Thursday 16 July 2009

Local eating early in the growing season

Really, it's been quite the series of food-adventures this spring and summer. It's exciting to watch the seasons change, and the foods change with it. In late spring we started to see diversity in local veggies appear. My husband and I were going to St Jacobs Farmers Market almost weekly, to get the freshest of what the season had to offer. Three of our favourites were asparagus, fiddleheads and morels.

We literally crawled out of bed to get to the market on a Saturday morning by 7am, in order to procure the morels. We have a source (*taps inner arm*) who grows local mushrooms and goes out and picks edible wild local mushrooms and sells them at the market. The one of the first early mornings we ran out there, he'd made a mistake and didn't have my reserved order, and we left without our first taste of the wild seasonal delight. He called us back, long enough to give us a heads up on the first fiddleheads of the year, from one of the local old order Mennonite vendors, Henry. Henry not only sells fiddleheads at that time of year, but maple syrup. In fact, he has light, amber and dark maple syrups for sale. My husband and I highly recommend the dark maple syrup, it is truly an amazing treat.

It started raining when we were off to visit Henry. By the time we were walking away from there (large bag of fiddleheads and container of maple syrup under arm) it started to pour and we sought shelter in one of the market buildings. Eventually the rain stopped but the market was absolutely flooded. We ended up rolling up our pants and, in our sandalled feet, walked through the frigid water up to our knees (note: farmers market - think hay, manure, etc) to finish our shopping.

The funny thing was, it ended up being a phenomenal adventure in the end. Neither of us really minded the rain, much. Wading through the water was funny, and we dried out quickly after. It was a great moment of connection with Mother Nature herself to be out, foraging for food, literally in the elements.

Later that morning, a friend called. She'd secured morels at the same market, having gone late in the day, he had a reserved bag whose owner never showed up. So in the end, our treasures arrived anyways!

Mmmmm.... if you've never had morels, you can probably find the dried versions of them in your local grocery store. But there is something spectacular about the taste of fresh morels that is hard to describe. They aren't cheap, but they are an amazing tasty treat that shows up in Southern Ontario for a few weeks of the year.

One thing about them, those fine little ridges with deep grooves... they hold the sandy soil that they grow in.


What we used, on a tip from a friend, was a salt water soak. I used warm water (in hopes of slightly opening up any pores) with a sea salt and soaked them for an hour or two, stirring them up to loosen the sand now and then.

In terms of cooking them, our favourite method was to sauté them with butter and garlic. They are holy-crap-good.


The food adventures this year have, as always, helped to reinforce our connection to our food, and I appreciate every moment of it. Every adventure has had a unique, happy ending.

Thursday 9 July 2009

Market fun and a Strawberry-Gooseberry Jam

Today we went to the St Jacobs Farmer's Market, the first time I've been to one of their Thursday markets. We wandered in and lunch time and it was crazy busy, I was absolutely taken aback by how *many* people there were. We prayed to the Goddess of Parking, and did a little careful watching for people getting into their car (or minivan in this case) and found an excellent spot close to the vendors.

We did as we usually do, and made a bee-line for our favourite mushroom vendor. We picked up some portabellos (mostly for the BBQ) and crimini. Did I mention we're in a CSA this year (community supported agriculture program) and we're getting veggie baskets weekly? And yet we still need more ;)

Eventually we made our way over to where most of the old-order Mennonites vend and found gooseberries for sale. Being the brave local-food-adventurer that I am, I bought the bigger of the two sizes of baskets. I've been pretty much buying any local foods as they come in season this year, then coming home and doing some research about them, tasting them, and making a recipe out of them.

One of the things I learned about gooseberries is that they are high in pectin. So, I made:

Strawberry-Gooseberry Jam

2 cups Strawberries
2 cups gooseberries (roughly chopped)
1.5 cups of sugar (or to taste, I like a tart flavour)

In a pot, cook fruit on medium until very soft (maybe 10 minutes?)
Note: You can use either fresh or frozen berries. Gooseberries freeze best whole.

As usual with my recipes this is approximate cooking measurements, I did it by taste.

Fabulous, small batch of jam. Yum yum yum.

Incidentally, we got some of the last garlic scapes and asperagus of the season.