Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone is having a great, safe, and delicious Thanksgiving this year! We had our dinner yesterday, so today I have time to relax and tell you all about it!

We decided to invite several friends over this year, and did a (mostly) 100-mile dinner. (“Mostly” because there was a demand for cranberry sauce, so I relented there. Also, the wine was not local, but I have an explanation for that. Most everything else came from the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market, so when I say “the market” in this post, that’s what I mean.

The menu I dreamt up was big. We had a LOT of food, but that way we made sure that no one went home hungry.

Turkey
Our turkey was from Silver Bridge Farm in Landmark, MB. We ordered it back in August so that we would commit to actually doing Thanksgiving. When I put our name down, we specified a “medium” turkey. When we arrived at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market on Saturday to pick up our turkey, they had a sign asking everyone to get as large a turkey as your roaster would fit. Our roaster could hold up to 22lbs, so we ended up with a 21.88lb turkey. I’m not sure how to show scale on this thing, but here it was before it went into the oven:

I stuffed it with onions, sage and oregano from the market, and rosemary and parsley from our garden. That’s it. No salt, no brining, no butter under the skin… All I did was roast it upside down, breast down. It was in a 425F oven for 30 minutes, then a 325F oven for another three hours.

Now, all the calculators I’d seen said that a bird this size should take about 5 hours. But after three and a half hours it was done. Like, DONE. We called everyone in a panic and got them here quickly while the turkey rested, covered in foil and towels. When we sliced the bird, the breast meat was incredibly juicy. I am converted: turkeys go into the oven upside down from now on!

Stuffing
I made homemade stuffing. I got wild rice bread from the Bread Lady on Saturday, and chopped it up into cubes to dry overnight. Other than that, it was a basic dressing: celery and onions from the market in lots of butter, broth made from the turkey neck, some sauteed sage from the market, and parsley from the garden. It all went into a buttered casserole dish and was baked, covered, at 400F for about 40 minutes.

Potatoes
There seems to be a problem with local potatoes this year! Despite looking and looking, we could not find sweet potatoes at the market. I also wanted to do my lavender-coloured mashed potatoes just for the colourful interest, but we couldn’t find the blue potatoes either! *sigh* So, I made smashed red potatoes, which worked just fine.

Green Bean Casserole
This dish worried me, since my standard, classic green-bean casserole involves cans of cream of mushroom soup. Well, Alton Brown to the rescue! I made Alton’s from-scratch green-bean casserole with green beans from my garden, onions from the market, and mushrooms from Loveday. It was a huge success, and my husband has already requested that I make it this way from now on.

Veggies
Our veggies were corn from the market that I’d frozen earlier in the summer, and honey-glazed carrots. Both the carrots and the honey were from the market. (I used this super-simple recipe.)

Rolls and Cranberry sauce
The rolls were butterhorns from Mum’s Country Bakery in Landmark. (Incidentally, if you’ve never tried their cinnamon buns, you must!) I got both regular and multigrain, and they were both great.

The cranberry sauce… *sigh* Well, the cranberries were from Safeway. I was going to do a tart raspberry sauce using frozen raspberries from a friend’s garden this summer, but there was pouting and whining. In the interests of peace, I conceded on the sauce. My husband made a nice lemon-scented cranberry sauce with a touch of allspice.

Wine
Now, I could have gotten local wine. Manitoba has some very nice fruit wines that we could have used. But while we were back home visiting my family earlier this year, we picked up a bottle of Pink Catawba from Heineman’s Winery in Put-in-Bay, Ohio. It was a bit sweeter than I like, but everyone else seemed to like it.

Pumpkin Pie
I am blessed with a husband who makes the most amazing pumpkin pie. He starts with a sugar pumpkin, roasts it, purees it, makes the crust, and bakes them all together. Mmm.

So, that was our dinner! We have an obscene amount of leftovers (including 8lbs of turkey – we weighed it!), so tomorrow I think I’ll be making some turkey pot pies to freeze.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Garden Retrospective, 2010

We’re still getting days in the high 20s, and the humidex has been bringing the “feel like” temperature well into the 30s, but summer is ending. You can feel it on the wind, and smell it in the air. The trees are still mostly green, but a few are starting to take on their fall yellow cast. The lady at The Preferred Perch was on CJOB’s The Gardener a few weeks ago, and said that she thinks fall will be early this year because the birds are starting to migrate already.

Oh well. I can’t complain too loudly, since this year has been head and shoulders better for gardening than last year. We’ve already harvested more tomatoes this year than we got all of last year. My poor tomato cages are being crushed beneath the weight of the vines this year, and I have my eye on a few monster tomatoes that are starting to ripen. I also have a gigantic bowl of cherry tomatoes already. A good number of those are destined for the freezer to liven up our winter pastas.

The beans are the real story in my garden this year. I think I’ve frozen about 10 pounds of beans so far, and they’re still going! We didn’t do a very good job last year of keeping them picked, so we’re trying to stay on top of it this year.

Also, the zucchini are producing baseball bats. Bleah. I prefer my zucchini smaller, because they taste better and don’t have as many seeds. But I think I tried to pack too many plants into a small area this year, and the zucchini are being hidden until they’re ginormous. I’m going to have to retool where everything is planted for next year.

And finally, this year I got onions. Starting them from seed is for suckers – I’m doing sets from now on! The onions are a good size, and taste good. They also look like they’ll keep rather well, so I did something else that I’ve never done before. After the sugar snap peas were done, I turned over the bed and replanted it to try and get a late crop of peas, lettuce and onions. I figure that even if we get an early fall, they can take a mild cold snap and still produce well. We’ll see how that goes.

Overall I’m pleased with how everything came out this year. I’m doing my best to save as much as we can (since the two of us can only eat so much produce before surrendering!) and have been making great use of our new freezer. I’ll try to do a post soon about some of the things I’m doing to save the harvest for the coming winter.

Eggs now available at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market

Ok ok ok ok ok! I’m back! School is over, the requisite trip back home has taken place, job has been secured. I am crossing my fingers that I will have more time for blogging, now that I don’t have homework and other issues hanging over me!

In case it passed your notice, the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market is now open. The market is open every Saturday 8:00am-3:00pm. It will also be open on Canada Day (8:00am-3:00pm), and starting in July it will be open Wednesday afternoons noon – 6:00pm.

We’ve gone every weekend that the market has been open so far, and it’s been even better than last year. The produce stands are awash in asparagus and spring greens, and we’re even starting to see carrots and tomatoes. (And of course, Wenkai Liu is back with his wealth of greenhouse-grown Oriental veggies.) Our favourite vendors are back, and there are some new ones.

One of the most exciting additions has been Nature’s Farm eggs from Steinbach. The market was really lacking in two areas: eggs and dairy products. I suspect this is because of the tight grip that marketing boards have on producers, so I am thrilled to see these eggs available directly from the producer. The colour of these eggs is amazing. The chickens are fed with flax, which gives their yolks an amazing orangy-yellow colour. Nature’s Farm also makes a variety of pastas that I’ve written about before.

I’m looking forward to another summer of exploring our local foodshed via the Market. Hopefully, the addition of Nature’s Farm means that there are even more good surprises in store in the years ahead.

Manitoba Spud Wars: Small producers vs Peak of the Market

Welcome to Battle Potato! In this corner, we have Peak of the Market, a non-profit marketing board that has been given the power to regulate the sale and marketing of root vegetables in Manitoba. In the other corner, we have The Potato Coalition of Manitoba, a group of small potato farmers, farmers’ markets and citizens who want to ensure that consumers have choice when it comes to their potatoes.

So what’s the big deal about potatoes and Peak? As a consumer of potatoes (yum yum), I am concerned about what the changes mean to me. According to The Potato Coalition of Manitoba, new regulations enacted on March 31, 2010 limit the choice that consumers have when purchasing potatoes from smaller producers. The details are posted on their website, and the claims are backed up with links to the new regulations: the Potato (Freshly Dug) Seasonal Farmers’ Market/Roadside Stand Exemption Order and the Potato (Freshly Dug) Seasonal Retail Production and Marketing Exemption Order.

So which specific items concern me the most? First, the fact that after November 1 of every year, I won’t have access to my choice of locally-grown potatoes. No local blue potatoes, no local heritage varieties, no local fingerling potatoes. If I want local, I must buy russet, red or Yukon Gold, which are the only three varieties that Peak of the Market carries.

Second, local restaurants that I support and love must buy from Peak of the Market if they want locally-grown potatoes. Again, this will severely limit the choice that these restaurants have in selecting produce for their customers. If Fusion Grill (just one restaurant known for its hyper-local menu) gets it in its head to serve lavender-coloured mashed potatoes this summer, made from local Russian Blue potatoes, good luck getting them from Peak of the Market.

Third, if a small producer hasn’t sold their entire crop by November 1, they must forfeit the profit from those potatoes. Even though potatoes are eminently storable, the producer must donate their remaining crop to a food bank. Laudable? Yes. Has the potential to drive small producers out of the potato market for fear of not breaking even? Yes. I suspect this may have been at the core of last September’s potato news story in which a local potato grower basically said it wasn’t worth growing potatoes if Peak of the Market would just force him to give them away.

Finally, I found this may have tossed a damper on a new project that I only just now found out about: my new favourite place to go shopping even though it’s not open yet. A year-round farmers’ market is being developed in the James Avenue pumping station in Point Douglas. This wonderful, fantastic thing is now threatened by these regulations. If producers can’t sell their potatoes in the winter, then there will be no potato producers at the year-round farmers’ market. Yes, there will be other things to sell, but the fact that such a storable food item can’t be sold is ridiculous, and could threaten the future of the year-round market.

Cue distress.

Fortunately, there is hope. The Potato Coalition met with Minister Stan Struthers (Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Initiatives) to discuss their concerns, and they report that the meeting went well. They will also be meeting with Peak of the Market on April 16 to try to get further exemptions for small producers.

This summer should be interesting. I’m hoping that the exemption is granted. If it’s not, we could face the possibility of a summer with no potatoes at the farmers’ markets. (Why plant potatoes if you’re not sure you can sell them all?) If you’re interested in helping, check out the Coalition’s “Get Involved” page.

Christmas Dinner in Pictures

I hope everyone has had a good holiday. We sure did! And thanks for everyone’s feedback on my poll about traditional Christmas meals. Turkey was the overwhelming favourite, probably due to the high Canadian readership. My husband posed the same question on his blog, which has a fairly high American readership, and the most popular answer there was ham. So there is a difference over the border!

One reader put it this way: “In the USA a lot of people avoid turkey [for Christmas] because everyone just had it for Thanksgiving, but of course that’s less of an issue north of the border where Thanksgiving is celebrated several weeks earlier.” Good point!

Anyway, after some discussions and logistical figuring, we finally settled on a dinner for this evening.

A gorgeous prime rib roast of Manitoba beef. We picked it up from The Carver’s Knife on Wednesday, and they “cradled” the roast for us. That means they sliced off the ribs and retied them turned around the other way, so that they cradled the roast. I used the spice rub from this post in Livejournal’s Food Porn community, and bastardized Alton Brown’s roasting method (sans pottery). The roast was juicy, succulent, melt-in-your-mouth tender, tasty, and perfectly cooked. This is a Do Again!

With the dripping from the roast I made “proper” Yorkshire pudding. I’m well practiced with making popovers, and this is the same idea: a thin batter, leavened with steam. This came out great.

We had a bit of a backlog of potatoes from our Fresh Box, so I used this recipe for Roasted Potato Medley: Yukon Gold, red and sweet potatoes, all local.

Broccoli from our Fresh Box in a lovely cheddar cheese sauce. I wasn’t sure how much sauce the recipe I had would make; now I know it’ll be about two cups worth! We had lots of sauce left. ;)

…And we finished it off with pumpkin pie, made with roasted, frozen pumpkin that we had bought at the last farmers’ market of the year. I’m stuffed!

Happy holidays to all my readers!

Half Pints’ Burly Wine Day

Yesterday morning, even though it was a Saturday, we set our alarms for early and managed to get out of the house before 9am. (Trust me, that’s a miracle for us for Saturdays after the time change. Winter = sleepy.) What rousted us from our warm bed so early? Why, beer!

We visited the Half Pints Brewing Company’s Burly Wine day and open house. The Burly Wine, which has gotten some rave reviews, was available in the 2009 variety, along with a small selection of 2008s and 2008s aged over bourbon chips.

Burly Wine is a barley wine, or a very strong ale. They have rather high alcohol content, and actually improve with age (rather than going “skunky.”)

We managed to get to the brewery on Roseberry a bit after 9:30am and got in line. We snagged four bottles of the 2009, two of the 2008, and six of the 2008 bourbon. We also grabbed a six of Half Pints’ seasonal beer, Sweet Nikki Brown.

After we secured our goods, we made for the tasting room to sample the beer we’d just purchased. Whew, that stuff is strong! I admit to liking my beers a bit less – uh, robust. For comparison, St. James Pale Ale is right up my alley. But I can see the Burly Wine being more of a sipping beer rather than a drinking beer. This is a beer that you enjoy slowly over the course of an evening… Almost out of necessity. (I admit to being a cheap drunk.) My husband, however, LOVES the Burly Wine, and is already figuring out how to portion out the bottles in order to age them in the most efficient manner.

Then we went on a tour with the Brewmaster for Half Pints, Dave. He called the company a home brew operation that got out of hand, and you can tell in the way he shows people around. He takes pride in every step along the way, and happily answered all of our questions about the brewing process. As my husband put it, “I enjoyed the tour because it was presented in the enthusiastic manner of somebody who obviously loves his craft, showing off his favourite toys.”

I asked if they were planning on doing a lambic anytime soon, since I love lambic beers so much. He said that he would like to do a lambic, but that they were really labour intensive. If they do come up with one, I’d really like to try it!

Anyway, we had fun, and we’ll try to make it back for next year’s Burly Wine day.

Fresh Option Organic Delivery

With the seasonal closing of the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market last weekend, and having put the garden to sleep earlier in October, we decided to take the plunge and sign up for something we’ve been interested in for a while: the Fresh Option Organic Delivery service.

Fresh Option delivers boxes of fruits and vegetables to your door weekly (or bi-weekly if you prefer). I’ve been interested in this service for quite a while, but we just didn’t think we could eat the veggies from the garden and the stuff from the farmers’ market and whatever was delivered! But now that we’re into winter (sort of), we decided to try it out.

It’s sort of like a pot luck for vegetables. Fresh Option posts the contents of your upcoming box on their website a few days in advance, allowing you time to plan your meals and research foods you haven’t tried before (for example, our first box will contain chard). We opted to get the small box once a week, and I’m surprised at how much stuff we’re going to get. If we go a few weeks and it looks like we’re getting too much food, we’ll scale it back to once every other week.

It’s also requiring us to shift when we do our meal planning, since we ordinarily go grocery shopping on Sundays. This first week, though, I’m using the few days leeway as a chance to get “caught up” and use up the veggies that we already have on hand: namely, almost a whole bag of onions. (French onion soup it is!)

When spring rolls around, the farmers’ market opens and the garden starts producing more zucchini than I know what to do with again, we will most likely cancel the service until the fall again. But until then, we’re looking at this as a challenge – can we use up all the fruits and veggies in once week? If anything, it’ll encourage us to get more veggies in our diet!

I’ll post again in a few weeks with an update as to how it’s going.

Last Farmers’ Market of the Year

Saturday was the last market of the year in St. Norbert. The promised that they’d be open until Halloween this year, and they delivered – even if the choice of vendors was a bit slim due to the late date and cold weather.

When we go to the market, our bags usually look like this when we leave: about 75% veggies and fruit, 15% prepared foods (pierogies, breads, cider, etc), and 10% meat. On this last trip to the market, we bought a stack of vinartarta from Kyle, one eggplant, and the rest of our money went towards meat.

Meat! It freezes well, so this seemed like a great way to enjoy the fruits of the market further into the winter. We bought two pounds of bacon, which I divided into six-slice packages for freezing. We got two veal flank steaks, and we picked up a bison roast that will be experiencing the crock pot thing today.

This was a great year for the market, at least from the customer’s point of view. Our garden did so poorly this summer (more on that later) that the market felt like a godsend for providing local tomatoes when mine failed badly.

We’ll miss you, St. Norbert’s Farmers’ Market! See you next year!

Russian Blue Smashed Potatoes

So, remember those Russian Blue potatoes that we found at the farmers’ market? (And the vendor still has lots! I can’t remember their name, though; they are usually along the southernmost row of stands at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market.)

Anyway, I’ve made a lot of things with these blue potatoes, just to see how they look in different formats. The steak fries were really interesting, although the browning they got sort of muted the blue colour. Making potato and leek soup was – well, it tasted great, but the soup turned out an odd greenish-brown colour.

But! When I made smashed potatoes, I think I have found my most favourite thing to do with these potatoes. I just love the lavender colour.

I never make mashed potatoes anymore, by the way. Peeling a potato just feels like I’m sending the best part to the compost pile. And who has time to whip potatoes into smooth submission anymore, anyhow?

I also don’t use a recipe, typically, and prefer to eyeball things. So here’s how it usually goes, with amounts estimated. Adjust everything here to your taste!

* About 1lb Russian Blue potatoes
* 1 to 2TB butter
* 1/4 to 1/2 cup sour cream
* less than 1/4 cup milk – maybe a few tablespoons
* salt and pepper

Wash the potatoes and cut out any eyes or soft spots. Cut the potatoes into 1/2″ chunks. In a large pot, cover the potatoes with water and bring to a boil. Cook until the potatoes are soft. Drain.

Put the pot back over high heat for about a minute. Flip the potatoes around in the pot to dry them off just a bit. Remove from heat. Add butter, sour cream and milk, all to taste, while mashing with a potato masher. Mash them good! You’re looking to break up all of the big chunks of potato, and to make sure the butter, milk and sour cream get thoroughly mixed through. You are not looking for silky creaminess. If you wanted that, you should have peeled the potatoes! :)

Add salt and pepper to taste. If you want, add some freshly chopped chives as well.

Chanterelles on Toast

Remember those chanterelles? I’m here to tell you their fate!

I did massive searches for recipes that used chanterelles. Boy, there sure are a lot out there! But I already had an idea of what I wanted. I wanted the mushrooms to stand on their own, and not have to compete with a cream sauce, for instance, or a strong-tasting cheese. I also wanted simple, because our schedule has been a bit hectic lately.

In the end, I found exactly what I wanted: a fresh-tasting dish that highlighted the taste of the chanterelles, but without a lot of fuss.

This was so simple and easy, but my husband summed the taste up when he said, “Wow. This tastes like something you’d get at a really expensive restaurant.” If we can find more chanterelles at the market this weekend, I’d like to pick more up so I can try this again. So good!

You will need:
* a loaf of crusty french bread
* 1/2 lb yellow chanterelle mushrooms
* 1/2 an onion, diced
* olive oil
* 1 TB cream (I just used half-n-half)
* about 1/8 cup chopped fresh parsley (or four sprigs or so)
* salt and pepper

Slice four nice, thick pieces of bread from the loaf. Don’t use the heel! In a large frying pan, heat about 2 TB olive oil over medium heat. Toast the bread in the frying pan. When one side is golden, add more olive oil to the pan and flip the toast pieces. (Watch them carefully – some of mine got a bit *too* toasty, if you know what I mean.)

Meanwhile, clean the chanterelles with a damp cloth. Quarter them lengthwise, and then chop into pieces about 1″ wide or long.

Heat a medium frying pan over high heat. When the pan is hot, toss in the chopped chanterelles and stir, stir, stir! You can add a bit of salt at this point if you’d like.

Doing this dry saute will drive a lot of moisture out of the mushrooms. You can spoon off the water if you’d like (apparently it makes awesome mushroom stock) but I didn’t get enough to bother saving. I just left my water in the pan – it was probably about two tablespoons or so.’

Once no more water is cooking out of the mushrooms, add the onions and stir. Cook the mushrooms and onions until the onions start to get soft. Add a sprinkle of salt and a few twists of fresh-ground pepper. Add the parsley and stir to combine. Add the cream and remove from heat. Continue stirring until the cream is completely incorporated.

Spoon the mushroom mixture over your toasted bread. Serve hot.