Summer is approaching and as the days are getting longer our time at the markets is starting to near an end for the season.  We have two more markets in Scottsdale.  Our last market at the Old Town Farmers’ Market will be Saturday, May 25th.  We will be at Town & Country until Wednesday, June 26th.  We look forward to seeing you!

Bob just got a new toy for the farm that has been three years in the making.  In 2010 he ordered a specially modified seed cleaner to be used for cleaning bee pollen.  Three years later it arrived.  This cleaner is hand-made with wooden frames and metal screens to use agitation and air to clean our bee pollen.  The man who built this for us has a long history in doing this.  His grandfather made the first seed cleaner in the 1920′s and while ours is a little more high-tech, the same basic principles and design are used in the one we now own.

The bee pollen is shaken and sifted through several sizing screens by airflow with any waste separated and disposed.  For decades, farms have used this type of device to remove the chaff and excess plant material accompanying harvested seed so that it may be sized uniformly to fit in planters.   It also allows for inspection of the quality of seeds.  Our cleaner will be used to remove any bee material or wax while leaving the pollen granules whole.

Bee pollen, along with nectar, is the total source of nutrition for a bee and is the most complete food known to man, containing amino acids, vitamins, minerals, folic acid and it  is a richer source of protein than any animal source.   It is credited with helping everything from athletic performance and the immune system to treating skin inflammation, but the two main reasons people consume bee pollen to treat allergies and to use as a nutritional supplement.  It takes about a teaspoon a day for three months to see any benefits from bee pollen, and consuming raw, locally harvested bee pollen is best since the bees are gathering pollen from the same regional plants that may be causing seasonal allergies.  Of course, the best way to find out how bee pollen would benefit you personally is to consult your physician.

At the markets we have heard of all sorts of uses and benefits from our customers.  Since it is such a richly packed nutritional food, it is advisable to introduce it to your diet slowly and to make sure you don’t have an allergic reaction.  It is wonderful to add to a multitude of dishes, I have had bee pollen on everything from yogurt to salads, but do not add to anything hot since heat will destroy the active enzymes and reduce the nutritional benefits.  It can be stored for about six months, and it can be frozen safely for later use.

Also, here is a quick note about the markets…

It is getting close to that time of the year when the temperatures rise and our days at the market are coming close to an end.  Our last market at the Old Town Farmers’ Market will be on Saturday, May 25th.  We will continue the Wednesday markets at the Town and Country Farmers’ Markets until Wednesday, June 26th.

This past weekend we held the cooking class and farm tour that were auctioned at the BASIS Peoria school fundraiser.  Chef Payton Curry graciously offered his time and talents and created an amazing menu of dishes using produce picked that morning from the farm.   Payton showed how to love your veggies roasted and raw.  He taught the class how to make perfectly roasted beets, rutabaga and turnips, gave a lesson in how to hand-pull mozzarella, and made a dish that I have obsessed about for two years.  He also did some simple dishes that made our veggies shine… like drizzling honey over grilled fava beans in the shell or adding whipped honey butter to a plate of raw radishes.  He taught us when to use vinegar for roasting beets and why not to use it when roasted rutabaga, and he gave some tips on how to use green garlic.  At the end of class, Bob, Sean and I got pizzas going in the wood-fired pizza oven using sausages from the Brat Haus, Payton’s pickled onions, the mozzarella made in class and veggies from the farm.  The pizzas, along side all of the wonderful dishes Payton made during class, left the class smiling and full.  You know the food is a hit when there is a quiet happy contentment that passes across the table after a meal.

Bob got the event started with a quick tour of the farm, starting with the high tunnel that is filled with our heirloom tomatoes.  

Payton educating and entertaining the class

Turnips roasting in the fire

Perfectly roasted and tossed with a little green garlic

A wonderful assortment of mushrooms that were cooked in the fire.  Eaten on their own and on the pizzas.

Shelling the fava beans

Sharing the pros tips for perfectly roasted beets

Learning how to hand-pull mozzarella

A new sous chef for Payton mastering mozzarella

And my favorite dish…

We first had this dish two years ago when Payton was at the Welcome Diner.  We loved it so much we ordered a second bowl for our table.  We then went back to the diner for it again.  I may have asked Payton about it so feverishly that he made me a gallon (no joke!) to take home.  Sean, Aidan and I made short work of that gallon.  I have tried recreating it at home since then, but it wasn’t the same.  And then as a gift, Payton taught it to the class, and this student took note… yellow eye Steuben beans, grilled Favas, pecan pesto, lemon zest, a little love.  Sounds simple, but done right it adds up to pure happiness.   It was just as I remember and totally worth two years of obsessing.  (We may have had it again with dinner last night.)

Much thanks to Chef Payton Curry and his always lovely wife Shantal for a wonderful afternoon.  And a big thank you to all of the auction winners who bid on the class and came out to the farm.  We were thrilled to help the BASIS Peoria school… and to have so much fun doing it!

After months of work trying to get the ground prepped and ready, the new farm land out at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America is really taking off.  We had our first harvest in February, and since then one thing after another is starting to come up.   After all of the planning and work we have put into this new venture, it is so wonderful seeing that once hard, dry land showing signs of life.  Take a look…

Rows of the new Salanova lettuce heads are so vibrant and beautiful.

The four acres of sweet corn doesn’t look like much now, but this will soon be a field of green.

Purple and cheddar cauliflower heads hiding under their leaves.

The patient garden has a mix of everything from onions to calendulas.

Celery, kale and carrots all in leafy green rows.

The Hope Springs Organic Farm is starting to become everything we had hoped.  It is exciting to see it come together and even more so to share it with the patients, caregivers, and staff at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, along with our family of farmers’ market customers and restaurants that we have been working with for so many years.

Right now the farm smells like orange blossoms, or roses, or basil, or even garlic depending on where you stand.  The birds are in constant chorus hidden in various trees.  The sounds of spring training baseball from the stadium just beyond our fields have been roaring and applauding for the past month. Marsha’s Lady Banks’ roses look like a waterfall of flowers from her back windows.  Their perfume follows you around.  I can smell it the minute I pull up to the farm every morning.  In every field there is something new going in the ground and something else making one last appearance for the season.  Today we just spotted the first purple iris open right in time for Easter weekend.  Even with an early Easter, somehow they knew.  I love everything about spring in Arizona.  Sean and I sat on our back patio last night and watched the sky change colors and were grateful for the moment.

This is why we live here.

In that spirit, I ditched my desk this morning and wandered around the farm with my camera instead. Wouldn’t you?

Little yellow flowers coming off of the kale

Baby tomato plants popping up in the big shade house

Rows of basil in the shade houses

Italian flat leaf parsley

The plant I am most excited to see grow every year.  Sun Gold Tomatoes!

Fava beans

The green house and all of the seedlings that are about to go in the ground…

Marsha’s Lady Banks’ Roses

To give you an idea of how big they are – there is a full-size basketball hoop hidden in there.

And finally…

The first one of the season.

Happy Spring!

P.S.  Come early to the market this Saturday!  We will have plenty for your Easter brunch… but this market tends to be a busy one every year!

Years ago Bob and Sean took a semester class about date palms that they still refer back to regularly.  I have written about our date palms before on the blog (you can find that piece here).  Date palms have an interesting history and are plentiful in the valley.  Bob and Sean have made the most of that class by knowing how to pollinate, harvest and care for the trees themselves.  You don’t have to have a farm, though, to take care of your date palms and to enjoy their wonderful fruit.

ASU has a Date Palm Germplasm grove on their Polytechnic campus in Mesa that started collecting rare varieties of date palms over 20 years ago and is one of only four date palm germplasm collections in the U.S.  Germplasm is the living tissue from which new plants can be grown.  To date there are more than 65 date palms on the ASU campus in Tempe and 138 date palms from more than 40 varieties at the Polytechnic campus.  ASU harvests the dates and sells them at the ASU Farmers Market and at their campus bookstore.

The ASU Arboretum is offering outreaches classes free to the public on date palms.  If you have backyard date palms, these classes would be good information on how to harvest the dates, how to care for the palms throughout the year, and how to remove offshoots and propagate new palms.  They will have date palm experts on hand, and a special guest speaker Arthur Futterman from Futterman Farms in Indio, CA, who has worked with these trees since the 1970s.  James Badman, brother of FnB’s Charleen Badman, is also an instructor.

The classes are free this year and attendees will be given date palm offshoots.  The classes offered include:

Pollination and harvest – 9:00am, March 30th by Arthur Futterman
Tools and Offshoots – 8:00am, April 13th by James Badman
Tools and Offshoots – 8:00am, April 27th by Arthur Futterman

The classes will be held at the ASU Polytechnic Campus at 7127 E. Upton Avenue, Mesa, AZ  85212.  To sign up for the workshops, click here or call 480.268.4165.

We were fortunate enough to be invited to a family and friends pre-opening dinner at the new Bink’s Midtown this past weekend.  Kevin and Amy Binkley own two of our favorite restaurants, Binkley’s in Cave Creek and Cafe Bink in Carefree.  They are now bringing their combined talents into Phoenix with Bink’s Midtown off of 24th Street and Osborn Road.  We have been following along on their progress and were excited to finally get to see what they have created.  The menu, much like the restaurant, is a happy marriage of the best of both of their other ventures.  The dishes were a mix of Kevin’s wild inventiveness along with the wonderful comforts of Amy’s great dishes from the cafe.  (Happiness… her Bolognese is on the menu here!)  The restaurant is in a restored home that has been beautifully converted into a bright, airy dining room and bar with a large patio out front and a smaller one in the back.  It is both elegant and relaxed.  The white walls inside are lined with framed portraits of different vegetables and a few of some of the farmers that Kevin and Amy work with.  Everything about Bink’s Midtown is about the vegetables, so much so that the shirts on the servers declared that this is the “Year of the Vegetable”.  As evident from their menu, they are very dedicated to sourcing locally and serving organic, in-season fare, even including a selection of nice Arizona wines.

Over the course of the evening, we were happy to sample from many of the menu offerings.  Some of the highlights for me included the Roasted Parsnip soup with poached pear, the Citrus Salad with honey, miners lettuce and hazelnuts, the 5 Spice Duck Breast with grilled grapes.  Sean loved the Flat Iron with red wine and shallots and Aidan devoured the Cider Braised Pork Cheeks with roasted apples.  Bob and I are both absolute fans of Amy’s Bolognese up at Cafe Bink’s, and we both were thrilled to find a new twist on it.  The Bolognese at Bink’s Midtown is served over a garlic bread – bread pudding, which was to die for.

For Phoenicians who haven’t made it to one of Kevin and Amy’s restaurants before, they will soon understand why so many of us have happily made the trek up to Carefree and Cave Creek.  It was a beautiful meal and evening, and a wonderful way to celebrate our friends and their new place.  It was also fun to see this on the wall of a restaurant that so wonderfully celebrates vegetables…

Bink’s Midtown opens this week starting with dinner service only, but will open next week for lunch and weekend brunch as well.  Our best to the Binkleys!

Bink’s Midtown
2320 East Osborn Road
Phoenix, AZ    85016
602.388.4874
www.binksmidtown.com

It is going to be ninety degrees this week.  Already.

This may help a little.  Marsha made this for us recently and it is so refreshing and light that it almost begged for warmer weather to appreciate it fully.  And now that it looks like warmer days are upon us…

Cucumbers, diced
Fennel, diced
Small sprinkle of dill, chopped
Lemon juice
Queen Creek Olive Mill Mexican Lime Olive Oil
Touch of Sea Salt

That’s all.  Enjoy!

Also… We underestimated how quickly all of the bread from Noble Bread would sell at last Wednesday’s Town &  Country Farmers’ Market.  Our apologies to anyone who was disappointed.  All of the bread was gone before 10:00am, but not to worry, we have tripled the amount that we are bringing this week.   There should be more than enough!

Noble Breads
Available Wednesdays at the Town & Country Farmers’ Market at the McClendon’s Select booth.
Available Saturdays at the Old Town Farmers’ Market at the Brat Haus booth.

For more information about Noble Breads, you can visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/NobleBread.

Sean made me one of my favorite breakfasts last week.  It was simply toasted and buttered bread with avocado smushed on top and a little sea salt.  It is ridiculous how simple it is or even more so, how happy it makes me, but there you go.  What made it stand out last week was the bread.  Sean had sliced a piece from a loaf of country bread Bob brought back from the market from Noble Bread. It was the kind of bread I love most (and I LOVE bread!), at its center it was chewy, filled with holes and rich in flavor, with an outside crust that tasted faintly smokey from the wood-fired oven.  Bliss!

As much as I loved that breakfast, I love the story behind Noble Bread even more.  I have found since I have started writing about food that truly good food always has an equally good story behind it.  When there is a little love and care put into making something, you can taste it, and when it really stands out, then you know there is a story there too.   Jason Raducha, the baker/brainchild, behind Noble Bread grew up on his Nana’s cooking.  She would make him pepperoni bread and pan loaf breads when he was a boy that tasted like nothing you could find in the supermarket.  When she would visit, he would beg her to make bread for him, and when she did she would teach him how as well.  Jason’s Nana taught him about different flours, the importance of the temperature of liquids, how yeast worked, and to have patience.  Over time, Jason began to experiment with baking on his own.  He wanted to create the perfect pizza crust, and would spend weekends with his cousin trying to tinker with the recipe.  He bought a small, wood-fired oven and learned how cooking with the heat of the fire changed how he baked breads.  He read books on it, went to different bakeries to talk with their bakers, tried different types of flour, all in the quest to create a loaf of bread with the flavor profile he was seeking.  He had one baker offer him a starter that he calls a “bread awakening” to the idea of naturally leavened breads.  He also researched flours and began having his own organic, GMO-free flour custom milled for him.  Over the years, Jason has been everything from a hockey instructor to an arena manager to an IT solutions provider, but it was bread that called to him.  As he tested and tried new recipes, he found that he needed an outlet to start selling all of the bread he was baking.  He soon became the neighborhood “bread man” and had won the rave reviews of his friends and neighbors.  Dough is his medium, and he finally realized that he needed to give himself over to it completely, following the passion for cooking that his Nana had inspired in him.

Jason knew how to make bread, but he realized that making it his business would take some help.  Rather that find investors who may want to change his recipes or his vision he choose to raise money through Kickstarter, an online funding platform for new creative ventures, in order to find people who shared in his dream.  His plan was simple; feed people quality.  Jason wanted to take Noble Bread out of his neighborhood and in to farmers’ markets, CSAs and local Phoenix restaurants.  He asked for help in funding the building of a mobile, wood-fired pizza oven and for the forming baskets and other necessities to get his dream off the ground.  As of last August, he reached his funding goal.  The oven is a 5,000 pound fire brick oven on a dual axle trailer that is powered completely by wood.  With 20 pounds of wood, Jason can make about 200 loaves of bread.  He can make made to order pizzas in it as well and even chocolate chip cookies.

Right now Noble Breads offers Country Levain (my new favorite!), Walnut Cherry Levain, Semolina, Whole Wheat with Honey, Sandwich Rye, Spelt Baguette, Pan de Mi, Cinnamon Rolls, Focaccia and a Monkey pull apart bread.  Jason can also make special order kaiser rolls, hot dog and hamburger buns, and pretzels.  The best part is all of the dough is made with organic, GMO-free flours, naturally collected yeast and purified water.  I have now tried several varieties of Noble Break and you can taste the old world traditions and the care for details that Jason puts in each loaf.  They would make his Nana proud.

But the best part about it was a little secret that I didn’t know until today.  We are going to start selling Noble Bread at the Town and Country Market on Wednesdays!  Noble Breads is already offered at the Old Town Farmers’ Market on Saturdays at the Brat Haus booth, but now you can find them with us at the Wednesday market too.  I have already put in strict instructions with both Sean and Bob, so they know not to return without a loaf of the Country Levain.

Make sure you come by early and pick up a loaf for yourself, because you are going to want to try Noble Bread for yourself.

Noble Breads
Available Wednesdays at the Town & Country Farmers’ Market at the McClendon’s Select booth.
Available Saturdays at the Old Town Farmers’ Market at the Brat Haus booth.

For more information about Noble Breads, you can visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/NobleBread.

(Bottom three photos courtesy of Jason Raducha.)

One of Aidan’s favorite people at the Old Town Farmers’ Market in Scottsdale is Joe with Cotton Country Jams.  Joe Riley and his wife Ernie have been making jams and so much more locally for twelve years. In fact, they along with their granddaughter and great-granddaughter have created a large line of jams, jellies, syrups, sauces, vinegars and pickled products using as much locally grown fruits and vegetables as they can.  They have been a client of ours for years, and we are big fans of what they do.  Bob swears that they can pickle anything, okra, beets, asparagus, jalapeños, garlic, Burr Gherkin cucumbers, you name it.  Take a look…

They offer the standards such as Strawberry, Peach, Raspberry and Fig Jam or Ye Olde English Marmalade, but then they also have a long list of interesting twists like Chipotle-Raspberry Jam, Say Uncle Hot Sauce, Pumpkin Pecan Butter, Cinnamon Barrel Pickles, even a Prickly Pear Cactus Jelly.  Joe has a little something for everyone, including a Bloody Mary Mix that looked really good.  He even offers a list of suggestions of ways to cook with his different products and how to add them into dishes that sound quite inviting.

Come check them out next time you are at the Old Town Farmers’ Market, they are right by us, or you can find them Downtown Phoenix market.  Their products are used in a number of restaurants around town and you can also find Cotton Country products for sale at La Grande Orange, Pane Bianco, Tea Time in Scottsdale, the Foothills Cafe in Ahwatukee, or from their showroom downtown.  Joe is wonderful to talk to and his products have all sorts of ways of adding a little local flavor to your dishes.  You will soon understand why Aidan loves them so much!

Cotton Country Jams
3801 South Central Avenue
Phoenix, AZ  85040
www.cottoncountryjams.com