Keta salmon on sale!

We love wild salmon but because it's so expensive, we only buy it when it is on sale. This week, Keta salmon is on sale at Whole Foods Market. The price? Only $6.99 per lb. I had never heard of Keta salmon until Sunday morning when Caroline and I went to Whole Foods Market to buy our groceries. I wasn't sure what it would taste like but for $6.99 per lb, how could I go wrong? I bought a pound and we ate it for dinner tonight. Unlike King or Sockeye salmon, Keta salmon (alson known as Chum or Chub) has a very mild flavor and light colored flesh. Keta salmon has a lower fat and omega-3 fatty acid content than other species of salmon. For example, 3 oz of King salmon has about 11.5 grams of fat compared to just 4 grams of fat in the same amount of Keta salmon. But it is high in protein and, well, it's salmon and we love salmon. To cook it, I placed it skin-side down on a broiler pan, brushed the flesh with melted butter, rubbed it with Alder smoked coarse salt and broiled it for 6 minutes. I served it for dinner with brown rice and a side of sauteed yellow squash cut into rounds. The salmon had a nice flavor. So nice that I think I will go back to Whole Foods Market later this week to pick up some Keta salmon to freeze and eat later this summer. Keta salmon is on sale until July 21.

Where Our Milk Comes From

For the last two years, we've been buying Calder Dairy milk. I'm lactose intolerant so I've never tried the milk but Geoff tells me it tastes great. Calder Farm is a family owned and operated farm in Carleton, which is located about an hour south of Ann Arbor. The farm has a relatively small herd (110 milk cows) of Holstein, Brown Swiss, and Jersey cows. Artificial hormones are not given to the cows to enhance their milk production. I've always wanted to meet the cows who produce the milk that Caroline drinks everyday so this afternoon, Caroline and I drove out to Carleton with our friends Katherine and Julia. I had never been to a dairy farm so I wasn't sure what to expect. We arrived at 3:00 pm, just in time for Caroline to have a chance to help give a bottle of milk to a 7-day old calf. We spent the next hour walking around the property (and eating ice cream from the on-site ice cream parlor) and at 4:00 pm, we watched the cows being milked in the milking parlor. The farm has a small milking parlor with only 8 electronic milking machines. It takes about an hour and a half for all 110 cows to be milked. The milk is stored in a refrigerated tank and then taken to Calder Dairy in Lincoln to be pasteurized in small batches and bottled in recyclable glass bottles. After watching so many documentaries exposing the underbelly of the conventional and industrial food system, I was heartened by our visit to this farm where cows are treated with respect and where the employees seem to take pride in their work.

Needle Lane Farms CSA

When our friends Leslie and Steve asked if we could use their CSA (community supported agriculture) share while they were out-of-town, of course I said "yes." They are members of Needle Lane Farms CSA (Tipton, MI) and pick-up their share at Morgan and York on Tuesdays. I love the CSA model. Members subscribe to a farm by buying shares of the farm in advance to cover the anticipated costs of the operating the farm. In return, they receive a share of the harvest throughout the growing season. Before Caroline was born in July 2006, we were members of the Michigan State University Student Organic Farm CSA (community supported agriculture). Every Wednesday we went to the farm to pick up our share of fruits and vegetables for the week. We never knew what we would get in our share from week to week and that was part of the fun. I loved the challenge of making meals from surprise ingredients. After Caroline was born, we found that we didn't have time to go to the farm to pick up our share and I didn't have the energy to accomodate surprises. So we dropped our membership. I miss being a member of a CSA so when it came time to pick-up Leslie and Steve's share today, I hurried to Morgan and York. Their share of vegetables -- broccoli, lettuce, kohlrabi, chard, cabbage, red potatoes -- looked ultra-fresh and delicious. Dinner tonight? Whole wheat pasta tossed with sauteed garlic, broccoli, sun-dried heirloom tomatoes, toasted pinenuts, and parmesan cheese and served with a side salad. Thanks Leslie and Steve!

Don't toss the beet greens!

Beet greens are delicious. They can be used as a substitute for spinach, chard or kale.

Caroline's new favorite vegetable? Beets!

Last year, Caroline would barely touch my roasted beets. This year, she can't get enough of them. She likes golden beets and Chioggia beets (the pink and white stripped variety) but her favorite beets are the red ones. She likes the taste enough to eat them but what she loves most is the way that they make her tongue (and everything she touches) that deep red-purple color. Sometimes, she rubs the roasted red beets along her lips and says, "Look Mama! Lipstick!" I don't encourage food play but I let Caroline get away with a few applications.

I roast a bunch (or a couple of bunches) of beets on the weekend, store them in a covered container in the refrigerator, and use them throughout the week in salads, as a side dish, or just as is.

Roasted beets

Ingredients:
Beets

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 450F. Trim beets and scrub clean. Small beets can be roasted whole. Large beets should be cut in half or quartered (depending on their size) if they are going to be roasted alongside small beets. Place beets, cut-side down, in a oven-proof dish. Add a splash or two of water. Cover dish tightly with foil. Place in the oven and roast for about 30-40 minutes or until beets are easily pierced with a sharp knife. Peel beets while they are still warm by using fingers to rub off the skin.

Strawberry (or other fruit) jam salad dressing

We bought a flat of strawberries at the farmers' market a few weeks ago and ended up turning about half of it into jam. I love strawberry jam but we probably have more of it now that we can use up in the next year. While tinkering around together in the kitchen last week, Caroline and I made strawberry jam salad dressing. The recipe is simple: 1:1 ratio of olive oil and Agro Dolce vinegar (or champagne vinegar) and strawberry jam to taste. If you like sweet salad dressing, add more strawberry jam. For more subtle hints of strawberries, add less.

What happened to our lettuce? And our broccoli?

Saturday afternoon was my first trip to our community garden plot since returning home Friday after an overnight trip to DC. When I saw that the tips of our lettuce leaves had been broken off, I have to admit that my first thought (or maybe I said it out loud) was, "Doesn't Geoff know how to pick lettuce?" But then I saw that the tip of one of the broccoli leaves also had been ripped off. It seemed strange that Geoff would have tried to harvest a broccoli leaf. When I got home, I asked Geoff, "Um, did you pick some lettuce while I was gone?" When he shook his head, I panicked. What had gotten into our lettuce? When we planted our garden, we put up a fence around our entire plot. We even buried it and used metal stakes to secure it into the ground so that critters wouldn't be able to eat our food. When I checked my email later that afternoon, I saw that I had a message from Katherine, one of our community garden sages. She wrote, "So I was just out in the garden and it looks like a groundhog got into your garden." I felt my blood pressure rise as I kept reading. It turns out that a groundhog got into our plot through slits in our fence, probably made by the University of Michigan Northwood grounds maintenance crew who weed-wack around the fence. Katherine, who also happens to be a friend, repaired our fence for us by patching the slits with pieces of fencing material and garden-variety twist ties. I was thankful and thought that our groundhog problem had been resolved. But when I went to check on our garden this morning, I saw that the bottom of our "door" had been pushed aside and found our broccoli plant standing near-naked with its leaves eaten away. I am not happy.

First Raspberries!

Our first stop at the Ann Arbor farmers' market this morning was Tantre Farm located next to Hollander's and near 4th and Kingsley. These days, we start our Saturday morning farmers' market shopping at Tantre Farm because they have a large variety of produce; whatever we can't buy there, we buy from other vendors. This morning, they had yellow/gold and red raspberries! Caroline loves raspberries so we bought a couple of half-pint containers of the red variety. The USDA certified organic raspberries were $4 for a container. I don't always buy USDA certified organic produce but when it comes to berries, which are so hard to clean, I almost always buy them from vendors who do not spray their berries with chemicals. Caroline loved the raspberries and ate a full half-pint container as we walked through the market.

How to Talk to Woodchucks

Geoff: Caroline, what would you say if the woodchuck came up and wanted to eat our flowers? I would say, "Get away, woodchuck!"

Caroline: No, Daddy. That would not be nice. I would say, "Woodchuck, please don't eat the flowers because Mama will be cross."

Simple and in-season

It's 90F outside and too hot to cook anything that requires turning on the stove or oven for long periods of time. I contemplated getting take-out sushi for dinner but since it's a farmers' market day, we'll have something simple and in-season tonight: quesadillas made with summer squash and Monterey Jack cheese and salad made with lettuce from our garden. Dessert? Mulberries.