Symphony Salad Ensemble

The Symphony Salad Ensemble we created last week was such a great hit that we decided to feature it this week. It is a great way to make a very robust salad as well as to try our unique produce. More people are becoming fascinated with our unusual selection so we thought this would be a nice way to let you a try a variety of items. The Ensemble starts with a bag of the Symphony Salad mix then adds golden sugar peas, podding radishes, dragon carrots, herbs and flowers. All of these are also available as single purchases without the ensemble. The ensemble ingredients change each week depending on what is in fruition in the garden.

We also discovered that some of you weren't familiar with our hallmark Symphony Salad mix. It is different in that it is a mixture of greens that offer a wider variety of flavor and nutrients than a simple salad. It is so nutrient dense it would take an entire web page, not one blog entry, to cover it all. The Vittles de Vine Symphony Salad mix contains 2 kinds of Kale (Red Russian and Red Ursa), Tres Fin Endive, Palla Rossa Chicory, 2 kinds of Parsley (Flat-Leaf Italian and Darki Mossi), 2 kinds of Spinach (Secret Spinach and Bloomsdale), Mild Mustard Mix, Chervil, Arugula, 2 kinds of Orach (Aurora and Magenta Magic). Burgundy Amaranth, Magentaspreen Goosefoot, Epazote, Blonde Escarole, Perfection Fennel, 7 kinds of Lettuce (Blushed Butter Oak, Divina, Jack Ice, Anuenue, Outredgeous, Brown Golding, Flashy Trout Back).
Thank you all for your support and wonderful comments. We look forward to seeing you at Market.
Aunt Farmer

Not So Common Thyme

I was harvesting thyme for the market today. It inspired me to blog. The entire bed is covered with beautiful edible thyme flowers and bees, bees, bees. When I water, the bees don't even bother to leave for the duration; they just dance in the rain and carry on.

Thyme is very high in a much-overlooked vitamin, Vitamin K. This vitamin is necessary for bone formation and blood clotting and helping the body assimilate calcium, a mineral along with manganese that is also found in abundance in thyme. Thyme is most known for containing the volatile oil, thymol, which makes it's antibacterial activity strong enough that it actually preserves food (and a few Egyptian mummies) and is known to be a great antioxidant. It has other valuable constituents as well, including terpenoids that are known to have anti-cancer properties. Cook with thyme to help make the food you eat safer from microbial beasties. Put it in salad dressings for taste and health benefits.

As an herbal remedy, it has historically been used as a remedy for a wide variety of ills ranging from coughs and colds to infections to hangovers. It makes a powerful tea so I like to have it on hand all the time.

This is only a single small blog entry and cannot begin to say all there is to say about thyme. So suffice it to say that while thyme is called "common thyme", I find nothing common about it at all.

We have plenty of both common thyme and lemon thyme for the market. Let us know if you want to dry your own and we'll bring extra for you.

Living with the Seasons

I find it to be a wonderful enigma that the more consciously I live in a season, the more aware I am of the future seasons. We are in the midst of summer now and everywhere around us are flowers and fruits and vegetables to be enjoyed as each plant expresses itself. And yet this is also the time when I need to be seeding again plants that prefer the coolness of fall. It is the time I am deciding which seeds to save for planting next spring. It is the time when I prepare for winter meals when there will be snow instead of lush produce on my property. The future truly does depend on the now.
I am presently freezing strawberries for future smoothies and sugar peas for the future stir fry. And all the while I am watching the tomatoes grow bigger and begin to ripen. I'm collecting old recipes and thinking of new creations I want to try when they are ready. I am planning salsa, stews, chutneys and a plum sauce. I feel pressed to can vegetable stock prepared with carrots, onions, garlic, herbs, potatoes, tomatoes and a variety of lettuces. Each vegetable stock creation will change with the phases of summer and keeps my winter from being repetitive, stark and bare.
What would my future be if I hadn't been aware of it now?
Thanks for listening to my summer musings.

Bee Balm is blooming as flowers take off at market

I'm always excited when Bee Balm bursts into bloom to add its startling color in my garden. This beautiful herb of the mint family is rich in historical lore and the list of its medicinal uses is long and impressive. The story is that the colonists switched to using their native Bee Balm after the Boston Tea Party. They didn't miss imported tea at all once they tried what was so easily available all along. The name Bee Balm comes from the use of the flowers in poultice form to ease bee stings.
Besides the traditional use of both leaves and flowers in tea, iced or hot, you can use this beautiful flower in garden or fruit salads, soups, breads, or as a garnish on any plate. It is particularly good with pork as it is slightly minty in flavor. The leaves have a bit of a citrus flavor added in with the mint. If you have a recipe for citrus rind, you can substitute with Bee Balm leaves.
Butterflies, bees and hummingbirds love this plant as much as we do. But we'll all sacrifice a bit and make sure we have some available at market next week.
Previously I said on this blog that we are fostering an attitude of "self-lagniapping". Yesterday showed a significant turn in that direction. More people came specifically to buy our herbs and flowers to beautify and flavor their food. Some had specific recipes or creations in mind while others wanted jazz in their salads. Also more people are realizing we are specializing in out of the ordinary items and came by to peruse the choices of the week. They went home with grape leaves, podding radishes, golden beets and the very popular dragon carrots.
I would like to thank all our customers who are finding they enjoy and share our quirky propensity for decorating food.

Last Week and This Week

So you noticed our new booth style last week! With summer here and the sun getting more intense we wanted to keep your produce as fresh as possible on ice instead of on display. We had fun coming up with a set up that would show you our salads without the actual salad you will take home having to suffer in the heat. It was fun having a floral dining room and being in the display instead of standing behind it. For me it was more interactive. And again, the people are definitely the most fun of all at the market.
Last week one of the first things we sold out of was our red-purple dragon carrots. We're pleased to have Dan Hutchinson use them in his Il Fiasco cooking demo tomorrow. He is making Moroccan Style Goat, and will add our dragon carrots, chervil, peppermint, and garlic chives. That should be a very interesting and colorful dish.
We also have golden beets, the Symphony salad, of course, and a wide array of lagniappes. Nasturtiums are in full force so the leaves and flowers are in a lot of the dishes we're eating now. The leaves are good in salad, on sandwiches, made into a pesto, or sauteed in with other vegetables. The flowers are just as versatile. Try stuffing them with any favorite filling and arranging them on a plate at your next dinner. Beauty and nutrition go together hand in hand.
And we will have our regular assortment of herbs, both common and exotic. For those that tried the lavender last week, isn't it surprisingly "right"!
See you tomorrow.
Aunt Farmer

Tuesday's Market, 30 June 2009

It was really great being at the Tacoma Farmer's Market on Tuesday. While bunching our cilantro (which was a big seller this week) I had the opportunity to spend time interacting with some of our customers and really enjoyed how unique each person is. (Reminds me of the uniqueness of our salad). Some people just stopped by to say how much they loved our booth; it caught their eye as they were walking by and made them stop in their tracks. They felt compelled to enquire as to exactly what we were doing with those flowers in our salad?

We truly appreciated your feedback, as we are evolving and changing each week and we know we are on the right track when we get this kind of response.

Some regulars stopped by to pick up their weekly supply of salad greens, arugula, onions, spinach and orach mix, herbs, edible flowers, etc. Others came to see what lagniappes we brought to the market this week. They discovered 3 varieties of beautiful rose petals, evening primrose leaves, strawberries, bachelors buttons, purple basil, lemon thyme, radish flower, and that is to name only a few.

Many people recognized flowers from our booth that they have growing in their garden but did not realize they could eat, so stopped by just for informational purpose and left with excitement and a sense of purposefulness. (I think there will be a lot of grazing going on in a few gardens in Tacoma this holiday weekend).

I was especially taken by one of our returning customer who brought her digital camera and showed us pictures of the salads she made with our salad mixes. We encouraged her to (and hopefully she will) post them on our blog so you can all see them and be inspired to beautify your salad as she did. Her salads were truly masterpieces, a work of art. The only problem with creating such a magnificent salad is you don’t want to disturb it; you just want to keep staring at it. I guess that's why digital camera and printers were created, so you can have your salad and eat it too. This beautiful lady shyly confessed to us that she takes photos of the meals that she makes because they are so beautiful. We boldly confessed to her that we do the same!

I must add that I find after a glass of red wine, the food definitely looks and tastes even more beautiful and succulent.

Bon Appetit!