Hello Everyone- 
More local produce this week. 
Beautiful bunched spinach, asparagus, rhubarb and radishes from Lancaster Ramps galore, from Hepworth, Regional Access, Irwin Mushrooms, and Angello's. 

Tomorrow we'll be getting the FIRST Organic Baby Arugula Cup for the season from Blue Moon. No more Satur. 
Local salad season will be in full bloom the first or second week of June. Organic Cantaloupe, Honeydew and watermelon started this week with surprising good flavor. 

We expect to see Florida sugar babies at some point next week. 

 Non-GMO corn is as sweet as it can be... Organic supplies are low and we will run out by the end of the weekend. 

Banana containers have been held at the port making it hard to ripe correctly or received the greener kind we like. Still this week we are in route to sell 13,200 pounds of bananas!!! 
Want more cool numbers? 
This week we'll sell almost 4000 strawberry cups and 4056 Broccoli Bunches... 

The organic Blueberries are AMAZING! and the apricots started with a bang, great taste and texture.

Georgia peaches and Cherries are right around the corner. 

California Valencia Oranges will be here next week. Celery prices continue to rise and availability is getting tight. 
You may see some PALE (or White) grapefruit here and there, they are Desert Grapefruit. 

Ending: 
 -Ambrosia Lady Alice 
To keep the members that like organic apples happy we have added Bagged Pink Lady. 
- Bartlet, but tried Pacham from Argentina. 
- Purple sweet potatoes 
- Campari Tomatoes, maybe... we haven't been able to find more information.  
- Mineolas 

 Gaping: 
- Cherry del Cabo.  
- Baby Spinach continue to have quality and mildew issues, we might run out of 1lb bags. 
- Mustard Greens 

 Happy Mothers Day!

The Sumo's are ending- otherwise known as Dekopon.  One of the most popular citrus varieties in all of Japan.  :( 

It's ok though, because the Tangelos are getting goooood! Joe Holtz said that they'd get good in March and, of course, he was right.  

What else is good in the world of citrus?  Navels.  Both the organic and non-organic are excellent.  

Allen says: "sure, those are all great, but forget about all other citrus except the Melogold."  

Let's talk cheap.  

We started the week with VERY cheap (and tasty) non-organic strawberries.  By the weekend we'll have sold over a pallet and a half of them- over 25 cases per day.  We tried to get more, but the price doubled, so we won't be ordering anymore for now.  

Organic Blackberries are very cheap and very good.  If you've been avoiding organic berries lately because of the price, now's the time to jump in.  

Let's talk pears...  USA bosc are done.  We're waiting for South America to come online. 

Organic Globe Grapes...  We ran out, but will get good quality on Monday.  

No More Oro Blanco, but it's ok, just eat the Melogold.  They're better, anyway.

Organic Grapefruit- we WILL run out this weekend.  The Florida grapefruit crop has been cut in half by citrus greening.  We will be able to get more from California on Tuesday.  

We have a different type of Mango.  It's from Puerto Rico and it's a mango called pango.

   

SALADS

Trouble in salad land.  Word from the growers is that there are problems with mildew in some of the fields.  We had to soup a lot of spring mix (cups, bags and loose) this week because they were going bad well before the dates on the bags.  We do have some salads, including spinach and arugula, but there will be shortages this weekend.   

What else might we run out of this weekend?

-Bunched spinach

-Organic Shishito peppers

-Bok Choy

-Sweet peppers in cups

Organic Papaya will be back next week.  

Current Local Produce Offerings

Click here to view pics of some of our local produce offerings:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsk5u9d2B

Minimally treated: 
Apples:
cameo
candycrisp
empire
fuji
honeycrisp
pink lady
stayman winesap
Asian pears

Organic:
Loose chioggia, gold and red beets
green and red cabbage
orange
purple and white carrots
celeriac
elephant garlic
loose kohlrabi kale
arugula and red mustard microgreens
maitake cup
cremini
portobello
shiitake
white cup and white loose mushrooms
red and yellow onions
parsnips
dried hot peppers
red, yukon, keuka gold, and some of the fingerling potatoes. The local fingerlings are the irregular gnarly shaped "papa cacho"
black, watermelon, muu, and green meat loose radishes
rutabaga (wilhelmsburger, if you like knowing things)
purple top, red, and two white (hakurei and hinona kabu)
turnips. Sold out of yellow 'neeps around Burns Nigh
red and yellow shallots
alfalfa, mung, broccoli, crunchy mix, spicy, sweet pea and 2 packs of sunflower cut or trays of wheatgrass

Pesticide-free or IPM:
Oyster mushrooms
heirloom beefsteak and rainbow cherry tomatoes from Flora
basil, iceberg and butterhead lettuce from Gotham Greens
Asian mix, green sampler, petite mix, and primavera mix microgreens

Produce Weekend notes 2.20.15

-We have a new (to us) Apple. It's called Lady Alice. Eric V says it tastes like a grown up Honeycrisp.  

 

 -We've moved the organic and non-organic lemons back to the top shelf of the final cart in the middle of the aisle. It's a legacy spot for the lemons. They're unrefrigerated, yet happy to be there. This gives us more space for the bounty of citrus we're currently carrying. 

-Speaking of citrus... The TDE and the Florida navel are ending. They'll run out by the end of the weekend. For the TDE, we can spread the grapes to cover the spot.  The Florida navel are our juicing orange right now. If they run out, we think the best juicing alternative is the moro blood orange. 

-Bunched Spinach. We're having trouble getting anything worth getting. We're going to run it down and wait until we can our hands on something that our members would be interested in buying. 

-Green Bean bags. Our supplier was shorted from their supplier and therefore so were we. Anjou pears from Washington are ending. Bartlett from South America are starting soon. Likely from Argentina. 

-For all of you Napa cabbage fans... sorry, we couldn't get any for the weekend. Try savoy, eh? Same deal with shishito peppers. Tight supply. More on Monday.

Weekend Produce Updates - 02/13/15

Here we go... 

Pixie Tangerines. They're new (to us), they're small, they're seedless and they're very good. 

Cara Cara are back and we love them as well. 
Wikipedia has some nice things to say about them: 

 This medium sized navel is sweet and low in acid. The flavor is more complex than most navel varieties and has been described as evoking notes of cherry, rose petal, orange, and blackberry. 

My plebian palate is dull and sadly I couldn't detect the notes of rose petal. Not so dull though that I don't know a good cantaloupe when I taste one- or when Janet tells me it's good. 
It's actually called the MAG Cantaloupe, short for Magnificent. The name itself has notes of presumptuousness. Luckily, it lives up to it's name and is quite good. From Costa Rica. 
We also have some Guatemalan Golden Honeydews. They're also very good. 

The price for organic asparagus has fallen as the season progresses in Mexico and we're now carrying it alongside the non-organic asparagus. 

Watercress. We've stopped carrying the pesticide free watercress because it is no longer pesticide free. We're now carrying an organic watercress. It comes in bags and is kept near the salads. 

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.

Thanksgiving....by the numbers

For the 2 week period ending Sunday 12/1 (the Sunday after Thanksgiving) we sold:

14,000 lbs minimally treated Apples, not including...

5,100 lbs of Honeycrisp

1,948 5lb boxes of Clementines

709 5lb boxes of organic Satsuma Mandarins

13,440 organic Lemons

12,500 Avocados

18,500 lbs of organic Bananas (this 2 week period is always this slow for Bananas-we usually sell over 20,000!)

1,242 packages of organic Cranberries

1,760 packages of conventional Cranberries

6,250 lbs organic Red Seedless Grapes

3,200 lbs organic Baby Salad Greens (all kinds)

2,600 lbs organic Green Beans

4,300 lbs all Brussels Sprouts (and we couldn't get as many as we wanted of any of them)

8,500 lbs of all Carrots

6,500 bunches of all organic Kale 

3,500 lbs all Mushrooms

11,500 lbs all Onions

2,800 bunches all Parsley despite numerous out of stocks due to scarcity

13,700 lbs all organic Potatoes

1,100 lbs organic Pumpkins

5,785 lbs all organic Winter Squash, not including...

2,730 lbs organic Butternut

12,284 lbs all Sweet Potatoes

1,850 lb local organic Heirloom Tomatoes (yes, local-thank you, Hepworth Farms!)

BUTTER & BAKING NEWS

Organic Valley 1-pound butters

(Cultured Un-salted & Salted) are temporarily out-of-stock from our distributor! If our current supply runs out, try their European Style or Pastured Butter. These are organic, same quality product, smaller package (8 oz.).  

Kerrygold Salted Butter: 

There is a global shortage of this beloved Irish grass-fed butter. BUY IT NOW because once our current supply runs out it could be months before we have it again. There is no shortage of the Kerrygold Unsalted, which the Irish Dairy Board suggests is a good substitute for holiday baking. 

Sunrise Family Farms Butter is no longer being made. We are sad to see it go, but we will do our best to bring in a comparable locally-made grass-fed table butter.

Immaculate Baking Pie Crusts!
Back in stock for the Holiday Pie Baking season! Refrigerated -- in the Butter Case.  

Frozen Pie Crusts!
In the Ice Cream Case! Lots & Lots!

New Items--(gluten)FREE Bread Moxy Bach packs and Moxy Croutons.  The latest in fresh-baked gluten free items.  Look for them on the cart next to the egg case. 

Look for all your fresh baked gluten needs on the cart next to the egg case--Amaranth Bakery breads, Whipped Pastry bread and baked goods, Free Bread Company bread and croutons.

How many local items this week?

 This many! ==>

In Other News

After many years of research, we are unable to ascertain the origin of the term "fingerling" potato.

 

 

FREEZER NEWS...

gee whiz, it's been a long time since i've posted anything.

first, a word from one of our suppliers-

INTRODUCING BARRAMUNDI
A relative newcomer to the U.S. market, barramundi is finding a place at high end restaurants and retailers because of its versatility and eco-friendly reputation.
A member of the sea bass family, barramundi is native to Australia’s northern tropical waters and parts of Southeast Asia.
PRODUCT FORM:
Skinless, Boneless Fillets
PRODUCT PROFILE:
Barramundi has a firm, moist texture, large flakes and a sweet buttery flavor.
QUICK PREPARATION SUGGESTIONS:
BAKE – Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Brush fillets with melted butter or oil and season to taste. Place in greased baking dish and bake for approximately 15 minutes.
GRILL – Pre-heat grill to medium high. Brush fillets with melted butter or oil and season to taste. Grill for 3-4 minutes. Turn and cook 3-4 more minutes.

while i have you, wanted to tell you of a few more things we have now in our freezer and ice cream case-

back by popular demand- northern chef wild shrimp!

Organic Nectars ice cream (we used to carry this and it was super expensive) is back. it's now called Cashewtopia. We have vanilla, chocolate, chocolate hazelnut and pistachio. its also less expensive.

So Delicious Sugar free Vanilla coconut ice cream and Almond milk ice cream cherry amaretto.

Zoe's Premium Dog Food will be taking a hiatus- they are expanding so we may not get any until november december.

Gabe the Fish Babe will also be taking a break. I believe they are in the middle of expanding as well. Its return is TBD.

Stay tuned for more new products in both cases. hoping to be back sooner than later.

Tangerines in July?!

That's right!  We have a strong supply of delicious late harvest Murcott and Pixie tangerines from Sundance Organics in California to help you stave off those midsummer colds.  They are sweet and easy to peel.  A great addition to picnics and beach bags.

BOBO FARM CHICKENS ARE BACK!!!

They finally got the new packing machinery up and running, so – after a five-month absence -- everybody’s favorite FEET-ON chickens are back in the Coop!