Today’s newsletter has so much information, here’s a list of topics to let you know what’s new in this issue!
1. FREE BROCCOLI last week--FREE HEAD LETTUCE next week!
2. Our new YouTube video:  processing collard greens to freeze
3. Great recipes for collards, chard, and eggplant
4. New produce boxes--a trial run of an all-Alaskan Community Supported Agriculture box on the South Side!

free broccoli last week… FREE LETTUCE next week!
On Saturday we introduced the Great Alaskan Broccoli Challenge, and next Saturday, September 6th, VanderWeele Farms is sponsoring another giveaway: The Great Alaskan Lettuce Extravaganza! I’ll send you another newsletter next week with a recipe and a coupon, so sign up here on the web for your newsletter if you want to receive your free lettuce at the market next Saturday!  You’re going to love this salad dressing recipe… In the meantime, here is the recipe for the broccoli this week!

the recipe: roasted broccoli with garlic

This recipe is one of the absolutely easiest recipes from Alison Arians’ 2008 South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Cookbook, but it’s also one of the yummiest. It makes such a nice side dish, a great snack, a fantastic pizza topping… that is, if you can resist eating the whole batch straight off the baking sheet.
I find that it’s easy to eat lots of vegetables and resist snacking on unhealthy food as long as I have plenty of ready-to-eat vegetable dishes like this hanging around in the refrigerator.

2 pounds broccoli
4 (or more) cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Peel the broccoli stalks, starting from the bottom, using a paring knife—the thick skin will peel away from the stalk. Then slice the stalks into coins less than ¼” thick. Keep them separate from the florets. Cut the florets into bite-sized pieces.
3. Coat 1 or 2 large baking sheets with non-stick spray or oil. (This makes clean-up a lot easier.)
4. Toss the broccoli stalks with half the oil, garlic and salt in a bowl until evenly coated with oil. Spread the broccoli stalks out into a single layer. Roast until the stalks are tender and beginning to brown, about 20 minutes.
5. Toss the broccoli florets with the remaining oil, garlic and salt, and roast them like the broccoli stalks until tender and beginning to brown. That will take less time—more like 12-15 minutes. Enjoy!

website
Are you ready for our new YouTube video?  It’s all about processing collard greens to freeze. I know you’ve been dying to know what’s with the collards at the farmers’ market, and whether you have to be a Southerner to eat them. Do they involve great chunks of ham and vats of grits? I’m sure that a real Southerner would have some great ways to cook them up, but since I was born and raised here in Alaska, I’ve had to learn my own way of cooking them. I love them so much that I’ve just frozen up 20 bunches of them for the winter. What, you might ask, is the advantage of freezing so many collards?

First of all, I love collards for their ability to stand up to a pot of boiling water. Most greens, when steamed or boiled, wilt down to a shadow of their former self. You practically have to have a bushel of spinach to make a nice little side dish for two people—and that’s a lot of spinach cleaning to do. Even chard (which I love) isn’t my favorite thing to freeze, because it sautées down so much, even when I dice up and include the stems. But collards are thick and tough, and don’t collapse much under their salted boiling water bath, leaving you a lot of greens to pack into ziplock bags and freeze.

Then, when you thaw them out, they are so wonderful when you braise them with onions for 20 minutes or so, and then add garlic. See my recipe for braised collard greens in my cookbook and here on the website, and the even more wonderful recipe for kale (or collards) and cabbage with white beans on garlic toast (also in the cookbook and here on the website).

You can use collards in place of any hearty winter green in recipes—kale, turnip greens, etc.  They have an assertive flavor that not everyone loves, but if you cook them properly (the salty boiling water blanch, and then the slow braise with onions), and add plenty of salt to the finished dish, they have a wonderfully complex flavor.

Did you already check out the sauerkraut and broccoli processing videos on YouTube? 

recipes
Now that I’ve sent you searching all over the website for great collards recipes, here’s the link for the written recipe for processing collards. Also, you’ll find a few more fabulous new recipes!  Another chard recipe… I admit that my chard has been coming from my own garden this year (what I can salvage from the slugs), but there is beautiful chard at the market, too! So get going on this one—it’s chard with golden raisins and toasted almonds.

Next up is a more complicated dish that I think you’ll really love, though—it’s a gratin of eggplant, roasted peppers and garlic. It’s got a few steps, but you can do them ahead of time, and the result is well worth it. 

NEW: produce boxes from the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market!
Have you been waiting for a South-side, 100% Alaskan alternative to the boxes of produce shipped up from Washington every week? A&M Farms is launching a trial run with some big beautiful boxes of produce next WEDNESDAY, at the Dimond Center Farmers’ Market. We’re excited to see how many people are interested in a Community-Supported Agriculture Box on our side of town! If there’s enough interest, we could launch a CSA box program next year!

The boxes will cost $25, and will contain the following all-Alaskan bounty:
1 head cauliflower | 1 bunch carrots | 1 pint cherry tomatoes | 1 pint gorgeous, sweet strawberries | 1 English cucumber | 2 zucchini squash | 1 head of romaine lettuce

[Since this is a trial run, A&M Farms has limited quantities of cherry tomatoes and strawberries. After the first 20 boxes have been ordered, these items may be replaced by big beautiful tomatoes and fresh peas.]

To order a box and have it waiting for you on Wednesday, please email Arthur Keyes, at . He’ll send you a confirmation email within 12 hours. Then you can bring your check or cash to the Dimond Center Farmers’ Market on Wednesday, between 10am and 2pm.

Please note: If there is a frost between now and next Wednesday, these vegetable boxes may not be available. So—your order is a little bit subject to the weather. But let’s think warm weather!

flowers
I’d like to introduce a new vendor at the market—it’s Taylor’s Flowers! She offers buckets-full of beautiful flowers, and you can pick any blooms you like to Build Your Own Bouquet. How fun is that? I saw some beautiful combinations last Saturday while I was selling bread!

vegetables
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 | parsnips | 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

bread
Rise & Shine Bakery will be baking two pan loaves this week, our 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, as always, and our Alaskan barley bread, made with barley grown in Delta Junction! Both of these basic 100% whole-grain breads make such great toast and sandwich bread.

Hearth loaves will be toasted seed (you’ve been waiting for this one!), packed with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, and a little polenta. We’ll also be baking the Alaskan potato & chive bread—lightened and moistened with potatoes from Palmer, and flavored with oniony chives. And last, but certainly not least—the dessert or breakfast bread you’ve been waiting for, the fruited almond bread! Packed with golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried apricots and toasted almonds… what’s our celebratory excuse this month? Well, we’re celebrating Labor Day weekend, of course!!

After this week, Rise & Shine Bakery will take next weekend off—we’ll be gone for September 6th, but back the following Saturday (September 13th).

Mary Jane will also be at the market with all kinds of breads, croissants, palmiers, and macaroons from the French Oven Bakery.

farmers’ market cookbook
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 pass this email along to 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.

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

Please respond to this email if you’d like to be removed from the newsletter list.

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

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

related recipes

processing collard greens to freeze
chard with golden raisins & almonds
gratin of eggplant, roasted peppers & garlic
roasted red peppers
fast fresh tomato sauté
marinara sauce