Corn Posted by Mike Farley (08/05/2013 @ 10:18 pm) 
Oh yeah. that photo says it all, doesn’t it? It’s prime time for corn. I guess, as the farmers call it, it’s sweet corn….if you just say “corn on the cob,” you also mean corn that is used for feed for pigs and cows on farms. Where I live in Wisconsin, sweet corn is available from local farms from late July until early September or so. The first crop is super sweet and tender, and as the season wears on, the kernels get bigger and thicker and more dense, and less sweet and less tender. But for now, it’s prime time for corn and that means we eat it in our house pretty much every day for six or so weeks. There is no good reason not to! Posted in: Food on a Budget, Green Living, Healthy, Your Kitchen Tags: corn, farm, farmer's market, fresh produce, fresh vegetables, summer, sweet corn, sweet corn Wisconsin
Pink slime–no, thanks Posted by Mike Farley (05/15/2012 @ 8:24 pm) 
It’s become a buzzword/term in 2012–pink slime. Like you, I had no idea what it was until I read an article two months ago in Mother Jones. This is how the article describes it: “the cheeky nickname for scraps of slaughtered cow that have been pulverized, defatted, subjected to ammonia steam to kill pathogens, and congealed into a filler for ground beef.” It goes on to say that McDonald’s was using it but planned to stop doing so, along with Taco Bell and Burger King, who also succumbed to the public outcry. But pink slime is apparently in school lunch ground beef. It’s in packaged and frozen burgers, and even in commercially sold ground beef. Wow. How the hell do you get around that if you eat and enjoy burgers, meatballs, meat loaf or other ground meat products? I know what I”m doing. I’m not eating fast food ground meat. I’m thinking twice before ordering something made with ground beef in a restaurant. For home use, we buy ground beef from a local farm (at the farmer’s market here in Madison) that we know is organic and high quality, or from Trader Joe’s, which states on its website that their ground meat does not contain pink slime. We are not ready to give up meat entirely, but what we are also doing is trying to eat one or two vegetarian meals per week. I am not naive enough to think that there isn’t crap like this in many foods–or pesticides or whatever. But pink slime? It’s vile, it’s scary and it has no place on my plate or on my family’s plates. Posted in: Chefs and Restaurants, Green Living, Grocery stores, Healthy, Uncategorized, Your Kitchen Tags: Burger King, commercial ground beef, farmer's market, frozen burgers, ground beef, hamburgers, McDonald's, Meat Loaf, meatballs, organic meat, pink slime, pink slime information, school lunches, Taco Bell, Trader Joe's
Tomatoes: a pet peeve Posted by Mike Farley (07/11/2011 @ 9:51 pm) I’m going to write more about food pet peeves tomorrow, but I thought since it’s the middle of July, that a stand-alone post about tomatoes is in order.
Now, I feel blessed to live in Madison, where we have one of the best farmer’s markets in the nation (and I’m not exaggerating…look up the Dane County Farmer’s Market). Anyway, I also belong to an awesome CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with a local farm, Driftless Organics. But we get our box from the farm every other week and this past weekend was an “off” week. No problem, I can always head to the market on Saturday. But since my wife was out of town and I had our 3-year old in tow, the fact that an art fair moved the market off the “square” to a much more congested area of downtown, I decided to just get what I needed from the grocery store. Which leads me to my gripe today–tomatoes. Is it too much to ask that a “vine ripe” tomato in the grocery store, is, you know, vine ripe? Instead they are mealy and disgusting, something I expect in January, not in July. I am guessing that these tomatoes are grown in a hothouse, and/or are plucked before they should be plucked. But come on. Even the “cluster” tomatoes, the ones that are sold with the vines, are crappy from the grocery store. There is no substitute for a farm-fresh tomato in the summer, or one you grow yourself (we didn’t do that this year but I’m regretting that decision already). But there is also zero excuse for a store–even a chain grocery store–to sell a crappy, mealy tomato in the heat of summer. It’s also a crime for a restaurant to serve mealy tomatoes this time of year, but raise your hand if you’ve had a mealy restaurant tomato recently. I know I see a lot of hands from where I sit because it’s true! Anyway, I hope our CSA share has some tomatoes, and even if it does, I’m buying more from the market this weekend. It’s time for tomato sandwiches, one of the best parts of summer, and there is no room on my bread for crappy-ass tomatoes! Posted in: Healthy, Ingredients, Uncategorized, Your Kitchen Tags: community supported agriculture, CSA, Dane County Farmer's Market, Driftless Organics, Driftless Organics CSA, farm tomatoes, farmer's market, grocery store tomatoes, Madison, Madison farmer's market, mealy tomatoes, summer tomatoes, tomatoes, vine ripe tomatoes, Wisconsin
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