’t make the potatoes greasy and soggy.  I have to admit, this process has never appealed to me.  All that hot oil, getting the temperature just right… But Dan (my husband) has expressed interest in trying it. Maybe it’s a guy thing.

Mr. Stockwell says you don’t have to fry them twice—just fry them at 375 degrees, not too many at a time. So, what the heck? Let’s give it a whirl! We’re going to use light olive oil (the smoke point is higher than 375 degrees, so I don’t think it’ll burn), and just cook a few at a time. I have a candy thermometer, so I hope we can keep the temperature right. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

When Meredith gets home from preschool, and after our usual book-reading and snuggling, we’ll make them for dinner. (I’ll make sure she doesn’t get anywhere near the hot oil—don’t worry!) I guess I should be whipping up a batch of homemade ketchup now, in anticipation… maybe if these turn out really well, I’ll do that next time!

parsley root?
I happened to catch a glimpse of a new vegetable at Rempel Family Farm last Saturday, and I’ve been kicking myself every day since because I didn’t buy it: Parsley Root!!  I’m going to get some this week, though, and try it out, mashing it with some potatoes, I think. I’ve read about it in Deborah Madison’s Local Flavorsbook. It’s a different plant than the regular parsley (like celery root, or celeriac, is a different plant than the usual stalk celery). Deborah Madison writes: “Parsley roots are thin and unpromising in terms of volume but a huge treasure when it comes to flavor. Their taste is clean, bracing, and assertive enough to have a real presence in a potato puree or potato soup.” She peels them and boils them up with the potatoes!  Anyone else want to give it a try? Mr. Rempel says its roots are in Eastern Europe (pardon my pun), so if you look for other recipes for it, this may help!

tasty technology tidbit
You might have read about my new website/blog already, and checked it out at AlisonsLunch.com. But did you know that you can subscribe, to get the posts over your email, or through a reader? I’ll be posting stories and recipes to this website all winter, so you can get the information automatically if you’d like. Just scroll down the left side of the page until you get to “Subscribe.” Then, you can choose from two options:
1. “Subscribe via email,” where you’ll enter your email address. Then you’ll receive an email in return to confirm your address.  You’ll just need to click on the link provided in that email to validate your email address. When you’re all signed up, you’ll receive an email when I put a new post on Alison’s Lunch.
2. “Subscribe in a reader,” where you’ll add Alison’s Lunch to your RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader. If you’re already familiar with this service, you know what this is all about, but if you’re like me, and need further explanation, a really helpful overview is this short and sweet YouTube video, called “RSS in Plain English.”

recipes
I’m including three fantastic recipes this week! The first is an absolutely divine recipe that I hope hope hope you’ll try, even though you might wonder what the big deal is. It’s Savoy cabbage on pasta with toasted walnuts, and it’s just out of this world good. The second recipe is for potato and onion salad with smoked salmon. It’s amazing with those new little peanut potatoes sprouting up at everyone’s stands these days!!  But you can use any waxy potato, even purple ones!  And last, I’ve included a new recipe for me: broccoli and red peppers with Thai peanut sauce! I think you’ll love it, too!!  Check out the recipes and the photos!

produce boxes from Glacier Valley Farm CSA!
Have you heard that Arthur Keyes and Alison Arians are starting a new year-round CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program? The new Glacier Valley Farm CSA program will focus on bringing you boxes of Alaskan produce from our local farms. You can sign up for boxes every week, every other week, once a month—or more sporadically. You decide!

• During the summer and fall, we’ll stock the CSA boxes with 100% Alaskan ingredients, grown by Arthur & Michelle Keyes, of Glacier Valley Farm, and by a variety of other farmers growing vegetables and berries in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.
• In the winter and spring, we’ll stock the boxes with as much Alaskan produce as possible: storage vegetables like cabbages, carrots, potatoes, beets, and turnips. To add variety to these nourishing and savory staples, our goal is to also include fresh vegetables and fruit from small, family-owned farms in the Northwest. 

If you’d like to order a box, please email Arthur at . While the Wednesday market is still running (through October 1), you can pick up your box from Arthur Keyes on Wednesday at the Dimond Center farmers’ market, from 10am-2pm. Please bring cash or a check for $25 to Arthur Keyes when you come to pick up your box. 

After October 1st, you’ll be able to pick up your produce boxes at several locations around town, including Tap Root Café, on Huffman Road. More information to come!

We have been thrilled with the response so far to our CSA program, and we want to make sure every box is fantastic… so depending on when you sign up, we may need to put you on a waiting list for a short time while we get our supply chain and distribution sites ramped up. If you have a suggestion for a good pick-up location, please let us know!

Read On »

potatoes potatoes potatoes!
If you haven’t been to the market in a while, you’ll be stunned by the vast array of beautiful, different-colored potatoes everywhere!

Ok, you’ve probably been invited to a wine-tasting party once or twice in your life. I’ve heard of cheese-tastings, too. But how about a potato tasting? Leave it to Vern Stockwell, of Stockwell farms, to have regular potato tastings!

He told me last week that his Purple Vikings win his blind potato tastings every time. They are a beautiful, bright pink, knobby potato—I guess they couldn’t be called the Hot Pink Vikings, since they were named after the Minnesota football team (wouldn’t be manly enough). Maybe the Hot Pink Viking-ettes after the cheerleaders? Anyway… the blind tasting doesn’t mean that you have to eat them with your eyes closed—they aren’t hot pink all the way through! Just their skins and some pretty pink rings through the center. It’s a medium waxy potato, Vern told me.

So I took a bag of Purple Vikings home with me, and in the spirit of the blind tasting he mentioned, I thought I’d roast them head-to-head with another just-dug Alaskan potato: Cal Whites, from last week’s CSA box. (You’ll see the recipe at the end of the newsletter for my garlic-roasted potatoes—they go with my savory sautéed cabbage, in a deconstructed Bubble & Squeak). Sure enough, Vern was right! Although the Cal Whites were fantastic, when matched head to head with the Purple Vikings, the Vikings were a bit creamier and sweeter. The Vikings looked a little strange after 25 minutes when I scraped the potatoes around on their pan (the pink/purple was turning a rather unappetizing grayish color), but at the end of their roasting time, they were just as brown and golden and wonderful as could be. And TASTY!!

I told Vern that I’d had a great time with my mini-tasting. So then said that I really should taste a bunch of different potatoes, not just two kinds! So this Wednesday I brought home a beautiful rainbow of potatoes, in six carefully labeled bags. This week I’ll be roasting and tasting the following potatoes:

Cherry Red | Yukon Gold | Purple Vikings | German Butterball | All-blue | French Red | Peanut

What a hoot!! I’ll have the advantage of a really hot, really big bread oven on Friday night, after our bread comes out of the oven!! 

Vern will be bringing big 20-pound bags of these gorgeous potatoes to market on Saturday—for sure, he’ll have big bags of the first four types listed above. He’ll be selling them for $20/bag.

And of course all the other farmers will have loads of beautiful potatoes, too—I’ll bet every one of them grows potatoes that the others don’t!  Check them all out and see what you’d like to try!!

PRODUCE BOXES from Glacier Valley Farm!
Have you heard that Arthur Keyes and Alison Arians are starting a new year-round CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program? The new Glacier Valley Farm CSA program will focus on bringing you boxes of Alaskan produce from our local farms. You can sign up for boxes every week, every other week, once a month—or more sporadically. You decide!

• During the summer and fall, we’ll stock the CSA boxes with 100% Alaskan ingredients, grown by Arthur & Michelle Keyes, of Glacier Valley Farm, and by a variety of other farmers growing vegetables and berries in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.
• In the winter and spring, we’ll stock the boxes with as much Alaskan produce as possible: storage vegetables like cabbages, carrots, potatoes, beets, and turnips. To add variety to these nourishing and savory staples, our goal is to also include fresh vegetables and fruit from small, family-owned farms in the Northwest. 

If you’d like to order a box, please email Arthur at . While the Wednesday market is still running (through October 1), you can pick up your box from Arthur Keyes on Wednesday at the Dimond Center farmers’ market, from 10am-2pm. Please bring cash or a check for $25 to Arthur Keyes when you come to pick up your box. 

After October 1st, you’ll be able to pick up your produce boxes at several locations around town, including Tap Root Café, on Huffman Road. More information to come!

We have been thrilled with the response so far to our CSA program, and we want to make sure every box is fantastic… so depending on when you sign up, we may need to put you on a waiting list for a short time while we get our supply chain and distribution sites ramped up. If you have a suggestion for a good pick-up location, please let us know!

Alison’s Lunch
Have you enjoyed reading my newsletters? If you like my recipes here on the farmers’ market website, you may be interested in checking out my brand-new website, www.AlisonsLunch.com! When the market ends in October, I’ll stop posting on the farmers’ market site, but I’ll be loading recipes and stories on my new year-round site, Alison’s Lunch. 

What’s the website all about?  It’s about vegetables. About which ones I cooked for lunch. And dinner, too. And how it tasted. And where the ingredients came from (who grew them?), and how I made it (the recipes!).  And who I ate it with, and what inspired me to possess the vegetable in the first place. (farmers’ market? my vegetable patch? Costco bonanza?) And what it would taste really good with (menu ideas!). And why you would probably love to make it and eat it!

I hope that my recipes and stories will encourage you to buy vegetables—all sorts! (Local ones, if you can.) Then I want to give you ideas for how to cook them up with gusto and confidence. And I’d love to inspire you to feed these delicious creations to people you love! So… I hope to see you there!  www.AlisonsLunch.com

Read On »

Have you been waiting for a year-round Alaskan alternative to the boxes of produce shipped up from Washington every week? We’re launching our very own Alaskan Community-Supported Agriculture program, which we plan to continue through the winter.  Our goal is to use as much Alaskan produce as possible, but including fresh vegetables and fruit from small, family-owned farms in the Northwest. Right now, though, our boxes are 100% Alaskan, and they are BURSTING with colorful, delicious, fresh produce!

Email Arthur Keyes, at , by Saturday night (September 13) if you’re interested in signing up. Through October 1st, you’ll pick up your boxes on WEDNESDAYS, at the Dimond Center Farmers’ Market, from 10am to 2pm. These first boxes will cost $25, and you can pay Arthur Keyes by cash or check when you pick up your box.

We have been thrilled with the response so far to our CSA program, and we want to make sure every box is fantastic… so depending on when you sign up, we may need to put you on a waiting list for a short time while we get our supply chain and distribution sites ramped up. If you have a suggestion for a good pick-up location, please let us know!

recipes
This week I’ve put in two GREAT new recipes that I’m very excited to share with you! As soon as that Savoy cabbage started showing up in the market, I invented a recipe for cabbage with pesto and new potatoes that I think you’re going to LOVE! It’s an absolute no-brainer.  And the other?  Now that the carrots are rolling in, I’m introducing a great carrot spread that you’re going to want to eat on toast, crackers, celery sticks… give it a try!  It’s very easy, and it’s YUMMY!

vegetables
Here’s a list of the vegetables I’ve seen at the market—but there are new things arriving all the time! 

arugula | basil | beet greens | beets, red | beets, chiogghia | broccoli | cabbage, green | cabbage, napa | cabbage, red | carrots | cauliflower | chard | cilantro | collards | cress | cucumbers, pickles | cucumbers, slicers | daikon | dill | eggplant | fennel | kale, lacinato | kale, red russian | kohlrabi | lettuce, buttercrunch | lettuce, iceberg | lettuce, red | lettuce, romaine | mustard, mizuna | mustard, red | mustard, tatsoi | onions, green | parsley, italian | parsnips | peas, sugar snap | potatoes, butterball | potatoes, new | radishes | rhubarb | salad green mixture | shingiku | sorrel | spinach | squash, blossoms | strawberries | sugar snap peas | tomatoes, cherry | tomatoes, red | tomatoes, yellow | turnip greens | turnips (white, snow apple) | turnips (purple-topped) | zucchini blossoms | zucchini, green | zucchini, yellow

bread
Rise & Shine Bakery will be baking two of the large pan loaves this week, their 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, as always, and their alaskan potato bread, made with new crop potatoes grown in Palmer! Both of these basic 100% whole-grain breads make fantastic great toast and sandwich bread. I always save 10 loaves of the potato bread for myself to pop in the freezer for the next few weeks! We’ll also be baking the raisin & toasted pecan pan loaves for your breakfasting pleasure!

Hearth loaves will be the fresh rosemary bread, great with pasta, salads, and warming soups and sandwiches (especially panini!) and our alaskan onion rye bread, our newest savory flavor—great with cheese, and for sandwiches of all kinds!

Mary Jane will also be at the market with all kinds of breads, croissants, palmiers, and macaroons from the French Oven Bakery.

Read On »

new: PRODUCE BOXES at the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market!
Have you been waiting for a South-side, Alaskan alternative to the boxes of produce shipped up from Washington every week? A&M Farms is launching a trial run with some big beautiful boxes of produce! You pre-order them by e-mail, and then pick them up on WEDNESDAY at the Dimond Center Farmers’ Market from 10am-2pm.

These first boxes will cost $25, and will contain a variety of beautiful all-Alaskan bounty!  If you sign up for the box, Arthur Keyes will email you the contents of the box on Sunday; I’ll let you know in the Tuesday newsletter about the contents, too.

To order a box and have it waiting for you on Wednesday, please email Arthur Keyes, at , or call him at 907-354-5833. Please include your name and phone number in your order. Arthur will send you a confirmation email within 12 hours. Then you can bring your check or cash to the Dimond Center Farmers’ Market on Wednesday, between 10am and 2pm.

recipes
This week I can’t help putting in two recipes that are especially great on cold days… they each have a bean or legume in them to add heartiness, so they are meals in themselves! The first is a beautiful golden-colored dish that takes advantage of the glorious cauliflowers at the market: a red lentil & cauliflower curry with golden raisins. (Those salmon-colored red lentils do turn golden when you cook them.)

Another bean dish is one that I’m very fond of… it’s for chard & fennel with tomatoes & black-eyed peas. Have you cooked many black-eyed peas? They are very quick to cook, and I love their sweet, earthy flavor. They go SO well with chard, tomatoes, and if you have it, the slightly licoricey taste of fennel!

And last, I’m including a beet salad with horseradish dressing, because the beets (and their greens) are coming in with such reckless abandon! Take advantage of them now while they still have their greens on for this delicious salad.

vegetables
Here’s a list of the vegetables I’ve seen at the market—but there are new things arriving all the time! 

arugula | basil | beet greens | beets, red | beets, chiogghia | broccoli | cabbage, green | cabbage, napa | cabbage, red | carrots | cauliflower | chard | cilantro | collards | cress | cucumbers, pickles | cucumbers, slicers | daikon | dill | eggplant | fennel | kale, lacinato | kale, red russian | kohlrabi | lettuce, buttercrunch | lettuce, iceberg | lettuce, red | lettuce, romaine | mustard, mizuna | mustard, red | mustard, tatsoi | onions, green | parsley, italian | parsnips | peas, sugar snap | potatoes, butterball | potatoes, new | radishes | rhubarb | salad green mixture | shingiku | sorrel | spinach | squash, blossoms | strawberries | sugar snap peas | tomatoes, cherry | tomatoes, red | tomatoes, yellow | turnip greens | turnips (white, snow apple) | turnips (purple-topped) | zucchini blossoms | zucchini, green | zucchini, yellow

Read On »

free broccoli last week… FREE LETTUCE next week!
On Saturday we introduced the Great Alaskan Broccoli Challenge, and next Saturday, September 6th, VanderWeele Farms is sponsoring another giveaway: The Great Alaskan Lettuce Extravaganza! I’ll send you another newsletter next week with a recipe and a coupon, so sign up here on the web for your newsletter if you want to receive your free lettuce at the market next Saturday!  You’re going to love this salad dressing recipe… In the meantime, here is the recipe for the broccoli this week!

the recipe: roasted broccoli with garlic

This recipe is one of the absolutely easiest recipes from Alison Arians’ 2008 South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Cookbook, but it’s also one of the yummiest. It makes such a nice side dish, a great snack, a fantastic pizza topping… that is, if you can resist eating the whole batch straight off the baking sheet.
I find that it’s easy to eat lots of vegetables and resist snacking on unhealthy food as long as I have plenty of ready-to-eat vegetable dishes like this hanging around in the refrigerator.

2 pounds broccoli
4 (or more) cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Peel the broccoli stalks, starting from the bottom, using a paring knife—the thick skin will peel away from the stalk. Then slice the stalks into coins less than ¼” thick. Keep them separate from the florets. Cut the florets into bite-sized pieces.
3. Coat 1 or 2 large baking sheets with non-stick spray or oil. (This makes clean-up a lot easier.)
4. Toss the broccoli stalks with half the oil, garlic and salt in a bowl until evenly coated with oil. Spread the broccoli stalks out into a single layer. Roast until the stalks are tender and beginning to brown, about 20 minutes.
5. Toss the broccoli florets with the remaining oil, garlic and salt, and roast them like the broccoli stalks until tender and beginning to brown. That will take less time—more like 12-15 minutes. Enjoy!

website
Are you ready for our new YouTube video?  It’s all about processing collard greens to freeze. I know you’ve been dying to know what’s with the collards at the farmers’ market, and whether you have to be a Southerner to eat them. Do they involve great chunks of ham and vats of grits? I’m sure that a real Southerner would have some great ways to cook them up, but since I was born and raised here in Alaska, I’ve had to learn my own way of cooking them. I love them so much that I’ve just frozen up 20 bunches of them for the winter. What, you might ask, is the advantage of freezing so many collards?

First of all, I love collards for their ability to stand up to a pot of boiling water. Most greens, when steamed or boiled, wilt down to a shadow of their former self. You practically have to have a bushel of spinach to make a nice little side dish for two people—and that’s a lot of spinach cleaning to do. Even chard (which I love) isn’t my favorite thing to freeze, because it sautées down so much, even when I dice up and include the stems. But collards are thick and tough, and don’t collapse much under their salted boiling water bath, leaving you a lot of greens to pack into ziplock bags and freeze.

Then, when you thaw them out, they are so wonderful when you braise them with onions for 20 minutes or so, and then add garlic. See my recipe for braised collard greens in my cookbook and here on the website, and the even more wonderful recipe for kale (or collards) and cabbage with white beans on garlic toast (also in the cookbook and here on the website).

You can use collards in place of any hearty winter green in recipes—kale, turnip greens, etc.  They have an assertive flavor that not everyone loves, but if you cook them properly (the salty boiling water blanch, and then the slow braise with onions), and add plenty of salt to the finished dish, they have a wonderfully complex flavor.

Did you already check out the sauerkraut and broccoli processing videos on YouTube? 

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You know broccoli’s good for you, and yeah, yeah, you should be eating it by the bushel according to the latest health reports… But does it seem like a bit of a chore? Maybe when you shop at the farmers’ market, you head for the snap peas and carrots, lettuce and tomatoes, instead of those great big bunches of fresh broccoli.

But when was the last time you ate Alaskan broccoli?  And not only ate it, but prepared it in a way that was so good you couldn’t stop eating it?  We think our recipe and our broccoli will change the way you think about broccoli forever!  In fact, we think our Alaskan broccoli is SO good, and our garlic-roasted broccoli recipe is SO fantastic, that we want you to try this recipe ON US.  Yep. FREE. You can have three beautiful heads of sweet, tender, fresh Alaskan broccoli on Saturday, August 30, if you bring your coupon and commit to trying this recipe. Come early—because VanderWeele Farms can only bring so many cases to give away—so this offer is only good while supplies last!

Here’s how you get the coupon and the recipe!
1. If you’re not already signed up for the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market email newsletter, sign up here by Thursday at noon (just type your email into the yellow box).
2. On Thursday afternoon, you’ll receive an email newsletter with the recipe and the broccoli coupon on it!
3. Print out the page with the recipe and the broccoli coupon.
4. Cut the coupon off the recipe, and keep the recipe for yourself.
5. Make plans to get up early on Saturday morning (the market starts at 9am).
6. Bring your coupon to the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market (O’Malley & Old Seward Hwy) on Saturday, August 30.
7. Make a beeline to VanderWeele Farms’ stand.
8. Promise solemnly to make the garlic-roasted broccoli recipe, and get your free broccoli!
9. Then give us your feedback! Did you love it? Did you already love broccoli, but this recipe was a revelation? Do you have a recipe you like even better? Please share it with us!

If you want more great broccoli recipes—or for that matter, fantastic recipes for any vegetable you can find at the farmers’ market, you can find lots of other great recipes here on the website or by buying Alison Arians’ 2008 South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Cookbook (available at the farmers’ market). It’s loaded with all kinds of great ideas and time-saving tips for cooking delicious and healthy meals, loaded with local produce.

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Guess what!! We’ve made another YouTube video!! It’s about how to make SAUERKRAUT!! It’s a really great way to process the cabbage that’s showing up, so sweet and juicy, at the market these days. It’s Farmer Mark Rempel’s family recipe, and it’s really easy, really fun, and most importantly, really delicious!!

Here’s the crazy thing about our sauerkraut. Mark told us to keep tasting it after we made it, stirring it around every week. When we liked the taste, he told us, probably after five weeks or so, just take it out of the crock and put it into ziplock freezer bags and freeze it for the winter. So we waited our first week to stir it around, and when we stirred it up, it smelled SO good that we tasted it after just one week and loved it!! It was already sour enough for us to love the taste—so we just froze it up after only one week! So make sure you make the sauerkraut to your taste. I’m going to try another batch and see what it tastes like after two weeks!

eat local challenge
The Alaska Division of Agriculture is sponsoring an “Eat Local Challenge” the week of August 24-30th.  Check http://www.alaskagrown.org for further details!
They are trying to get Alaskans buying and eating more local produce during the week! Many restaurants have agreed to participate and feature Alaska Grown products on their menus during the Challenge week! Of course we couldn’t be more pleased to join in!

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I have three great ones this week!  In addition to the sauerkraut, I have a fantastic chard recipe, and a wonderful cauliflower soup, too. They are both really delicious, and couldn’t get any healthier! Please try them out when you get a chance!! Using the sweet, sweet chard and the wonderful, tender, luscious Alaskan cauliflower, you just can’t beat these dishes!

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