Beans are one of the world’s oldest foods, dating back nearly 4,000 years. They come in many colorful varieties, and must be picked, shelled, and dried before storage. In the Seacoast, among the varieties available are heirlooms (Marfax, True Red Cranberry, Stueben Yellow Eye), which were planted by the native populations. Our local beans are so much fresher than what you find on the grocery shelves. Soaking and cooking times can be reduced when preparing dishes with this local ingredient (the beans on grocery shelves can be many years old and require much rehydration). If you have a crock-pot, try making Boston Baked Beans.

There will be a few vendors with beans this Saturday, including Baer’s Best Farm and Meadow’s Mirth Farm.

Purchasing:
Be sure to ask your farmer about the particular variety bean, including it’s best use.

Storing:
Store dried bean in a cool, dry place. While they store nearly indefinitely, it’s best to use them while they are young, and take advantage of their quicker cooking times and fresher taste.

Cooking and Eating:
Sort through your beans to remove dirt or stones. Rinse and soak for 6-8 hours before cooking.

Recipes:
Garlic Lover’s White Bean Soup
White Bean and Onion Fritters
Simple Spicy Beans
Rancho Gordo, great source of bean info and recipes
High Fiber Brownies

Join us for an evening of food and lively discussion! We’ll be meeting at a new venue, the Discover Portsmouth Center at the corner of Middle & Islington Streets in Portsmouth. Click here for map and directions.

Please note that there are NO kitchen facilities at this location so please bring your food ready to eat. BYO plates, utensils and everything else as well. Chairs and tables are on site.

• Dinner: 5 – 6 p.m.
• Discussion: 6 – 7 p.m.

We’ll be talking about our two upcoming events in March and April, and sharing the rest of our plans for the new year. Hope to see you there!

For more information on the format of this event, read “About Our Potlucks”on our webpage.

For more information: www.slowfoodseacoast.org

Our next Winter Farmers’ Market is on Saturday, February 25th, inside the Wentworth Greenhouses in Rollinsford, NH, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A full list of the 50+ participating farmer and food producers, and the products they will be selling can be found at www.seacoasteatlocal.org.

Seasonal Highlights

As we near the end of February, we are gaining just under 3 minutes of daylight each day. By Saturday, we’ll be up to 10h 59m 24s. Winter greens thrive on these lengthening days. If you have yet to give winter spinach a try, be sure to pick up a bag this week. It’s sweet and tender, and very delicious. You’ll also find plenty of other greens, including salad mix, several types of kale, bok choy, microgreens, and beet greens. There are also carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, winter squash, beets, turnips, rutabagas, and cabbage.

Lengthening daylight also brings an abundance of eggs. Locally raised eggs are amazingly delicious and full of flavor, nutritionally dense, and come from chickens raised humanely. Farmers are happy to talk about their growing practices, be sure to ask if you have questions.

There will also be beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and goat as well as milk, yogurt, cheeses, breads, cookies, spices, granola, soups, stews, prepared meals, pastas, and more savory treats.

CSA Day at the Market

The Winter Farmers’ Market on February 25th will also feature the opportunity to learn more about Community Supported Agriculture in the Seacoast area and speak directly with CSA farmers. 14 CSA Farms will be in atttendence, ready to answer questions and describe their CSA in detail.

Community Supported Agriculture offers a terrific way for people to get a steady supply of local food directly from the producers while creating a relationship of mutual support between farmer and eater. There are a lot of diverse options for pick-up locations, share structures, available foods, and farm involvement. Come to CSA Day to find the right option for you!

Activities at the Market

• Cooking demonstration and book signing with Kathy Gunst, author of Notes from a Maine Kitchen
• Free kids activity with Strafford County 4-H will keep them entertained while you shop
• Live music by Mike & Mike
• Food donations will also be collected by the Community Food Pantry of Somersworth — consider buying something fresh to help those in need.

The Details

• Wentworth Greenhouses: Located at 141 Rollins Road, Rollinsford, NH, just 1 mile past Red’s Shoe Barn of Dover. For map >
• Market Shuttle: Easy parking, with a free shuttle van running continuously from additional parking provided by Salmon Falls Stoneware, 75 Oak Street in Dover, around the corner from the Wentworth Greenhouses.
• Online Resources: View a full list of market vendors, search for available food, or check our interactive market maps to see which vendor will be attending a particular market
• SNAP & Debit Tokens: SNAP (foodstamps) can now be used at the winter farmers’ market — SNAP customers swipe their EBT cards at the market info booth, and then use tokens to shop with approved vendors. Help us spread the word about this important new project to provide access to wholesome foods to people of all incomes. Debit card customers can also purchase tokens to be used with all vendors. For more information, email snap@seacoasteatlocal.org. Partial funding for this project provided by the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.

For more information: www.seacoasteatlocal.org

See you at the market February 25th!

Before the Food Arrives on Your Plate, So Much Goes On Behind the Scenes

One of the first things to like about Tracie McMillan, the author of “The American Way of Eating,” is her forthrightness. She’s a blue-collar girl who grew up eating a lot of Tuna Helper and Ortega Taco Dinners because her mother was gravely ill for a decade, and her father, who sold lawn equipment, had little time to cook. About these box meals, she says, “I liked them.”

Expensive food that took time to prepare “wasn’t for people like us,” she writes. “It was for the people my grandmother described, with equal parts envy and derision, as fancy; my father’s word was snob. And I wasn’t about to be like that.” This is a voice the food world needs.

Ms. McMillan, like a lot of us, has grown to take an interest in fresh, well-prepared food. She’s written for Saveur magazine, a pretty fancy journal, and she knows her way around a kitchen. But her central concern, in her journalism and in this provocative book, is food and class. She stares at America’s bounty, noting that so few seem able to share in it fully, and she asks: “What would it take for us all to eat well?” Read more…

These Foods Will Make You Smile

The Modern American Diet—MAD—way of eating is throwing off our bodies’ natural feel-good chemistry, resulting in a miserable, moody, anxious, and agitated nation. Luckily, an instant jolt of happiness is just a forkful of brain food away. People should be focusing on brain foods and mood-promoting fats to best nurture happiness, says Drew Ramsey, MD, coauthor (with Tyler Graham) of The Happiness Diet: A Nutritional Prescription for a Sharp Brain, Balanced Mood, and Lean, Energized Body. “Just a few meals away from the modern American diet, and you’ll start to feel benefits like better energy and a more stable mood,” explains Dr. Ramsey. “The moment you make a better food choice you are instantly building a better brain.” Read more…

– Meet 14 farmers and learn about CSA share options for the 2012 season.
– Talk with farmers about quantity and pre-ordering options for meat and poultry.
– Buy a share in a farm’s harvest for the coming season.

Community Supported Agriculture offers a terrific way for people to get a steady supply of local food directly from the producers, while creating a relationship of mutual support between farmer and eater. There are a lot of diverse options for pick-up locations, share structures, available foods, and farm involvement. Come to CSA Day to find the right option for you!

The following farms will be available to answer questions and take sign-ups that day:

• Applecrest Farm Orchards
• Brandmoore Farm
• Brookford Farm
• Heron Pond Farm
• Meadow’s Mirth Farm
• Moondance Gardens
• NH Farm Museum
• Red Manse Farm
• Riverside Farm
• Stone Wall Farm
• Touching Earth Farm
• Two Toad Farm
• Wake Robin Farm
• Wild Miller Gardens

Considering a CSA for the first time? Read about Choosing a CSA for questions to think about and to ask farmers at CSA Day at the Market. Local Harvest.org offers even more tips for potential CSA members and detailed information on CSAs.

For a list of farms currently offering CSA shares, and more information about CSA Day at the Winter Farmers’ Market: www.seacoasteatlocal.org.

In this new book, the noted Maine cookbook author and national radio food journalist takes us into her South Berwick kitchen and garden, introducing us to the flavors of fresh, seasonal ingredients prepared in simple and inspiring ways. Notes from a Maine Kitchen is arranged by month, and features our very own Winter Farmers’ Market in the chapter for February, as excerpted here:

It’s 24 degrees, a bright, sunny February morning. I grab my nylon and canvas shopping bags (I feel so virtuous when I actually remember to bring my reusable bags shopping) and head off to the Seacoast Winter Farmer’s Market, just over the border in Rollinsford, New Hampshire. Twice a month from November through April, York County farmers and their counterparts in Rockingham and Strafford counties, New Hampshire, assemble in greenhouses and town halls throughout the Seacoast to sell everything from locally raised eggs and meat to winter greens, root vegetables, cheese, fish, and hot-house tomatoes.

The market officially opens at ten, but people begin pouring in just before nine. The response to the market can be summed up with three numbers: 2, 2,200, and 45. Two is the number of policemen employed to manage the traffic flow outside the market; 2,200 is the estimated number of shoppers who came on a cold winter morning to buy local produce. That puts a huge smile on the faces of the forty five farmers, bakers, and vendors selling their products inside.

Garen Heller, a farmer who runs Garen’s Greens at Riverside Farm in North Berwick, Maine, describes the turnout in one word: “unreal! It’s just unbelievable what is happening here. These crowds mean a return to the roots of people valuing agriculture. It’s a cult of agriculture.” When I ask Heller what the winter farmer’s market means for his business, he doesn’t hesitate. “I can breathe a little easier without worrying about income. These markets didn’t exist three years ago. If things continue on this trajectory, it’s going to change what it means to be a farmer in northern New England.”

About an hour after the market opens, Heller is already sold out of his greenhouse grown salad greens, winter radishes, bok choy, kale, and mustard greens. Early shoppers know to head straight for his table and grab the coveted produce.

As I walk the aisles of the market, held in a modern greenhouse flooded with winter sun, I see people lining up to buy root vegetables (everything from celery root, purple-topped turnips, and carrots to potatoes and parsnips), greens (chard, kale, and mixed salad greens), locally raised meats (chicken, pork, and beef, as well as buffalo and elk), locally caught fish (lobster, Maine winter shrimp, sole, haddock, and fresh crabmeat), locally made yogurt and milk, maple syrup, honey, cheese, bread, and pastries. If you get to market early enough, you can buy virtually everything a family needs for a week’s-worth of good eating.

Learn more about Kathy Gunst and Notes from a Maine Kitchen at her website and blog.

The New Hampshire House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing the sale of  unlicensed “homestead” food and on-farm sales of raw milk. New Hampshire currently allows the sale of non-potentially hazardous foods from licensed home kitchens; HB 1402 seeks to eliminate license requirements. From NHPR, an examination of both sides of the issue:

The New Hampshire House of Representatives has passed a bill that would make it easier for the smallest farmers to break even. If it becomes law it would allow residents to sell some home-made baked-goods, preserves, and cheese at home or at farmers’ markets.

When the homemade foods bill came out of a House committee, it had unanimous support.

It sits in a political sweet spot: both Democrats who want to support local foods and Republicans who want smaller government like the idea of deregulating small farmers.

It lets people sell less than $10,000 a year in home-made food and produce less than twenty pounds a day of hard cheese, without a license.

The bill was modified before being sent to the house floor to say unlicensed cheeses must be labeled as such, and they must be aged 60-days before selling…

Barnstead Republican Guy Comtois, the bill’s sponsor, says it’s aimed at giving new farmers a running start before they have to pay for a license.

“It’s tough to start off at 100 miles an hour,” Comtois says, “so it does not do away with licensing, it just gives somebody that’s coming out of the gate the chance to find out is this going to be doable or am I just gonna stay with the 20 gallons a day.” Read more…

The 2nd Annual Macaroni & Cheese Bake-Off presented by Granite State Dairy Promotion created a lot of excitement last month. Amy Hall, GSDP executive director, estimated the crowd at 600–650 people lining up to sample all the different variations on the comfort food classic.

Farm cooks continue to shine in this competition. This year a team of two dairy farmer sisters took that coveted prize. Deb Erb of Springvale Farms in Landaff and Doreen Morris of Gamblin’ Farm in Haverhill took first place in the NH Made category. Contestants entering this category were required to use at least one milk and cheese product sourced from a NH dairy farm or cheese making facility.

This award gets their recipe on the menu at Cotton restaurant in Manchester for the week of February 20th, and will feature the New Hampshire products that Deb and Doreen used to make their “Northern Comfort Macaroni and Cheese“—the Erbs’ own Landaff cheese, Cabot Creamery Cooperative butter, and half-and-half from Hatchland Farm dairy in North Haverhill. The Erbs make their Landaff Creamery cheese based on a traditional Welsh recipe.

Second place in the “NH Made” Category was Carolynn Durrel of Manchester, who featured Brookford Farm’s cheddar cheese and quark, and Bartlett Farm milk in her recipe for “Mmm Mmac and Cheese“.

For these and other winning Mac & Cheese recipes: www.nhdairypromo.org.

“I think we’re on the verge of great change. I think we’re seeing the beginning of the end of transgenic or GMO agriculture,” he said.

But altering the nation’s food system will take more than a single lawsuit. Gerritsen credited people on the New Hampshire and Maine Seacoast for working to revive a food culture that connects farmers directly to consumers, citing the success of community supported agriculture and fisheries in the area (Gerritsen’s Wood Prairie Farm established Maine’s second CSA back in 1990).

“We’re going to have to develop our own ability to go around (the industrial) model of agriculture,” he said. “What we need is a new vision of how farmers and eaters can develop alliances and relationships which are mutually beneficial.”

Read more…

The next Food and Health Forum dinner seminar features Pete Johnson, of Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury, Vermont. Focusing on “Putting the Culture Back In Agriculture Through Community and Collaboration”, this event will take place at Blue Moon Evolution on Monday, March 19th, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Special pricing for farmer tickets are available, with a portion of the evening’s proceeds to benefit Seacoast Eat Local. For more information: www.foodandhealthforum.com.