Posted by
MOFGApedia Editor on February 25, 2012
In the dark of the root cellar, the bright tales of last year’s harvests are fading. The warm fall season did not help the storage quality of any of the root crops. Those concerted efforts to use up the stores have fallen short of the mark. Either we do something soon or all this food will be compost or chicken food. Honorable fates, but let's try to get more of this onto our plates. These recipes offer ideas for cleaning out the root cellar.
[Read more...]
Posted by
MOFGApedia Editor on November 30, 2011
This time of year, many of us struggle with the urge to hibernate, to stay home and drink tea by the fire and read or work on a winter project, yet the social demands of the holidays pull us out far and, often, long into the night. Add in the hours of a full-time job and we are often pulled in too many directions. My solution is warm comfort food.
[Read more...]
From spring through fall, Maine cranks out the fruit. Our winter weary palates get shocked awake with rhubarb. In June, our eyes roll back with the divine perfection of sun-ripened strawberries. July brings on a rush of fleeting pleasures with raspberries, mulberries, gooseberries, sour cherries, currants and blueberries. In August, the blueberries continue, and fall raspberries, peaches and plums join the earliest ripening apples. September holds grapes, pears, apples, hardy kiwis and cranberries in her arms of plenty.
[Read more...]
On his show “A Prairie Home Companion,” Garrison Keillor once did a monologue about four people who went for a car ride in order to see the odometer turn to 200,000 miles. He took listeners through the town and out to the country, where our attention was turned to the crows in a cornfield, then the monologue traveled off with our minds meandering to other rich topics, only to have Garrison bring our attention abruptly back to the odometer, which then read 200,003 miles!
[Read more...]
In the last few years, I have noticed a significant increase in the number of small dairy operations, many of them organic, in Maine. Transitioning to organic has helped small dairy farms survive. Selling milk wholesale is one option, but I have noted an increasing number of farms marketing their milk and value-added products such as cheese and yogurt to natural food and gourmet shops, and even to Hannaford supermarkets.
[Read more...]
This summer I trialed 10 varieties of green soybeans for a local seed company. I planted and labeled each variety carefully, then took notes at various stages of development. The crowning event was the edamame (green soybean) taste-off. I steamed each variety separately, then shelled them into individual bowls. All of them had the delicious, nutty taste of green soybeans, but three were a little sweeter: ‘Sayamasume,’ ‘Beer Friend’ and ‘Shironomai.’ My old favorites, ‘Shirofumi’ and ‘Maple Glen,’ were delicious but not in the top three. ‘Beer Friend’ had larger beans than the others.
[Read more...]