How Does Your Garden Grow?

Back home, my family had a garden. Nothing fancy, just a couple rows of squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and some potted green peppers and cherry tomatoes. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was to finally have a garden of my own. Our neighbors had one a couple years ago, and we often helped them maintain and harvest, but never had we had a real garden that was ours. This past year, we finally dug deep and built ourselves a slice of paradise.

We built our garden out in the old chicken coop so that our neighbors’ horses and goats and the local deer population would stay out of it. As I said, it was a small garden and the enclosure was literally falling apart; many times, we had to prop up some of the beams using old two-by-fours. But it was the perfect garden for me.

Spotlight: Sweet Potatoes

About

"Sweet potatoes are as American as apple pie! Native Americans were growing sweet potatoes when Columbus came in 1492, and by the 16th century, sweet potatoes were being cultivated in the southern states, where they became a staple in the traditional cuisine... Today, sweet potatoes are used in cuisines all over the world as a satisfying and versatile vegetable with a well-earned reputation for nutrition." The sweet potato "sweetness intensifies as the sweet potato is cooked, creating the deep caramel flavor we love." [source]

Varieties
There are three main varieties of sweet potato produced in the United States. [source]

A favorite for mashing or roasting, the COVINGTON has rose colored skin and super sweet orange flesh. Eat it whole with your favorite toppings or cut into wedges and bake as a side dish.

Building a Community from the Ground Up

This summer, the coordinating team had the opportunity to help friend and fellow Brown student Tom Sullivan '15 with his photo essay on BMSP for the Swearer Sparks blog. We were thrilled when Tom contacted us in June saying he was interested in covering the program. Tom came to a few Market Days over the summer, showing up early to talk to farmers and snap pics while they unloaded, and later in the day to talk to shareholders (and pick up his own share!).

Farmer Chuck Currie of Freedom Food Farm delivering beets at Market Day.

Photo by Tom Sullivan.

When life gives you beets... make a cake!

This cake, adapted from Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables, is chocolate heaven. When my uncle (a self-proclaimed beet-hater) tasted it, he kept asking my mother how she got it to be so moist and delicious. She tried to dodge the question, but he kept at it until she admitted the secret ingredient: beets! He was certainly surprised, but that didn’t stop him from going back for seconds. I always ask for it on my birthday because it’s just that good.

Cary Chapman

BMSP Volunteer Fall 2014

BMSP is a USDA Recognized Food Hub!

Last week, the USDA launched their new search engine, The Local Food Directory. The Directory will help consumers easily locate farmer’s markets, CSAs, on-farm markets, and food hubs around the country and in their communities. Regional food hubs are businesses or organizations that actively manage the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products – and they are gaining lots of popularity as a way to create value chains over supply chains. The compilation of this list is part of a larger initiative by the USDA to remove barriers and ultimately make is easier for people to eat locally and support and engage with local food producers.

We are particularly excited about this initiative, because Market Shares is officially listed in the Directory, and we are the ONLY college campus Food Hub on there!

This is huge.

How to Store Your Share 2

Every season we get lots of questions about how to store certain items, and hear from shareholders that items are going bad quickly because they weren't stored properly. Never fear! We are here to intervene early on in the season.

Four Tips for All Items:

1. Do not store anything in direct sunlight or in overly hot places. It will ripen and start to rot very quickly.

2. Do not store items loose on fridge shelves. Put everything in plastic bags, or it will wilt very quickly.

3. Keep different types of items separate from each other (fruits and vegetables, onions and potatoes). The hormones they release will have different effects on the others, causing accelerated ripening, fiber decay, etc.

4. TAKE THE TIME TO STORE YOUR ITEMS! I certainly have been known to give in to the urge to shove my whole tote bag in the fridge after carrying home my share, but believe me, investing the time in doing it right early on will keep a lot of items from going to waste.

Spotlight: Husk Cherries

About

Husk cherries go by many names - ground cherries, golden strawberries, Chinese lanterns, and in French as the very charming Amour-en-Cage, or ‘caged love’, just to name a few. [source] We on the BMSP team were divided about whether they more resemble cherries or cherry tomatoes. They are often overlooked because of their parchment-like outer coating, despite their sweet and versatile flavor. "These little gems are in the same genus as tomatillos - hence the similar papery husk - and the same family as tomatoes. Ground cherries taste slightly sweet and tropical, with a texture that's somewhere between a tomato and a grape." [source]

"What tastes like a cherry tomato injected with mango and pineapple juice, and looks like an orange pearl encased in a miniature paper lantern? No, I'm not just trying to cram as many fruit references into one sentence as possible. It's a real plant: Physalis pruinosa, aka the 'ground cherry'." [source]

Community Post

Clara's Kitchen

Check out these two amazing recipes that shareholder Annalisse Daly made with her daughter Clara (the toddler many of you have admired at Market Day the past few seasons). Annalisse also shared two of her own great cooking tricks!

We hope you'll all be inspired by the beauty, deliciousness, adorableness, and handy tips that follow, and continue to send us your favorite recipes and photos of the dishes you make with your share at info@brownmarketshares.com.

Thank you so much Annalisse! Read what she has to say about each of the recipes below.

Herbed Summer Squash and Potato Torte

"I really truly did try to get a picture of just the food, but my chef-in-training decided she couldn't wait to taste test the results. All the other pictures have a suspicious-looking dimpled hand slyly pulling the pie plate off the table.

This recipe uses the last of the market share potatoes and green onions from a couple weeks ago and the yellow summer squash from last week."