NEW in this issue
1. Vern Stockwell’s potato-tasting extravaganza
2. Glacier Valley Farm CSA produce box information
3. My new website: Alison’s Lunch! www.alisonslunch.com
4. Great recipes for potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, and chickpeas!

potatoes potatoes potatoes!
If you haven’t been to the market in a while, you’ll be stunned by the vast array of beautiful, different-colored potatoes everywhere!

Ok, you’ve probably been invited to a wine-tasting party once or twice in your life. I’ve heard of cheese-tastings, too. But how about a potato tasting? Leave it to Vern Stockwell, of Stockwell farms, to have regular potato tastings!

He told me last week that his Purple Vikings win his blind potato tastings every time. They are a beautiful, bright pink, knobby potato—I guess they couldn’t be called the Hot Pink Vikings, since they were named after the Minnesota football team (wouldn’t be manly enough). Maybe the Hot Pink Viking-ettes after the cheerleaders? Anyway… the blind tasting doesn’t mean that you have to eat them with your eyes closed—they aren’t hot pink all the way through! Just their skins and some pretty pink rings through the center. It’s a medium waxy potato, Vern told me.

So I took a bag of Purple Vikings home with me, and in the spirit of the blind tasting he mentioned, I thought I’d roast them head-to-head with another just-dug Alaskan potato: Cal Whites, from last week’s CSA box. (You’ll see the recipe at the end of the newsletter for my garlic-roasted potatoes—they go with my savory sautéed cabbage, in a deconstructed Bubble & Squeak). Sure enough, Vern was right! Although the Cal Whites were fantastic, when matched head to head with the Purple Vikings, the Vikings were a bit creamier and sweeter. The Vikings looked a little strange after 25 minutes when I scraped the potatoes around on their pan (the pink/purple was turning a rather unappetizing grayish color), but at the end of their roasting time, they were just as brown and golden and wonderful as could be. And TASTY!!

I told Vern that I’d had a great time with my mini-tasting. So then said that I really should taste a bunch of different potatoes, not just two kinds! So this Wednesday I brought home a beautiful rainbow of potatoes, in six carefully labeled bags. This week I’ll be roasting and tasting the following potatoes:

Cherry Red | Yukon Gold | Purple Vikings | German Butterball | All-blue | French Red | Peanut

What a hoot!! I’ll have the advantage of a really hot, really big bread oven on Friday night, after our bread comes out of the oven!! 

Vern will be bringing big 20-pound bags of these gorgeous potatoes to market on Saturday—for sure, he’ll have big bags of the first four types listed above. He’ll be selling them for $20/bag.

And of course all the other farmers will have loads of beautiful potatoes, too—I’ll bet every one of them grows potatoes that the others don’t!  Check them all out and see what you’d like to try!!

PRODUCE BOXES from Glacier Valley Farm!
Have you heard that Arthur Keyes and Alison Arians are starting a new year-round CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program? The new Glacier Valley Farm CSA program will focus on bringing you boxes of Alaskan produce from our local farms. You can sign up for boxes every week, every other week, once a month—or more sporadically. You decide!

• During the summer and fall, we’ll stock the CSA boxes with 100% Alaskan ingredients, grown by Arthur & Michelle Keyes, of Glacier Valley Farm, and by a variety of other farmers growing vegetables and berries in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.
• In the winter and spring, we’ll stock the boxes with as much Alaskan produce as possible: storage vegetables like cabbages, carrots, potatoes, beets, and turnips. To add variety to these nourishing and savory staples, our goal is to also include fresh vegetables and fruit from small, family-owned farms in the Northwest. 

If you’d like to order a box, please email Arthur at . While the Wednesday market is still running (through October 1), you can pick up your box from Arthur Keyes on Wednesday at the Dimond Center farmers’ market, from 10am-2pm. Please bring cash or a check for $25 to Arthur Keyes when you come to pick up your box. 

After October 1st, you’ll be able to pick up your produce boxes at several locations around town, including Tap Root Café, on Huffman Road. More information to come!

We have been thrilled with the response so far to our CSA program, and we want to make sure every box is fantastic… so depending on when you sign up, we may need to put you on a waiting list for a short time while we get our supply chain and distribution sites ramped up. If you have a suggestion for a good pick-up location, please let us know!

Alison’s Lunch
Have you enjoyed reading my newsletters? If you like my recipes here on the farmers’ market website, you may be interested in checking out my brand-new website, www.AlisonsLunch.com! When the market ends in October, I’ll stop posting on the farmers’ market site, but I’ll be loading recipes and stories on my new year-round site, Alison’s Lunch. 

What’s the website all about?  It’s about vegetables. About which ones I cooked for lunch. And dinner, too. And how it tasted. And where the ingredients came from (who grew them?), and how I made it (the recipes!).  And who I ate it with, and what inspired me to possess the vegetable in the first place. (farmers’ market? my vegetable patch? Costco bonanza?) And what it would taste really good with (menu ideas!). And why you would probably love to make it and eat it!

I hope that my recipes and stories will encourage you to buy vegetables—all sorts! (Local ones, if you can.) Then I want to give you ideas for how to cook them up with gusto and confidence. And I’d love to inspire you to feed these delicious creations to people you love! So… I hope to see you there!  www.AlisonsLunch.com

recipes
In honor of the potato-tasting, and because Alaskan cabbage is the sweetest, most wonderful vegetable there is (not kidding—have you tried it lately?), I made up a recipe for a Deconstructed Bubble & Squeak. Check it out! You’re going to love it!! Next up is a Sicilian Cauliflower Salad-- another variation on the “cauliflower with capers & lemon” theme. Love using those pantry/refrigerator staples to make fun and wonderful local meals!  And last, but certainly not least, is a really yummy recipe for chickpeas with mint. Warming and hearty for these cool, crisp fall days!!

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 of the large sourdough pan loaves this week, their 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, as always, and their golden maize bread, made with cornmeal and a little honey! Both of these basic 100% whole-grain breads make fantastic great toast and sandwich bread.

We’ll also be baking three sourdough hearth loaves. We’ll have the toasted seed for your breakfasting, lunching, and dinnering pleasure! Those toasty, flavorful loaves are packed with pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and flax seeds (and a little polenta). And for those of you who have been patiently waiting, we’ll have both the dark chocolate & cherry loaves and the Alaskan cheese & roasted garlic loaves this week.

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 & Fall 2008
20 September
• pan loaves: 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, golden maize
• hearth loaves: toasted seed, Alaskan cheese & roasted garlic, dark chocolate & cherry
27 September
• pan loaves: 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, Alaskan barley, raisin & toasted pecan
• hearth loaves: Kalamata olive, Alaska potato & chive
4 October
• pan loaves: 100% whole wheat sourdough levain, Alaskan baked potato
• hearth loaves: Alaskan onion rye, savory pumpkin, fruited almond