Thanks so much for supporting your local farmers, by shopping at the farmers’ market!  Not only are you getting fantastic produce, but you’re ensuring a continuing supply of these great local products.  Just think—the more local produce you buy and eat, the healthier our local food supply will be! 

vegetables
If you braved the rain and came to the market last Saturday, you’ll know that there are no more easy decisions at the market. How to decide what to buy? There are so many different, wonderful, fresh, and delicious vegetables at the stands now that I really have to have a menu plan and a shopping list—otherwise I just buy everything and then I’m in big trouble.

How can anyone resist those big, beautiful, sweet cabbages and bouquets of greens and bunches of kale and heads of broccoli and cauliflower?  I always end up getting too much—and then cooking like mad, freezing some of the extra soups and stews to clear my ‘fridge before the next market! The nice thing, though, is that I can eat those frozen delights all winter. What an easy dinner—at the end of a long, busy day to have a home-cooked meal all ready to heat up and eat! 

Here’s a list of the vegetables I’ve seen at the market—but there are new things arriving all the time! 

arugula | basil | beet greens | beets, red | beets, chiogghia | broccoli | cabbage, green | cabbage, napa | cabbage, red | carrots | cauliflower | chard | cilantro | collards | cress | cucumbers, pickles | cucumbers, slicers | daikon | dill | eggplant | fennel | kale, lacinato | kale, red russian | kohlrabi | lettuce, buttercrunch | lettuce, iceberg | lettuce, red | lettuce, romaine | mustard, mizuna | mustard, red | mustard, tatsoi | onions, green | parsley, italian | peas, sugar snap | potatoes, butterball | potatoes, new | radishes | rhubarb | salad green mixture | shingiku | sorrel | spinach | squash, blossoms | strawberries | sugar snap peas | tomatoes, cherry | tomatoes, red | tomatoes, yellow | turnip greens | turnips (white, snow apple) | turnips (purple-topped) | zucchini blossoms | zucchini, green | zucchini, yellow

mushrooms!!
Two weeks ago Arthur Keyes, the market manager, started talking to a mushroom farmer from the Kenai Peninsula! He may just have bags of oyster mushrooms for us this Saturday! When he came up to check out our farmers market, he brought some samples of his mushrooms, and I was lucky enough to get two big, beautiful bags of them. I roasted them up with garlic oil and salt, and ate them on a spinach salad for dinner, and then for lunch the next day in a pita sandwich with sautéed chard and homemade Russian dressing. Wow, were they good! Check out the “related recipes” at the end of this newsletter for the links to the recipes and photos! 

recipes
I’ve already mentioned the recipes for the oyster mushrooms! Also, I’ve had several people request the recipe for my olive oil infused with roasted garlic—you’ll find links to all these recipes at the bottom of this newsletter, under “related recipes.”

jams & jellies
Three Bears Farm, a relatively new vendor at the market, has been bringing great jams and jellies to the market, and one of my bread customers told me that his tomato-jalepeno jelly is to die for, spread on top of a little cream cheese or goat cheese. I guess I’ll need to try some next week! A couple of his other interesting flavors are cranberry-walnut and pumpkin butter! He also has lots of conventional preserves, like rhubarb-strawberry and raspberry.

plants
I haven’t been writing much about the beautiful perennials from our plant nursery vendors lately, because suddenly we’ve gotten so many gorgeous vegetables. But just a reminder--Gray Owl Farm, In the Garden, and Mile 5.2 Greenhouses have gorgeous plants for your perennial garden, or your annual baskets and boxes. Every Saturday I’m just blown away by the fantastic array of flowers and shrubs and herbs that they are selling. Check them out if you haven’t lately!

website
Our website has been launched now for a week, and it’s been so much fun hearing from you about how you’ve been using it! Thanks for the encouragement to add more eggplant recipes—there will be a new one in next week’s newsletter, and on the website soon! And thanks, too, for the compliments on the photos—I’ve been having so much fun taking pictures of all the produce and plants, and then sticking them in here! Surf around—every time I make dinner or lunch from one of the recipes here on the website, I’m taking photos and loading them up with the recipes! You can see what the dish looks like before you make it!

If you want to know what I’ve just been cooking and taking pictures of, check out the little rooster at the bottom of this page. He’ll tell you what’s new on the website! I’ll usually include a link to exactly where to find the new photo & recipe—although it can’t be hot-linked (you can’t just click on it to find the page), you can copy and paste it into your website browser and the page will come up.

tasty technology tidbit
Are you wondering why the rooster’s website addresses look like this: “http://tinyurl.com/55t2tc”? What is a “tiny URL,” anyway? It’s a great method of changing a really long website address into a unique, short website address using letters and numbers that can easily fit into the rooster’s speech bubble. If you want to try it, just go to http://www.tinyurl.com and follow the instructions to make a long address into a short one! The program will automatically copy the tiny url onto your clipboard, ready to paste into whatever document you need.

We’re continuing to add new features to the website all the time. Soon there will be new ways to search for recipes (although the search engine is perfectly functional now)! And I’m loading new recipes and photographs all the time. You can see my photos here on the website as they rotate through from my account, “akfarmersmarket” on Flickr. Or you can click the link below the photo, above, and go directly to my photo gallery in Flickr! (More on that free internet program next week.)

bread
Rise & Shine Bakery is taking a week off, so we will NOT be at the market on Saturday, August 2. But Mary Jane will be there with all kinds of breads, croissants, palmiers, and macaroons from the French Oven Bakery, in case you don’t have any bread left in your freezer. 

farmers’ market cookbook
Lately lots of people have been buying additional copies of the cookbook to give as gifts! Thank you! I’m so happy that you’re enjoying the book for yourselves, and want to share it with your friends and family. One of my favorite recipes to use this time of year with the fresh, wonderful broccoli, is in the cookbook: broccoli salad with roasted peppers, capers and olives. I’ve just made it, taken a photo, and added it to the recipe here on the website. Check it out if you want to see what it looks like before you buy the cookbook! It’s such fun to make broccoli recipes right now, with all the sweet, fresh, broccoli at the market!

Here are some links to recipes to which I’ve recently added photos:

broccoli salad with roasted peppers, capers and olives: http://tinyurl.com/5afbwy
Napa cabbage salad with spicy peanut dressing: http://tinyurl.com/5ma6n8
crostini with grilled eggplant and pine nut puree: http://tinyurl.com/55t2tc

The South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Cookbook is filled with 100 pages of delicious, healthy recipes that showcase our flavorful, fresh local Alaskan produce. Recipes provide inspiration for ways to use Alaskan vegetables, fish, fruits, bread, and other products that can be found at our farmers’ markets. The cookbook focuses on vegetable recipes that have fantastic flavor and top-notch nutritional value. And if you’re wondering about how to process our Alaskan produce to freeze for the winter, the book includes instructions!

seafood
Arctic Choice Seafoods will have all kinds of fresh, delicious, Alaskan fish! Here’s a list of what they are likely to have.

fresh king salmon | fresh sablefish | fresh rockfish | fresh halibut | fresh clams | fresh oysters | halibut cheeks | king crab | snow crab | spot shrimp | side stripe shrimp | Dungeness crab | scallops | smoked salmon bellies

Saturday South Anchorage Farmers’ Market
Dates: May 10-October 4
Hours: 9am-2pm
Location: Subway/Cellular One Sports Centre at the corner of Old Seward and O’Malley

Wednesday South Anchorage Farmers’ Market
Dates: July 2- October 1
Hours: 10am-4pm
Location: behind the Dimond Center, in front of the Dimond Center Hotel

Please share this website and newsletter with anyone you think might be interested in receiving the weekly market news—they can email me, Alison Arians, at if they’d like to be added to our newsletter list, or they can sign up here on the website.

For more information about the market, contact Arthur Keyes, South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Manager, at 907-354-5833, or at .

Cheers! And see you at the market!
Alison Arians
Farmers’ Market Reporter

 
RISE & SHINE BAKERY
Long Term Baking Schedule, Summer 2008
2 August: OFF
9 August
• pan loaves: 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, Alaskan barley, raisin & pecan
• hearth loaves: fresh rosemary, Alaskan onion rye
16 August
• pan loaves: 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, Alaskan baked potato
• hearth loaves: toasted walnut, Alaskan cheese & roasted garlic, dark chocolate & cherry
23 August
• pan loaves: 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, golden maize
• hearth loaves: kalamata olive, Alaskan onion rye, Alaskan carrot & raisin
30 August
• pan loaves: 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, Alaskan barley
• hearth loaves: toasted seed, Alaskan potato & chive, fruited almond

related recipes

spinach salad with garlic-roasted oyster mushrooms
garlicky mustard red wine vinaigrette
roasted mushrooms
olive oil infused with roasted garlic OR garlic oil

pita stuffed with roasted mushrooms and sautéed rainbow chard
rainbow chard sauteed with chard stems & onions
roasted mushrooms
homemade russian dressing