Vegetable Facts

Coloring Easter Eggs Using Natural Dyes

April 12, 2017 By marketeditor

Supply List
*supplies available at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market

• 1 dozen eggs, any color*
• 1 cup chopped red cabbage per cup of water* — makes blue on white eggs, green on brown eggs
• 1 cup shredded beets per cup of water* — makes pink or purple on white eggs, maroon on brown eggs
• 2 tablespoons ground turmeric per cup of water — makes yellow eggs

Cooking Instructions:

1. Bring 1 inch water to rolling boil in medium saucepan over high heat.

2. Place eggs in steamer basket and place the basket in the saucepan. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low and cook eggs for 13 minutes.

3. Combine 2 cups ice cubes and 2 cups cold water in medium bowl. Using tongs or spoon, transfer the eggs to ice bath. Let sit for 15 minutes.

Dyeing Instructions

1. Add a cup of water for each color into a saucepan. Add cabbage, beets or turmeric and bring the water to a boil.

2. Cover, and turn the heat down to low and simmer for 15 to 30 minutes. You can cook longer for a deeper color. Drip a little of the colored water onto a white dish to check the color. When it has reached to color you like, remove the pan from the heat and let it cool to room temperature.

3. Pour the cooled colored water through a fine-mesh strainer into another saucepan or bowl.

4. Stir in 1 Tablespoon of white vinegar per cup of strained colored water. Pour the water over cooled cooked eggs in a bowl. The eggs must be completely under the water.

5. Refrigerate until the desired color is reached. My Saratoga Kitchen Table refrigerated eggs overnight.

6. Try rubbing dry dyed eggs with oil (olive or melted coconut oil) will allow them to shine.

Salads Year Round | Did You Know…

January 23, 2017 By marketeditor

By Himanee Gupta-Carlson

Did you know that you can grow greens for salads year round? Without a greenhouse. Without grow lights. Without a heating mat.

Peter Burke has come up with an ingenious idea for year round indoor salad gardening, which he shared in a workshop at last year’s Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY)’s annual Winter Conference and details in his book Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening. The idea is simple: you round up a bunch of small containers (Burke proposes the aluminum bread tins that you might have received gifts of fruitcake and zucchini breads in), a few growing implements, and a ton of seeds. You soak the seeds overnight. You also will want to soak newspapers or other acid free papers in water, and in a separate bucket some standard germination soil mix in water.

From there, you place a ½ teaspoon of sea kelp and 1 tablespoon of compost in your container and mix them together. Spoon your soil mix on top, level it so that it lies about ¼ of an inch from the top and drain the water from your seeds. Then, spread the moistened seeds over the soil so that they are touching one another but not overlapping. Cover the seeds with your water soaked newspapers and place them in a warm, dark place. Forget that the containers exist for four days.

On the fifth day, retrieve your containers, remove the covers and water the containers. Keep these containers in a well-lit windowsill, watering them with about two to four tablespoons daily.

Burke says that generally the green shoots will be ready to be clipped with scissors and eaten within three to four days of being in your windowsill. He advocates planting five small containers at a time, each one with a different seed, and to get into a routine of doing this planting on a daily basis. In this way, he says, you have the potential to have salads made from your own freshly harvested greens every day. The salads can include almost anything, but he has a fondness for pea shoots, radish and kohlrabi sprouts, kale and small lettuce greens.

So does it work?

I went home from the NOFA-NY conference with a container of pea seeds that I’d planted, courtesy of Burke’s workshop. The peas did sprout, and I did have greens – greens that I combined with farmers market purchased salad greens, sliced winter radishes, carrots and turnips, and occasionally pumpkin and squash seeds. In this way, my little garden lasted nearly three weeks. Inspired, I tried doing my own planting of five more containers. I have to admit that I didn’t follow directions as well as I could and had marginal success. But the idea intrigues me, and I hope to give it another, more focused try this winter.

Details on the book: Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening, Peter Burke, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015.

Locally Grown Sweet Potatoes Add a Fat-Free, Nutritional Boost

January 23, 2017 By marketeditor

By Mary Peryea

Did you know that the sweet potato is one of the most nutritious vegetables on the planet. This orange tuber offers an unsurpassed source of beta carotene; providing 214 percent of the daily requirement for Vitamin A in a single cup serving; and a significant source of Vitamin C, manganese, Vitamin B6, and potassium. That single cup serving contains only 180 calories and no fat.

Pleasant Valley's stand. Photo by Pattie Garrett — Pleasant Valley’s stand. Photo by Pattie Garrett.

Paul Arnold, of Pleasant Valley Farm, is one of the Saratoga Farmers’ Market vendors who sells sweet potatoes throughout the winter. Arnold began growing sweet potatoes about eight years ago. He sees them as a good crop to push through the long winter months until April. In May, he plants the next crop.

Sweet potatoes like loose sandy soil and warm weather. Ideally, the soil temperature should be above 50 degrees. That can be a challenge in our regions and helps explain why most sweet potatoes grown commercially come from the South.

In May, “slips” – or plants with no roots cut from last year’s harvest of sweet potatoes – are planted. They grow until late September, when cooler temperatures begin to prevail. Then, a “bed lifter” pulled by a tractor loosens the soil in the fields and the sweet potatoes are pulled up by hand. The sweet potatoes can’t be harvested by machine because they skin too easily.

After the harvest, the sweet potatoes are cured for five days at a temperature of 90 degrees. In the South, they can be left in the fields to cure. Here, they require some help. Pleasant Valley Farm has a room dedicated to storing winter squash and sweet potatoes, which require similar conditions. This process of curing turns the potatoes’ starch to sugar, sweetening them up.

Following the curing, sweet potatoes are stored at 55 to 60 degrees, with a humidity of 70 per cent. The storage room at Pleasant Valley Farm is heated, insulated, and dehumidified. In this environment, sweet potatoes can be stored for up to eight months.

What’s the best way to eat a sweet potato? For Arnold, the answer is like candy – almost. Steam the potatoes until soft, then slice or mash and eat them plain. Their inherent sweetness shines through.

Visit the Saratoga Farmers’ Market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays at the Lincoln Baths Building in the Saratoga Spa State Park.

Sweet Potato Fries with Yogurt Honey Dip

Adapted from recipe in Cooking Light, shared by My Saratoga Kitchen Table
Serves: 4

Ingredients
*Ingredients currently available at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market

• 2 sweet potatoes*
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary*
• 2 garlic cloves, minced*
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• ½ cup plain Greek yogurt*
• 4 teaspoons of honey*
• ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Clean the potatoes and cut into steak fries.
2. In a medium bowl, add olive oil, rosemary, and garlic. Add the potatoes slices and coat well. Sprinkle with paprika.
3. Place potatoes on a sheet pan and bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until tender and browned.
4. In a small bowl, combine the yogurt, honey and vanilla. Chill and serve with potatoes.

More Than a Can of Beans | Did You Know…

October 24, 2016 By marketeditor

by Himanee Gupta-Carlson

For the past two weeks, I have been collecting donations from Saratoga Farmers’ Market vendors for the Franklin Community Center’s food pantry. The goal of this program is to connect those who need food the most with the local farmers who grow it. As a volunteer for both the market and the food pantry, I am collecting unsellable but still edible foods and taking them to the Franklin center to be weighed, stored, and ultimately distributed.

Last Saturday, it was wet, windy, and quite chilly. Neither I nor the farmers wanted to linger past the closing bell. Against that scenario, John Otrembiak asked me a question: “Would they take soup beans?”

Soup beans are beans that often sell in the final two or three weeks of the summer market’s summer season. The term, on the Otrembiak’s signage, refers to beans that might have been planted for fresh-eating purposes but ended up drying out or being exposed to frost before they could be harvested in full. Instead of eating the whole bean – pod and seed – one shells the seeds from pods. The seeds range in quality from plump and juicy to dry enough to be stored for months of winter eating in jars.

Soup beans are like dry beans that are soaked and then cooked slowly in crock pots, pressure cookers, or soup pots for hours to produce hearty high protein soups, stews, or such dishes as cassoulet. Unlike dry beans, however, soup beans require only minimal – if any – soaking, and can be cooked to eat within an hour. They are fresh and highly nutritious and if shelled and stored properly can ultimately keep in storage for months, if not years.

Otrembiak’s question got me wondering about how such beans would fare as food pantry donations. Unlike their canned or dried counterparts, soup beans require some work. They must be shelled, washed, and then, of course, cooked. They are labor intensive, but they are local and delicious.

I decided to give the beans a try. Otrembiak handed me a plastic bin’s worth, and I put them in a plastic basket slatted to allow the wetter pods an opportunity to dry. Monday morning, I arrived at the food pantry.

“What happened to the soup beans?” I asked.

“They’re out on the free table,” responded one of the volunteers. “People are helping themselves.”

Cooking soup beans

My method is simple and basic: Shell about a cup’s worth of beans, and soak them for 20-30 minutes in water with a dash of salt. Drain and rinse.

In a soup pot, heat some oil or butter. Add some chopped onion or garlic, along with perhaps a root vegetable like diced carrots, turnips or potatoes. Add the beans, and then enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a low simmer, and cover. Cook until the beans are soft. Add a couple of chopped leaves of kale, collard greens, or perhaps some fresh herbs at the end.

Here’s a more formal recipe: http://www.italianfoodforever.com/2011/01/farmers-market-soup/

Roasted Potato Fries with Herb Salt

October 11, 2016 By marketeditor

Shared by My Saratoga Kitchen Table
Serves: 8

Ingredients
*Ingredients currently available at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market

• 4 large russet potatoes*
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil*

Herb Salt:

• ¼ cup kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• ½ teaspoon dry mustard
• ½ teaspoon onion powder
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
• ½ teaspoon ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon celery seed
• ½ teaspoon dried dill weed

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut potatoes into wedges. Pat dry. Place in a large bowl and toss with olive oil.

2. Combine all the herb salt ingredients in a small bowl. Sprinkle over the potatoes and toss to coat.

3. Arrange potatoes evenly on sheet pan. Bake until browned and tender, 20 to 30 minutes.

The Extraordinary Ordinary Potato

October 11, 2016 By marketeditor

By Himanee Gupta-Carlson

Did you know that a potato contains more potassium than a banana?

I picked up this nutritional gem from Sheldon Farms at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market. It came in late February, between the end of butternut squash and the beginnings of chives, when potatoes were one of the few local foods available.

The idea that a potato could out-potassium a banana amazed me. I checked it out. Sheldon Farms was right. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that an average banana packs in 422 milligrams of potassium. Potatoes do even better, scoring close to 1,000 milligrams.

“Potatoes are one of the best food values all around, said Albert Sheldon in August, when the first potatoes of 2016 were making their debut. “They’re comfort food and nutritious, to boot.”

Sheldon, 66, has farmed his entire life, and Sheldon Farms, a sixth generation family farm in Salem, NY, is known for its potatoes, although the farm produces many other crops. As Sheldon tells it, his parents met in 1946 when his father was buying seed potatoes from a man who turned out to be his father-in-law.

Sheldon clarifies the confusion over varieties – more than 100 sold in the U.S. alone – with a simple East/West distinction.

“In the Eastern part of the country, you’re likely to see an all-purpose potato,” he said. “One that is grown to be good baked, fried, and mashed.” Western potatoes, by contrast, are mainly russets, i.e, the Idaho potato, great for baking but less versatile.

Sheldon Farms has grown varieties of yellow, red, and white potatoes, along with fingerlings and Adirondack blues and reds. Sheldon likes them all admits to a special affection for yellow varieties. He’ll scoop up an armload, turn on the oven, and bake them all in a batch. For the next few days, he’ll savor them: baked initially, fried up the next night, mashed toward the end.

The first potatoes of a year’s harvest are a moment worth waiting for. Sheldon prefers to wait even longer, noting that the starches contained in stored potatoes turn into sugar over time.

Says Sheldon: “That potato on your Christmas dinner plate might be the best-tasting one of the year.”

The summer Saratoga Farmers’ Market continues at High Rock Park from 3-6 p.m. Wednesdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. The winter market begins Saturday, Nov. 5 at the Lincoln Baths.

Roasted Potato Fries with Herb Salt

Shared by My Saratoga Kitchen Table
Serves: 8

Ingredients
*Ingredients currently available at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market

• 4 large russet potatoes*
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil*

Herb Salt:

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut potatoes into wedges. Pat dry. Place in a large bowl and toss with olive oil.

2. Combine all the herb salt ingredients in a small bowl. Sprinkle over the potatoes and toss to coat.

3. Arrange potatoes evenly on sheet pan. Bake until browned and tender, 20 to 30 minutes.

Coloring Easter Eggs Using Natural Dyes

Salads Year Round | Did You Know…

Did you know that you can grow greens for salads year round? Without a greenhouse. Without grow lights. Without a heating mat.