Valentine’s Reprise

 

by Dietrich Bronner

 

What a heartbreaker that Valentine’s Day comes but once a year.  The holiday for celebrating our most important emotion serves to refresh romance, rekindle the flames of love, renew our views of and vows to our loved ones, and revive the feelings of compassion, care, and concern that make us human.

Evidence shows that loving one another and connecting socially to someone are the most important predictors of happiness.  Connecting socially sounds a lot like what we do at the Farmers Market!  Making those social connections requires work, though. The more effort and energy you invest in this labor of love, the more peace and prosperity you will find with your relationships that matter most.

Schedule a little bit of Valentine’s Day into every day of the year.  A few simple ideas and easy tasks can amount to mountains of good emotions for you and your loved one.

Do one nice, out-of-the-ordinary thing for your husband or wife each day.  Tuck a love note into your partner’s pocket so they find it at work.  Send a “thinking of you” email each day filled with comments, compliments, or congratulations on a job well done.  Scribble sentiments on a napkin or paper placed on a dinner plate.  Set the breakfast table for your partner the night before.  Use balsamic glaze (store-bought, or make your own by reducing balsamic vinegar to make a thick syrup) to decorate dinner plates with hearts and “XOXOXOs.”  Pretend your room is a fancy hotel and do a little turndown service for your spouse, including sweet handwritten sentiments attached to a bouquet of Farmers Market flowers.

Spending more time together takes a bit of planning, and there’s never a better time to plan than now!  Schedule time for each Saturday in our upcoming Market season to shop the Market, just the two of you picking out your favorite foods and tempting treats.  Amazing hand-made soaps, unique artistic finds, and healthy lotions make the Market mean more than just food.  Give the gift of Market Money as your commitment to show your love for all things local.  (Call 989-295-9766 to order gift certificates anytime.)

Don’t forget to send a Valentine to your favorite farmer, too! 

 

Cupid’s Crepes

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

2/3 cup flour (whole wheat is fine)

1 Tbsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

2 Tbsp. butter, melted

Filling: Leftover Valentine’s chocolates and raspberry, strawberry, or cherry jam

In a blender, mix eggs, milk, flour, sugar, salt, vanilla and butter until smooth.  Refrigerate one hour or overnight.  Pulse briefly in the blender again to combine, and then pour 1/4 to 1/3 cup of batter into a greased, heated pan over medium-high heat.  Tilt the pan so the batter forms an even circle.  Cook until the top is set and the bottom is lightly browned.  Flip crepe with a spatula and cook the other side 10-15 seconds. Remove to a wire rack to cool, and repeat with remaining batter.

To prepare the crepes for serving, chop chocolates into bite-size pieces.  (One truffle-sized chocolate per crepe should do.)  Spread each crepe with 1 Tbsp. jam.  Sprinkle chopped chocolate over the jam.  Fold the filled crepe into quarters.  Repeat with all crepes.  In a large sauté pan, melt an additional 2 Tbsp. butter over medium heat.  Add crepes and cook until lightly browned.  Flip crepes and cook a few more seconds.  To optionally flambé the crepes, pour a few tablespoons of rum or brandy into a measuring cup.  (Do not pour the alcohol directly from the bottle into the pan.)  Pour the measuring cup into the hot pan with the crepes over medium-high heat, let the alcohol warm up for 2 or 3 seconds, and then ignite the alcohol with a long match.  Let the flames die out, then plate the crepes with ice cream. 

 

Full article available at www.frankenmuthfarmersmarket.org  

Lent and Luxury

 

by Dietrich Bronner

 

With Lent now upon us, many give up an indulgence or luxury to better focus on the season.  Hopefully everyone packed in enough paczki on Fat Tuesday to ward off hunger pangs for the next six weeks while fattening up bakeries’ bottom lines! 

Surviving for six weeks without whatever we choose to give up simplifies our lives, increases appreciation for what we abstain from, and boosts our willpower.  Giving something up also demonstrates how our lives are made more complicated by niceties, not necessities.  If we can live without something, then consider that something to be a luxury. 

This time of year as our fields lay barren, we realize that “foreign” food grown thousands of miles away is a luxury of today that our ancestors survived millennia without.  Only in the last century has industrialization delivered to our doorsteps fruits from Asia, vegetables from South America, and meat from Australia.  Anything in the world awaits your desire by dialing up a telephone order or typing in an internet purchase. 

The perhaps all too convenient luxury of foreign food is so “everyday” that we have lost the knowledge of how to preserve foods from the harvest season to sustain us through winter and spring.  Hunters, gatherers, and growers of today are a unique breed possessing specialized wisdom that was once common knowledge.  Self-sufficiency in the past meant fending for yourself in a fashion born of necessity, not selfishness.  We have now become less self-sufficient and more selfish:  Our lives depend on businesses for food, and we often are too eager to horde our harvest of groceries rather than share a bountiful yield with others. 

Since six weeks of subsisting exclusively on local food is easier to swallow than six months, try limiting your Lenten diet to the foods produced and preserved in this neck of the woods.  Did you pickle your produce, sauer your kraut, can tomatoes and peaches, make jelly or jam, freeze berries and meats, and cellar away squash, apples and potatoes?  The self-reliant and self-sustaining among us who have done so fully acknowledge the hard work and careful planning required but also the joys of knowing where one’s food comes from, a true luxury in itself these days when most food is processed, packaged, and transported 1,500 miles away.  The self-sufficient are also often the most generous members of society, eagerly sharing with you some of the treasures of their local harvest.  Best of all, they will always have food on hand! 

If you run out of local food before Lent’s end, consider planning to plant and preserve more for you and your family next year, and share the luxuries with your neighbors too.  Knowing your food, your farmers, and your ability to provide for yourself—these are the simple luxuries that lavish good flavor and good favor on life.  

 

White Gazpacho

Lenten soup suppers find refreshment with a twist on the usually tomato-based soup, served cold as a contrast to our warm winter.  Local stand-ins are suggested first with more standard ingredients listed in parentheses. 

½ cup Market hickory nuts or walnuts (or almonds), optionally toasted

3 green apples, chopped (or 3 cups white grapes)

½ cup chopped white onion

1 cup white grape juice

2 cloves garlic

2 slices whole wheat bread, cubed

Pinch of salt

1 cup plain yogurt

1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp. oil of choice

Puree all ingredients in a blender until smooth, adding up to ½ cup water for desired consistency.  Strain, if desired.  Chill and serve cold, garnishing with more vinegar and oil if desired.  

 

Full article available at www.frankenmuthfarmersmarket.org