Sent: March 29, 2010
Spring appears to be coming extra early this year
Sadly we are running low on root vegetables unusually early this spring. We attribute this to last fall’s very cold and cloudy October. Normally this is the month when root vegetables begin plumping up for a big November harvest. Eventually the weather did become warmer (i.e. October-like) during November so that many of the roots eventually did fill out in December. However, during this exceptionally late and hurried harvest we did not notice how hard and fibrous the final crops had become during this most unusual fall. Of course we eventually discovered this problem while packing during the past few weeks. So after we threw out literally tons of root vegetables, we quickly went from good supplies; to sudden shortages. We are very sorry for any inconveniences this will present to your menu planning.
To help us maintain sales through the spring, we would really appreciate whatever you can do to adjust your menus to make more use of the produce we do have available. To refresh your memory, please look at our website pages on Seedlings, Salad Greens, Leafy Greens and Edible Flowers. They are all now growing very well in the greenhouses. Plus they all say “seasonal and local”.
Beth is our Edible Flower Selector extraordinaire!
Great Video of Cookstown Greens
Last January a very enthusiastic recent honours graduate from Waterloo University requested a tour of Cookstown Greens. He and a film-maker friend came and recorded their visit on video. A few weeks later Majid Mirza sent me a link to the marvellous video they had assembled. After the 1½ minute review of pesticide use, you too will enjoy this Video about Cookstown Greens.
A Tearless Onion?
Rather than feeding the world; it is now being recognized that GMO’s are starving the world’s poor! The poor cannot afford the chemicals required to make the GMO’s grow. But subsidized U.S. farmers can now grow lots of cheap calories (but which in fact use more calories than they really provide) for export to people who still cannot afford to buy this “food”. Despite lots of hype, GMO’s are basically only being used in corn, soy beans, canola, sugar beets, and cotton. If you are eschewing processed foods in your kitchen, you are probably not using any GMO’s. Just when we thought Monsanto was finally realizing the folly of their incredibly expensive Genetic Modifications industry, they now seem to be working on – a Tearless Onion!
Sent: March 22, 2010
Cookstown Greens’ Website Updates
We are in the process of remodelling our website. Our plan is to:
1. Add our weekly E-Letters onto the website so you can see what you may have missed. See February.
2. Put all the navigation pages in the left column, and have these visible on every page
3. Provide the current weekly single page Now Available list as an easy-to-print PDF
4. Put the Product Information pages in an easier to read and more informative table
5. Put more colour (i.e. more photos ) on the pages
6. Delete the older (pre 2006) newsletters and articles
Prior to us getting too far into the process, please provide us with your comments by sending an email to info@cookstowngreens.com. These comments may contain either what you really like (and would never want changed); or what you would find more useful (if something were to be changed); or you would never look at (and would prefer it to be deleted). Thank you so much for your suggestions.
While inserting the past E-Letters into the website, I noticed the March 9, 2009 (which may have been sent on March 8) email is missing from our archive. If anyone out there in webland still has this email in your archive, would you be so kind as to Forward it to dave@cookstowngreens.com? Thank you.
With Spring here and Easter just around the corner, we again have good supplies of Edible Flowers perfect for your Appetiser, Soup, Salad and Dessert presentations.
The Past Decade in Food
Lest we forget our recent history, read this Good.is essay. I suppose it is not too late in the new decade for someone to write a Canadian version of this tongue-in-cheek take on food fashions.
Sent: March 15, 2010
Paying the Price for Last Summers’ Rains
Last summer (’09) was the wettest on record; the summer before (’08) was the previous record wet year; and the summer before that (‘07) was the driest ever. This spring the greenhouse aphids were crawling around by Groundhog Day – the earliest ever. Outdoors, the Red Wing Blackbirds just made their earliest-ever spring arrival. What does all this mean? Maybe, just maybe, we’ll have our first early spring in many years! It would be great to have a reasonably long season of early spring radishes, turnips, sugar snap peas and shelling peas. However, no matter what the weather brings, it seems that asparagus always starts about May 5th.
Last year’s rains resulted in low yields and not-so-good storage. On top of that, demand for high-end vegetables has returned to 2007 levels. As a result of all this, you have probably noticed we are already out of all our Squash; Blue, Black and Red Flesh Potatoes; Orange Nantes Carrots; White and Amber Turnips; Green, Black, and Red Icicle Radishes; and also Fennel Bulbs, Long White Leeks, Dahlia Roots, White Salsify, and Smoke Dried Tomatoes. We do appreciate how frustrating this is for your winter menu planning. But for us, such a limited selection of produce is even more frustrating.
In order that our cellar not be too empty, we have decided to purchase some high quality specialty produce that meets our standards from a couple other Southern Ontario growers. Red Finger Potatoes, Black Salsify and Large Celeriac are now available from our root cellar. Nevertheless, spring ias already well underway in our greenhouses. We now have good supplies of Rainbow of Chards, Baby Salad Greens, Seedling Salad and Edible Flower Mix. Working these early spring delicacies into your menus will help us make up for the lack of late winter root vegetables. Thank you for helping to keep our cash flowing!
John Gundy’s celebration of local food.
John Gundy Exhibit
When there is a food related event in Toronto, John is there clicking away. If you have ever wondered what his images look like, you’ll have to make it over to The Department Gallery. See the exhibit between March 18 to March 29 at 1389 Dundas Street West. You can also smell and taste at special dinners on March 25 and 26.
Sent: March 8, 2010
Annual Brix Summary
In much the same way as winemakers, we regularly monitor our Brix levels. Technically this measures the percentage of dissolved solids in a few drops of juice from the vegetables. This measurement is primarily of sucrose sugar; but also includes other sugars, some vitamins and other nutrients, and most importantly for chefs, flavours components. We also record the diffusion (blurriness) because our chefs tell us this indicates a more sophisticated flavour profile. Lee Valley Tools offers an inexpensive ($69) refractometer if you would like to use one in your kitchen. (After you get into their site, search for “refractometer”.) For more information about Brix, please look at the attached article (no longer in their archives) I wrote for the September 2009 Food Service News.
View through a refractometer of two drops of Black Carrot juice.
I read this as 11.2° with a diffusion (blurriness) of ±.4
Below is our annual scorecard of how well we continue to improve flavour. You will notice that this year’s carrots were lower than expected. We attribute this to the unusually chilly and cloudy October that prevented the carrots from properly maturing prior to their November harvest. Each variety has its own expected Brix level. Heirloom varieties such as Black Carrots, Black Beets (which we first trialed last summer), Black Radishes, Finger Potatoes, and Black Salsify usually present exceptionally high readings. Jerusalem Artichokes appear unusually high because they contain inulin rather than sucrose as its sugar.
hot/dry cool/wet cool/wet
2007 2008 2009 Avg. Exceptional
Red Carrots 10.2 ±.4 11.2 ±.5 9.6 ±.2 6 ±.1 16 ±.5
Yellow Carrots 7.5 ±.3 8.2 ±.1 9.3 ±.2
Purple Carrots 10.0 ±.3 10.8 ±.3 9.2 ±.3
Black Carrots 12.3 ±.5 12.6 ±.3 11.2 ±.4
White Carrots 8.2 ±.3 9.5 ±.2 7.3 ±.2
Orange Carrots 10.0 ±.3 10.0 ±.3 9.6 ±.2
Golden Beets 14.8 ±.6 12.0 ±.3 14.2 ±.2 8 ±.1 14 ±.5
Chioggia Beets 14.6 ±.6 12.6 ±.3 10.8 ±.3
White Beets 14.2 ±.5 12.8 ±.3 14.3 ±.3
Cylinder Beets 10.8 ±.6 10.2 ±.3 11.4 ±.4
Black Beets 16.4 ±.5
Red Turnips 5.4 ±.4 5.8 ±.3 4.9 ±.2 5 ±.1 10 ±.5
Amber Turnips 5.4 ±.4 6.2 ±.3 6.5 ±.2
White Turnips 4.4 ±.4 5.8 ±.3 6.3 ±.2
Valentine Radish 7.2 ±.3 7.2 ±.3 8.9 ±.3
Black Radish 7.6 ±.3 7.7 ±.3 10.5 ±.3
Finger Potatoes 7.2 ±1.0 6.8 ±1.0 9.3 ±.6 5 ±.3 10 ±1.0
Ratte Potatoes 7.8 ±1.0 6.5 ±1.0 7.8 ±.6
Black Fingers 10.2 ±.6 11.8 ±1.0 10.6 ±.6
Red Flesh Potatoes 8.5 ±.8
Fuseau Artichokes 24.4 ±.6 21.8 ±.4 24.4 ±.5
Parsley Roots &
