Thanksgiving, by the numbers!

For the 2 week period (a few exceptions are noted) ending 11/30, the Sunday after Thanksgiving we sold:

15,000 lbs Minimally treated Apples, not including..

5,700 lbs of Honeycrisp

1,768 5lb boxes of Clementines (only had for 12 days)

800 3lb bags of Halos (only had 7 days)

325 5lb boxes of organic Mandarin Satsuma (only had y days)

5400 lbs organic Lemons

10,100 Avocados

17,600 lbs organic Bananas (this is our annual low! 20,000 is more typical)

1,616 bags organic Cranberries

1,989 bags conventional Cranberries

2,220 Pomegranates

3,228 lbs of various organic Baby Greens

900 bags of organic Green Beans (with occasional out of stocks)

1,700 lbs conventional Green Beans

2,750 lbs of organic Cabbages

6,533 lbs of all Brussels Sprouts

9,668 lbs Carrots

4,172 lbs of various organic Cauliflowers

5,000 lbs of organic Celery

1,100 bunches of Collards

6,024 bunches of various organic Kales

4,060 lbs of Mushrooms

10,250 lbs of Onions

3,270 bunches of Parsley

12,400 lbs of organic Potatoes

1,150 lbs of organic Parsnips (which was not enough)

6,195 lbs of organic Winter Squash, not including...

3,220 lbs of organic Butternut

11,040 lbs of organic Sweet Potatoes

1,560 pints of local organic Cherry Tomatoes (yes, local-thank you, Hepworth Farms!)

We're still counting the herbs....

We sold an approximate total of 12,875 cases of produce, 

more than one per minute , 

every minute that we were open, weighing 257,500 lbs.

Thank you, thank you receiving coordinators and receivers who lifted all of these tons (over and over and over again). Bravo!

Have you ever wondered which non-organic produce items have the most / least pesticides?

This EWG "Dirty Dozen" list, in order of most-to-least contaminated, offers a helpful way to prioritize which fruits and veggies to buy organic.We suggest keeping this guide with your grocery list — especially if you’re trying to economize on food or have trouble finding organic versions of some produce. If you especially love one or more of these fruits or vegetables and eat them frequently, all the more reason to buy organic whenever you can!

1. Apples
2. Celery
3. Sweet Bell Peppers
4. Peaches
5. Strawberries
6. Nectarines
7. Grapes
8. Spinach
9. Lettuce
10. Cucumbers
11. Blueberries
12. Potatoes

So which produce is of least concern in terms of pesticides? The EWG reports that these 12 fruits and vegetables tested lowest in pesticide residue:

1. Onions
2. Sweet Corn
3. Pineapples
4. Avocado
5. Cabbage
6. Sweet Peas (frozen)
7. Asparagus
8. Mangoes
9. Eggplant
10. Kiwi
11. Cantaloupe
12. Sweet Potatoes

Surchoix de Chevre

Switzerland is known primarily for cows, when it comes to dairy animals, but there are many great  goat’s milk cheeses being made there. The Surchoix de Chevre is one such example, and is notable furthermore for being made in an alpine style and format, even more unusual for goat’s milk. Made by Le Petit Chevrier in Lucerne — who describe their products as “Goat’s Milk Cheese that is 100% Swiss” — The Surchoix is made with pasteurized goat’s milk and aged a minimum of 8 months.
 The paste is a pale ivory color, lightly scattered with tyrosine crystals, dense and firm. Flavors are sweet, nutty and slightly gamey, with fruity and grassy alpine notes.

What's Good in the Cheese case right now?

Rustico Black Pepper

This not-quite-hard, pasteurized sheep’s milk cheese comes from the countryside near Rome, in the region of Lazio. The taste is mild and only faintly sheep-y, but whole and halved peppercorns give it a pleasant kick. It make an excellent pizza cheese and is good shaved on vegetables, as a parmesan alternative in risotto, or in an egg sandwich. Yes, it’s a cheap trick to compare prices with Murray’s, but we can’t resist: they charge $15 per pound. At the co-op it’s $7. An unmissable bargain.

Barricato Al Pepe

If the Rustico’s not peppery enough for you… get help, or perhaps try this wonderful cheese from Sergio Moro, best known for longstanding co-op favourites Sottocenere and Piave. He runs a small operation in Veneto, in northern Italy, that gets its milk from tiny family dairies. Barricatto means barrel-aged in Italian – in this case wine barrels that give the hard, buttery cow’s milk cheese a little extra tang. Oh, and it’s covered in crushed pepper. Zing! One for the cheeseboard.

Puits d’Astier

 

This is one of the most spectacular-looking cheeses we’ve seen: a doughnut-shaped wheel with an almost fluorescent yellow rind. It’s hard to believe this is naturally-occurring mould, but it is, a growth lovingly tended by Rodolphe Le Meunier, a young affineur who has already been named a Meullier Ouvrier de France. Only the very best artisans get to wear the red white and blue MOF collars (as anyone who’s seen patisserie documentary Kings Of Pastry would testify). Puits d’Astier is a little pricey, but worth every centime, for its dreamy semi-soft texture and intense, long-lasting flavor.

Queso Sudado

The name of this cheese – sweaty goat – isn’t the most appealing, but don’t let it put you off. It refers to the washed-rind aging process, in which the young cheeses are cured in brine, then aged for between eight days and a month, depending on the season. The result is a strong, full-flavoured goat cheese with a distinctly barnyard-y finish. It would stand up well to a full-bodied, old world red wine with plenty of earth and not too much fruit.

Urdina

 This cheese is a mystery to us, mainly because the label is written in Basque. Your romance languages are no use to you here, friend. But by God, the cheese is tasty. At first glance, it appears to be a blue cheese, but the texture is softer than expected, almost spreadably creamy, and the flavour is notably less strong than Stilton or Roquefort. So, it’s a blue cheese for people who don’t like blue cheese, and a little internet sleuthing reveals that it’s made from sheep’s milk by Ramon Lizeaga Azkue, in the smallest of small batches, somewhere near to a border between France and Spain that he presumably doesn’t recognise as legitimate. A revelation.