Category: Local Food (Page 7 of 15)

All about local food finding in the Twin Cities

Patty Pan Lasagna

October 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Basket of just picked Patty Pan

Everyone loves lasagna, right!? Here’s my veggie-heavy version. And the trick is using larger (what people may think of as past their prime) Patty Pan squash.

Patty Who?

Patty Pan squash are a prolific heirloom variety that I think of something between a summer and winter squash. The firmness and dense texture of these squash make for a much closer “faux pasta” than regular summer squash! I love all kinds of squash, especially zucchini, and have a dedicated blog all about different ways to use those beauties in Zucchini a Zillion Ways.

The plants themselves are large, but not as big as some typical zucchini plants can get. I got my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, “White Scallop.”

So how does a big ole squash become pasta-ish? Welcome my trusty mandolin. I use this simple kitchen appliance to slice and shred, and it makes my veggie loving life so much easier! From making beet chips to slaw, I use this handy tool almost every day.

A note of caution here: the blades are VERY sharp. Most mandolin packages come with a ‘guide’ or shield of some sort. I suggest using that whenever you get even a little close to the slicing blade.

VIDEO: watch a mandolin slicing patty pan in action

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Eco-Friendly Eating

September 24, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Today I’ve got a guest author digging deep into the field of eco-friendly eating. Help me welcome Laura to the Forks family! I met Laura online via the squares of Instagram and her feed @reducereuserenew and we share so many of the same values. You know I am a local food lover, and never miss a chance to talk about my three keys to eating local all year long:
Grow Your Own, Know Your Farmers, Preserve Local Food.

But this doesn’t mean eating all plants all the time for me- but making smart choices. So, when I asked her to share her take on “Eco Friendly Eating” she went for it.  

This one is worth the read- plus I link back to some of my earlier posts that touch on other aspects of the topics she covers. This article is like a little overview of steps we can take and choices to make that will create a difference for us and future generations- I dare you to choose just one of these changes and stick with it!

So, take it away Laura…

Starting Space

You’ve likely heard of the climate crisis. Scientists have been warning us of what could happen if we don’t make major changes for decades. Unfortunately, the effects of the climate crisis reach many different areas of our lives. The food we eat is no exception. 

But how exactly does the food we eat impact climate change? And what can we do? 

Let’s take a look at the answers to both of those questions. 

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cover crop growing in raised garden bed

Cover Crops for Soil Health: A Comprehensive Guide

September 1, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Adding a cover crop for soil health to my home vegetable garden was a game changer for me, and the garden has been happier ever since.

Planting cover crop seed is an easy and effective way to practice good soil health on any scale. There are a few tips and tricks for having the best luck for home gardeners. Timing and seed selection are key!

General Benefits of Planting a Cover Crop

  • Better Water Retention – soil with root mass holds more water
  • Less Weeding – soil that is covered keeps weed seeds from germinating
  • Reduced Disease – soil life diversity increases disease resistance
  • Less splash up – having a physical barrier between the soil and plants reduces pathogens from infecting plants

What Is a Cover Crop?

Cover crops are plants, usually grasses or legumes in vegetable gardens that are grown to benefit the soil rather than for harvest. Planted during off-seasons or between cash crops, they prevent erosion, suppress weeds, manage pests, and increase soil fertility. They act as a protective, living mulch, improving soil structure and organic matter.

There are many different ways of cover cropping, from holding a field for a full year, or part of spring or over the winter. Because I succession plant so much of my garden space (from early spring to late fall), I don’t leave much of my soil bare at any one time. But one of the reasons I have incorporated cover crops is how easy it is to sow the seeds after harvesting a late summer crop.

There are many different benefits of planting cover crops in the garden. One is to build up organic matter in the soil. Another is using legumes to add nitrogen to the soil. A final reason is to help break up compacted heavy soil with plants that have think roots. If left to rot they create wonderful space in the soil for nutrient and water transfer. I see cover cropping as another way of Companion Planting for your garden.

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No Dig Gardening + Hügelkultur: Layer a Lasagna Garden

August 19, 2021 / / 2 Comments

No Dig Gardening includes recycling, composting and improving soil all by layering it on! This process is known by a few different names; Hugelkultur, Lasagna Gardening and Sheet Composting, but the ideas are based on “No Dig Gardening”.

Laying out the new beds

Making garden beds this way works with nature’s existing cycles, creating healthy soil, less weeding and happier plants!

This process does NOT need to be created inside a box, just easier to keep layers tidy, I’ve success both in and out of boxes!

Build It and They Will Come!

The idea of setting up a garden bed like this is to let nature do the work for you. You’ll be helping nature create good soil by composting in place- and that requires things for the soil organisms to eat. By giving a diverse group of soil life things to feast on you can create a very active and healthy soil to plant into.

Building Better Soil

Soil biodiversity creates a more resilient garden. I like to equate good soil organisms with good gut health. We’ve likely all heard of pre- and pro- biotics; the helpers of digestion (and so much more). Soil organisms help break things down and make them available to plants in a similar fashion.

Everything from worms and beetles we can see, to bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and actinomycetes (though I sure couldn’t tell you what those looked like!) have a specific job to do- and many work in relationship with vegetable plant roots to feed them. There is a whole world of info about the soil food web out there, and I suggest watching THIS by Dr. Elaine Ingham if you want to dig a little deeper.

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A Zillion Ways to Zucchini

August 2, 2021 / / 4 Comments
Patty Pan are the cutest!

Are you a Zucchini lover or a hater?

Of course I’m a zucchini lover, I’m a sucker for a veggie that goes overboard and can be used in both sweet and savory ways!

I’ve finally gathered together my collection of recipes and ways I use and preserve Zucchini. I know lots of us vegetable gardeners joke about ‘ding dong ditch’ with these as the season progresses… This is the notorious prolific vegetable. And many get away from me and all gardeners each year (see picture at the end if you want proof of that ;-).

There are so many ways to make use of zucchini! This is such a delicious and versatile veggie. For those of with bounty, or if you just want to savor the sweet summer flavors into winter, read on!

Zucchini Growing Tips

I both start seeds indoors and direct sow- with similar results. I get earlier harvests with the plants started earlier, or more prolific but later with the plants I direct sow. Choose what works for you! They do like lots of compost and can be planted outside a fence, as critters (at least in my area) do not nibble. This is a great news because zucchini plants take up a LOT of space, easily three square feet. A little compost and mulch when planting and you should have oodles of zoodles!

Female flower to the left left, male flower to the right.
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biodynamic farm Heirloomista

Heirloomista Farm

July 23, 2021 / / 4 Comments

Welcome to the Farm!

Things are different by design on this biodynamic farm.

The first difference you’ll notice on this 5 acre farms is the lack of large outbuildings, big machinery or even an old farmhouse. Also, no overhead electric poles. This farm is completely off-grid.

You will see solar panels, an eggplant-colored tiny house, two hoop houses along with rows and rows of beautiful veggies, perennial fruits and pollinator habitat. A moveable chicken tractor and a sun hive round out the ways Kelsey hosts animals on this land. Each piece is intertwined with the next, serves a purpose and plays it part well.

Biodynamic Farming

Biodynamic Farming Defined: a form of alternative agriculture that takes an ecological and ethical approach to farming, food, and gardening.

Things on a biodynamic farm are thought out in wholistic, interdependent ways before anything is implemented. For Farmer Kelsey this means everything on the farm serves a few purposes. And she really does run this as a one woman show. She does most everything by hand enabling her to observe the plants (and critters) on the land more closely and to see changes in real time. She can decide what to do about those issues based on how it effects the whole system of living things on her farm. Sometimes doing nothing is the answer too…

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Creating Wildlife Habitat in your Garden

June 2, 2021 / / 2 Comments

Why You Want Wildlife in Your Garden

Bringing wildlife into your garden will bring you higher pollination rates, more food, less pest pressure and the joy that comes from watching an ecosystem thrive. The best part about it is that the ways to bring wildlife in are all tied together, kind of like nature itself. This is a great reminder that we and our yards are part of nature and not separate from it!

There are lots of specifics to follow, but it really comes down to diversity, and making all the things you want to live in your garden feel welcome. This is my take on companion planting in general as well. You can listen in on a companion planting conversation of mine on the Grow It Minnesota! podcast.

We started by deciding to not use synthetic chemicals in our garden. This is a first step that is truly the most important! Then we added a bird feeder and a bird bath and luckily had some beautiful mature trees on our property. Since then, we’ve added more wildlife features as we could, from more native plants they feed from, more watering spots and more cover, creating a little wildlife sanctuary. We actually went ahead and made it official with the National Wildlife Federation as a Certified Wildlife Habitat .

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rhubarb shrub

Rhubarb Shrub Love

May 14, 2021 / / 2 Comments
A hand holding a glass of rhubarb shrub in front of a rhubarb plant.

In case you haven’t met yet, let me introduce you to THE SHRUB—the kind you drink. This rhubarb shrub recipe is a bright, sweet-tart way to preserve the season and bring a little sparkle to everyday sipping.

Shrub What?

At its heart, a shrub is a sweetened fruit syrup mixed with vinegar to preserve summer flavors. In practice, shrubs are best sipped with friends who are as bubbly and sweet/tart as the flavors flowing from the glass.

The magic of any shrub is how it brings together the sweetness of the fruit with the acid of vinegar—creating a depth of flavor that lays down a perfect base to build on. But typical of true magic, there’s a third part: the health benefits of probiotics and enzymes from the apple cider vinegar complete the trinity.

Stephanie and Michelle.
Stephanie and I before Covid, at a WBL Farmers Market after she taught a fermentation class

When I first made shrubs, I cooked my rhubarb (and other fruits), then strained the juice and added vinegar. But there is a fresher flavor with fermenting. This may seem counterintuitive, but hear me out. When you skip cooking the fruit, you retain some great high notes from the rhubarb. Similar to fresh strawberry jam versus cooked strawberry jam…

Stephanie Thurow, my friend and coauthor of Small-Scale Homesteading, is also a master food preserver at Minnesota from Scratch. She first opened my eyes to fermenting shrubs and I will never go back!

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Sausage, Kale + Potato Potage

January 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This is my husband’s favorite hearty winter soup; a hearty blend of locally grown goodness that somehow becomes much more than the sum of its parts. Specifically this is a potage; which sounds really fancy but simply means a really thick soup.

I could go on and on about how much I love soups, and I’ve already compiled a few of my other favorite soups in a blog a while back, “Simmering Through Winter: Soup Suite”. It takes you through making “Very Veggie Zuppa Toscana, my take on a Basic Veggie Soup and a Ham + Lentil (way better than your split pea soup!!) plus some tips and tricks to making amazing soups- like getting the herbs and spices you add to “bloom”, stock vs broth, etc.

But back to this amazing simple yet sublime soup.

Sausage, Kale + Potato Potage

  • 1 lb pork sausage (local makes a huge difference here!)
  • 1 large yellow onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tsp Oregano dried
  • 1-2 tsp Thyme dried
  • 2 tsp Celery leaf dried
  • 2 cups shredded zucchini (I use frozen)
  • 4 small or one huge russet style potato
  • 4-6 Cups torn Kale (I use frozen too)
  • 6 cups chicken stock
  • Fresh parsley for serving (or any microgreens you happen to have)

Instructions:
Sautée Italian pork sausage until fully cooked, can spoon off some of the fat if desired (I find that locally raised pork products don’t have nearly as much fat as commercially raised kinds). Then add onions and sautée a few minutes, then garlic, then herbs.

Let the herbs ‘bloom’; this is when you let the dried herbs cook in fat before adding liquid to the pot – this is soup MAGIC!

Once you enjoy the aromas of all the herbs, add in the ‘wet’ ingredients; kale, zucchini, then potatoes and stock. This simmers only as long as the potatoes need to cook.

Serve with warm crusty bread, adding fresh greens, cheese or roasted squash/pumpkin seeds to the bowl just before serving. Or, you know, eat it right out of the pot…

Enjoy digging in to this hearty potage!

Michelle

Growing Microgreens

December 4, 2020 / / 1 Comment

GROW THOSE (micro) GREENS!

Microgreens are so much more than the trendy ‘vegetable confetti’ you see on foodie Instagram accounts!

Beyond being photogenic, microgreens are the poster child for the phrase “Good things come in small packages”.

  • They Pack 10-40 times as much nutrition as their full-grown counterparts
  • They are ready to harvest in 2-3 weeks
  • They don’t require any extra equipment to grow

In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about… Microgreens include a wide variety of edible immature plants. Varieties of greens, herbs, flowers and vegetables lend themselves to being eaten while small. You do not eat the roots like with sprouts. You harvest by cutting above the soil level and eating the stem and leaves.

It is no secret that I LOVE my microgreens… and I want to share with you how easy it can be to grow your own nutritious and delicious micros! So let’s go over the basics of getting started!

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