Category: Local Food (Page 3 of 12)

All about local food finding in the Twin Cities

Growing Ginger in the North!

January 20, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Like anything you grow at home- ginger just tastes better than store bought. And with how much I love ginger’s bold and distinct flavor of course I grow it. Plus, growing an exotic, tropical plant up in zones 3 and 4 is pretty darn empowering.

Then there’s the fact that most ginger sold in the U.S. is imported from China, Brazil or Thailand…and has been grown without much regulation and then shipped thousands of miles. Add in that is a beautiful plant that smells amazing and you’ve got to try growing this at least once!

Ginger Botany

Zingiber Officinale roscoe
Classified as an aromatic herb, the part of the ginger plant we most often eat is  called a rhizome, the underground stem of a plant. But with homegrown ginger you can enjoy the stems as well- I chop the stems and enjoy them in tea!

Native to Southeast Asia this plant likes if hot and humid. So if you have a greenhouse you’re a step ahead, but dedicating your warmest space to this plant should get you a happy harvest too. Growing ginger is an 8-10 month project, so we try to get started at the end of January here in Minnesota zone 4. And yes, these plants will be LARGE before they head outside, so plan for space similar to a tomato and they may even have to stay inside longer.

Here’s A Ginger Growing Timeline

  • Jan 20-Feb 20- Start soaking your rhizomes
  • Jan 27- Feb 27  pot up into soil, in a tray to sprout
  • March 1-15 pot up again into deeper pots with ample space
  • June 1- 15 Once temps are 65+F outside, you can move to final growing space outdoors

Growing Ginger

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Homestead Year In Review 2022

January 1, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I’m finally slowing down enough to take the time to get in that frame of mind where I can rewind and somewhat clearly peer back at 2022, the year in review.

Thankful for 2022

I distinctly remember being so very grateful for the late spring as I was frantically writing/editing/revising so many pages (so many times) along with Stephanie Thurow for our upcoming book, Small-Scale Homesteading.

I felt lucky that the maple sap held off until we got back from our March vacations. We brought home and raised a new brood of chicks into a healthy, happy (and spoiled) backyard flock. I took my local Master Gardener coursework and completed 50+ hours of volunteer hours. I helped grow vegetables and flowers at my son’s elementary school.

New Additions to the Homestead last Spring

We took time up north in Minnesota to walk through and wonder at creation. I taught classes on companion planting, composting, growing garlic, garden planning and preserving the harvest, wrote for magazines new and old. I got to manage our 6th annual Winter Farmers Markets. My family all got Influenza A at the same time and we nursed each other back to health with homegrown remedies. And I grew as much food as ever- including so many new favorites.

We celebrated life as we lived it. What a year both in and out of the garden!

Click HERE to watch some fly-over drone footage of the garden from this summer.

Weather Woes

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DIY Cocktail Infusion Kit

December 18, 2022 / / 3 Comments

Are you ready to take your cocktail game to the next level? With a DIY cocktail infusion kit, you can create deliciously unique flavors at home, transforming your favorite spirits into personalized concoctions that will wow your friends and add a special touch to any gathering. Making your own infused spirits to add flair to your cocktails is simple and fun!

I love playing in the kitchen—being able to coax out intense or subtle flavors from high quality ingredients lets you taste the herbs and spices in new ways! Infusing spirits feels like magic to me…

And magic is always a good gift to give!

Remember to save a jar or two so you can gift yourself as well. 😉

I’ve gotten rave reviews from friends who’ve sipped the results of these infusions so far. They are simple to put together and fun to give—and better than the store-bought versions in so many ways (especially because you can pronounce all the ingredients!). Plus, they can shine bright in their presentation, or be as homey as you like!

For more holiday gift ideas visit my Gift Guide to give from the heart

Gather Ingredients for Your Cocktail Infusion Kit

Tray of dried ingredients to make DIY cocktail infusion kits. Cherries, cloves, dried orange slices, cinnamon sticks and star anise.

Similar to mixing and matching herbs for teas from dried-up leaves, infusing imparts flavors (or healing properties like in calendula oil for making salve) without the heat. Letting herbs and spices impart their flavor at room temperature takes longer—but also brings with it subtler scents and layers of flavor.

I have just started seeing these kits in a few specialty shops and farmers markets and they are not cheap! But luckily, making them at home is quite inexpensive.

If making for yourself, you can use fresh ingredients (fresh orange or apple slices and cherries), but these make really fun gifts when fully dehydrated ingredients are added to the jars. Gifting dehydrated ingredients lets the person who receives the gift choose when they want to make the infusion themselves. You can gift with a bottle of spirits or without.

Dried orange slices, cherries, and cinnamon sticks arranged on a countertop and placed in glass jars to make DIY cocktail infusion kits.

Dehydrating

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photo of hardneck garlic harvest

Growing Great Garlic

August 25, 2022 / / 8 Comments

There are few crops as funky, dependable and well loved as garlic. For good reasons too! Garlic, and the other bulbs in the Allium family (like onions and shallots) add the base flavor to meals the world over. They’re easy to grow, easy to store and easy to cook with.

Humans have been cultivating garlic for over 7,000 years! In that time, we’ve selected variations in flavor, size, growth habits to come up with roughly 700 current varieties.

This article will help you grow great garlic too!

I presented a companion class
Grow Great Garlic via the
Minnesota State Horticultural Society,
available in their Webinar Shop for $8

Michelle
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Summer Spaghetti

August 3, 2022 / / 1 Comment

Welcome to summer at its best – Fresh Garden to Table Eating that celebrates so many of our favorite flavors of the season!

This is a great flexible recipe that can be changed to what you have on hand.

We eat this is as a chilled meal during high summer. While some might call it a salad, I see it as more of a base to add other things to; from leftover grilled chicken, some sourdough slathered with pesto… We’ve also added cooked and cooled cannellini beans to this for a protein boost. If you add beans, plan to add more dressing to keep the flavors balanced.

We’ve garnished with balsamic vinegar, pesto, fresh mozzarella, parmesan, olives, or whatever Italian flavors feel right that night. The main idea with this meal is to let the flavors from the garden shine. All the herbs in this recipe are easy to grow.

You can make this with regular pasta or use zucchini noodles (zoodles) or both if you have split family preferences like we do.

Summer Spaghetti Recipe

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Harvesting, Preserving + Using Herbs

August 1, 2022 / / 8 Comments

Filling your basket with fresh picked herbs is one of those  garden routines. It is by far one of the more glamorous parts of gardening (much better than mixing compost or weeding, right!?!) so don’t skip this joyful garden practice.

Whether you are growing herbs for cooking, herbal tea or the medicine chest there are a few tips to harvesting and preserving that I’ve learned along the way…

Favorite Homestead Herbs

Here are a few of my favorite (which also happen to be the easiest) herbs to grow. Watch a recent video of me harvesting herbs growing in my garden HERE on my @forksinthedirt Instagram.

Perennial Herbs

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Homestead Strata Recipe: Gluten Free

February 23, 2022 / / 1 Comment

As sunlight hours (if not warmer temps) return to Minnesota, so do the backyard eggs. This gluten free Strata recipe is a beautiful way celebrate the return of spring and fresh eggs. It is also a healthy family favorite, and a great way to sneak in all kinds of veggies.

On Our Suburban Homestead

I love how our chickens help keep us in tune with nature’s cycles. If you’ve been interested in starting a backyard flock of your own, or want to learn where you can buy local farm fresh eggs, I’ve got you covered. This is a family favorite for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Especially when the boys go and collect the eggs then crack them right into the mixing bowl!

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Beet Love

February 1, 2022 / / 3 Comments

One of my all time favorite vegetables is the humble Beet. Sometimes Beet Recipes can get a little predictable, but I’ve got a guest chef helping us keeps beets exciting today…and sharing his Beet Risotto Recipe with us!

I think my deep love for beets may be in part because it was one of those vegetables my mother NEVER cooked. So, I got to discover it all on my own and there’s something simply endearing about that, isn’t there? Their flavor and nutritional powers are pretty good reasons to love them as well…

Variety Matters!

I also love beets because you can use the entire plant, literally roots to shoots. I admit it took me a few years to fully board the ‘beet green’ bandwagon- but I am quite comfy now not giving up my seat now!

The rest of my family grew to love beet greens as a substitute for half the greens in their salads last summer. They even preferred it to spinach as the season wore on… we’ve also been enjoying frozen beet greens this winter.

But the beetroot is still up for debate with most of them.

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Lessons from the Garden

December 29, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Symmetry within the circle of our season — that’s the overarching lesson from the garden. But just one of the ways gardening teaches me year after year.

It is perfectly absurd to search for a beginning or an end to this cycle; is it when the seeds start forming, when I harvest my saved seed out of the garden, as I store it over winter, or when I plant it next spring that is “the beginning”? Is it when the food emerges, when its ripe, when I harvest, when I eat it, or when I compost the excess that is “the ending”? 

Taking into consideration the piles of compost, continuously added to by our hens, and all the other intertwined inputs and harvests from our little backyard homestead garden- I’m proud to announce that I can I find neither beginning nor end… instead I find a naturally flowing cycle that swallows its own tail year after year. A process without any one formula, rather a myriad of methods and infinite accomplishments along its way.

That being said; we all like to “take stock” every so often. The end of the calendar year, as the garden lays sleeping and frozen under the snow here in Minnesota seems a fitting time as ever. So, I’m taking a look back on this year of growing with you to share what I gleaned from my gardens. Or rather, what lessons my garden unearthed for me. I’ve added links to previous posts at the end of most topics, as it seems the lessons I learned this year are also perennial. But as with gardening- the roots grow deeper and the harvests increase with each passing year. I hope you can take a few of these ideas and let them inspire you to grow and harvest more (veggies, sustainability, peace) from your gardens this upcoming season. Let’s Dig In!

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Very Veggie Potato Leek Soup

December 1, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Soup Season is here and we couldn’t be more ready!

Leeks are a favorite late season crop that add so much depth of flavor to everything they touch, especially soup! We had a bumper crop this year so I’m excited to experiment with leeks this winter…

Straight up Potato Leek soup is divine, so I wasn’t sure if I should mess with it… but I did because I can’t help hiding extra veggies in all my meals.

So, here’s a soup that’s every bit as delicious with some added protein and veggie power. But it all starts with bacon, so don’t worry, this is definitely scores high on the flavor meter.

Ingredients

Bacon- 1 lb locally raised
Leeks- Three large or four medium leeks
Thyme-  few fresh sprigs or 2 tsp dry
Bay Leaf- 1-2
Potatoes- 4 medium-sized, peeled and cubed
Cauliflower- half to a full head, cut up
(or 2 cups Zucchini, shredded)
Any White Beans- ~ 1 cup
Chicken Stock- 3-4 Cups
Salt + White Pepper to taste
2 Tbsp Cream Cheese – optional

Directions

Soak and cook beans until soft (or used canned). Fry the bacon on low until crispy. Set bacon to drain. Use bacon fat to sauté leeks, on medium low for 5-7 minutes. Add in potatoes, cauliflower or zucchini, thyme and bay leaves. Pour in chicken stock. Simmer until everything is well cooked, 20+ minutes. Fish out bay leaf and thyme sprigs. Add in cream cheese. Use an immersion blender (or blender) to puree soup, or leave chunky if preferred.

Garnish with cream, microgreens, fried leeks, bacon, kale chips, etc… Delicious with homemade sourdough!

I’ve got more Forks in the Dirt “Veggie Heavy” Recipes over on my RECIPES PAGE. I hope you love this soup as much as we do, let me know what you think of the added cauliflower and white beans.

Dig In,

Michelle

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