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From Field to Table
What's Happening Now at Magicland Farms
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Volume Two, Issue Seven
| Sunday - June 27, 2010
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Magicland
Farms
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Everything We Sell We Grow Ourselves
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Greetings!
Welcome to the Magicland Farms' newsletter for the week beginning June 28th. We hope to keep you up to date with the happenings at our farm, along with providing you with some of our favorite recipes and other information we think you might find of interest. If you know of someone who might be interested in receiving our newsletter, you can forward it to them by using the forward link at the end of this newsletter
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This Week at Magicland Farms - June 28th to July 3rd
This week we are featuring handpicked green beans,
sand-grown new red potatoes plus a variety of potted herbs for your
kitchen windowsill including basil, chives, dill, parsley and
cilantro.
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From The Kitchen
Cherry Tomatoes
I absolutely love tomatoes of any kind. The SunSugar cherry tomatoes are exceptionally tasty. Eating them out of hand is wonderful. But I found a new favorite use for them; using them in an omelette is delicious. Toss a handful of these tomatoes, sliced in half, along with some cojack cheese in your omelette. Make sure you have a bunch of eggs around because once you try this you will be addicted. OK, maybe that is too strong a word but my gosh, these make one of the tastiest omelettes I have ever had.
Harvard Beets adapted from Allrecipes.com
16 ounces fresh beets
1/2 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
salt to taste
Wash, peel and cube beets. Using a saucepan, cover beets with water, cook for10 to 20 minutes until tender.
Remove beets from water and set aside. To liquid, add vinegar, sugar, cornstarch and salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium; stir in beets and cook until heated through.
My notes:
- The recipe calls for white vinegar. At the time I made these, I didn't have food quality white vinegar available. I checked on the internet and everyone said not to substitute apple cider vinegar. But since that was all I had, I decided to be brave and daring and went ahead. The beets tasted wonderful so I think you can safely substitute apple cider vinegar if you don't have the good white vinegar around.
- Remember all vinegar is not created equal. For cooking, you should only used vinegar that is sourced from fruits and grains. Many varieties of white vinegar are made from petroleum products (which I don't want in my food). Heinz distilled white vinegar is made from grains and is a safe choice.
- This recipe got rave reviews from my taste testers. These beets have a nice sweet-tangy taste that most of us love. Every bit of the beets disappeared and I probably could have made more.
- We also love beets on the grill. More on that next week.
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Specials In The Spotlight
None this week but look for future specials.
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Questions Our Customers Are Asking
In this section, we usually answer the most commonly asked questions by customers at the stand and via email. If you have any questions, email us and we'll do our best to answer.
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The Boss's Corner
The Sweet Corn Planting Scheduler Software is still showing,
as of today, a July 10 first harvest date.
Earlier in the week it pushed up the date to July 9th but now
is back to the 10th. While I really
believe we will start picking sweet corn on either July 9th or July
10th, to be on the safe side I decided to put up a sign at the
market which will read something like "Our
Sweet Corn Will Start About July 12th". I will let you know in the next
newsletter a firmer date-either July 9th, July 10th or
perhaps even July 12th. By
the way, while last year we didn't start picking corn until July 24th,
the long term average for us has been July 13th. However, this average date includes years
when we planted super early corn varieties like Northern Vee and Quickie, which
though ripen several days earlier than the three "secret" early varieties I now
plant, their ear size is smaller and their taste isn't as good as the early
corn I now plant. (By the way, at one time Northern Vee and Quickie were
considered, by us, as "secret" varieties.)
Don't be fooled
by the chilly nights that we will experience Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I wish there was
a practical way of keeping the cool temps bottled up so we could use them for
the rest of the summer! While I have
made erroneous forecasts in the past I am quite sure, starting late this
weekend, we will be entering the door to a heat wave that doesn't have an exit
until at least Labor Day. This will be
great for our watermelons and sweet potatoes but I am not really looking
forward to it. Well, most of us do love
watermelons (and our sweet, vine ripened watermelons are oh so good-especially
when it's hot) and this year they not only look astounding but we planted more
than ever-perhaps it was because I had a feeling how this summer would turn
out. By the way, I also do love sweet potatoes but they need to be cooked which
means more heat! However, our sweet
potatoes won't be ready until September when we know things will be cooling down
some. Keep an eye out for recipes for
sweet potato fries-freshly dug sweet potatoes make the best fries!
More About Beets
While I have grown beets for many years now, I am still
learning about them. While perusing the
literature concerning soil requirements for vegetable crops, I discovered they
require many more micronutrients than most vegetables. (Micronutrients are elements such as iron,
zinc, copper, manganese, molybdenum and others that are only needed by most
plants in very small quantities.) I
started thinking that is the reason beets are so rich in minerals-especially
the minerals which are found only in small amounts in other foods. So beets aren't only tasty but
nutritious. By the way, we grow a
special hybrid beet that has some sugar beet blood in its bloodline. This is one reason why the beets we sell are
so nice and sweet.
What We Are Picking
Our high tunnel Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes are now ripening
and we started selling them on Saturday. These cherry tomatoes are yellow/golden
when ripe-not red-and are exceptionally flavorful and sweet. We also have started to dig our red
sand-grown Norland potatoes and they are as tasty as ever. Starting on Monday June 28 we will be picking
our famous green beans--yellow beans should start next week.
Next week notes about our Pink Mason drink! This non-alcoholic drink is especially
refreshing when its hot-like this summer will turn out to be!
Nashle!
Tom
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This week's photo album
This year we are doing our photos for the newsletter a bit differently. Due to space constraints on our newsletter hosting service and concern for those of you on a dialup connection, we are going to host them on Drop.io (a web based file sharing service). Every week you will get a link to a photo album that shows the photos that go along with the newsletter. Simply click on the link below and it will take you to the photos. Clicking on a photo will yield a larger image along with a description of the photo.
This Weeks Photos 06-27-2010
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We appreciate your business and hope to see you this week at Magicland Farms.
Sincerely,
Tom and Annemarie Fox
Magicland Farms
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4380 S Gordon
Fremont, Michigan 49412
231-652-2368
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