Midweek Update for Wednesday, November 5th: Pickled Things, Cured Things, Fermented Things, Aged Things, Milled Things, Dried Things & Baked Things!

Pickled garlic and red onions from Purdy Organics at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

With the first midweek update of November, we give a tip of the hat to all things food artisan, value-added, or processed. What’s the difference? Nothing, really, except that when one says, “farmer value-added,” it means the farmer has processed their own ingredients into the artisan product. And food artisans are simply folks who take raw ingredients and craft (or process) them into something new. This time of year is great for such food, because we tend to enjoy them more now, because they extend the seasons of the ingredients they feature, and because many of those ingredients are done for the year already. And everything in this post features ingredients grown right here in Washington — something we require of our food artisans — and most include ingredients produced by farmers right here at your Ballard Farmers Market! Like Purdy Organics and their shiny new labels to match their new organic certification. They source their pickle ingredients from local farms, including our own Alvarez Organic Farms.

Kimchi, Krauts & more from Firefly Kitchens at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Firefly Kitchens got their start just a few short years ago selling at your Ballard Farmers Market and our midweek markets. They immediately began winning awards for their naturally fermented kimchis and krauts, not just locally, but across the country. This is food that will cure what ails you, and taste great doing it! It is living food. Personally, I heart the caraway kraut on a nice bratwurst from Skagit River Ranch.

Cordials from Finnriver Farm & Cidery at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Finnriver Farm & Cidery may be best known for its hard ciders, but it also make these awesome fruit cordials, a deliciously sweet finish to any meal, and great for all those special occasions in your future. They are made with berries grown right on the farm, as well as tree fruit from their neighbors’ farms. Stop by for a sample this weekend!

Dried garbanzo beans from Alvarez Organic Farms at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Do you buy your garbanzo beans in a can still? Do you think they don’t grow around here? Cuz they do. Lots of them! And Alvarez Organic Farms has them — this year’s harvest, dried, shelled, and ready for you to soak and make the best hummus ever, or to add to salads, soups and more. Cut out the middle man. Don’t worry about what those cans are lined with. Get closer to the source of all of your food. And enjoy even more localiciousness!

Corn meal from Nash’s Organic Produce at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Nash”s Organic Produce may be most famous for its carrots, beets and greens, but they also grow lots of grains, too. One of those grains is corn — milling corn. If you use corn meal at all, you absolutely must try Nash’s freshly-milled corn meal. You can actually taste the corn, in all its delicious sweetness! I use it for pan-frying oysters from Hama Hama Oysters or true cod from Wilson Fish myself. Nummers!

Gruyere bread from Snohomish Bakery at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. FLyons.

Finally, how’s about some Gruyere cheese bread from Snohomish Bakery? Snohomish makes this bread using Shepherd’s Grain flour, produced right here in Washington by a bunch of farmers over in the Palouse. This stuff is seriously addictive, so consider yourself warned! And we’ll see you at your Ballard Farmers Market this Sunday!

Midweek Update for Wednesday, October 22nd: Sunchokes, A Recipe From Nash’s, Sweet Potato Chips, Keta Salmon Skeines & More!

Poblano peppers from Stoney Plains Organic Farm at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

In this epic year of peppers, even Westside farms like Stoney Plains Organic Farm are getting in on the action. In fact, apparently, they have a gargantuan harvest of these gorgeous poblano peppers in progress right now. So if you want to get your chile relleno on, this is the time to do it! Stop by and grab a big bag full this Sunday at your Ballard Farmers Market!

Organic pink lady apples from ACMA Mission Orchards at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Pink Lady apples are one of my favorite eating apples. They are super crisp, sweet, and have just the tiniest hint of tartness. They have become a standard here in the Northwest in recent years, helped by their openness to long storage while maintaining their quality. Enjoy some of the first organic Pink Lady apples of the season this week from ACMA Mission Orchards at your Ballard Farmers Market!

Sunchokes from Summer Run Farm at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Sunchokes are in the house! North America may not have any native potatoes (though we Northwesterners lay claim to the Ozette as our own), but we do have this tuber, a member of our beloved sunflower family. You can eat them much like potatoes, including making soups, mashes, root roasts and even home fries. And they have the added benefit of actually being good for blood sugar levels. Yes, the skins are edible, and they can be eaten raw. When cooking, it is good to cut them and then put them in a bowl of water with some lemon juice in it to keep them from turning color on  you before you drop them in the pot, steamer or baking dish. Enjoy a true American native crop this fall! These are from Summer Run Farm, the winners of the first farm to bring sunchokes to Market this season award.

Arugula from Nash’s Organic Produce at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Nash’s Organic Produce has begun to harvest a bumper crop of arugula, and to that end, Devon has shared with us another great recipe, though I can’t help but ponder how this salad might be using some of their own delicious whole grains, or perhaps subbing some Glendale Shepherd fresh sheep cheese.

Quinoa, Beet and Arugula Salad

• 1/2 lb. beets
• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1-1/2 Tbsp. honey
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1/4 cup onion, diced
• 1/2 lb. arugula, chopped
• 5 oz. goat cheese

Cook beets until tender, peel and slice. Bring water to boil, add quinoa, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes. Whisk vinegar, olive oil, honey, garlic, salt, pepper together. Remove quinoa from heat, add 1/2 of salad dressing, cover refrigerate for ½  to 1 hour. Stir in onion, arugula, goat cheese, beets and remaining dressing, toss and serve.

Fresh Puget Sound Keta salmon skeines (eggs) from Loki Fish at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

With the annual Puget Sound Keta salmon season in full swing, Loki Fish has lots of fresh salmon skeines (salmon roe) available right now. Make your own ikura, or use them in any number of ways, from garnishes to salads and soups to sushi and more. Ask the fine folks at Loki for ideas this Sunday at your Ballard Farmers Market!

Sweet potato chips from Lyall Farms at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Lyall Farms has begun to harvest its wonderful Beauregard sweet potatoes from their fields in Sunnyside. And that means not only the sweet potatoes themselves at your Ballard Farmers Market, but these awesome sweet potato chips. If you love sweet potatoes, get thee to Lyall Farms this weekend!

Blueberries from Hayton Farms at Ballard Farmers Market. Copyright Zachary D. Lyons.

Finally, we finish up this midweek epistle with these beautiful blueberries from Hayton Berry Farms. This Sunday will be Hayton’s last for the 2014 season at your Ballard Farmers Market. It has been a berry season for the record books, but it had to end sometime, right? So why not load up for one last hoorah of fresh berries for this year, before you begin pining away as you await the first berries again next May.

August 23rd: Fish Eggs, Shelling Beans, Native Potatoes & Wild Berries

Loki Keta Ikura. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Ballard Farmers Market offers many delicacies unique to the Pacific Northwest this time of year. Beautiful keta ikura — salmon roe — from Loki Fish can add a little pop of briny deliciousness to many dishes, or just enjoy it atop a cracker on its own.

Washington's only native potato -- the Ozette -- from Oxbow Farm. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Washington may be the #1 potato producing state, but did you know that only one potato is considered native to Washington? Yep. It seems almost all potatoes, which are ultimately indigenous to South America, made their way to North America via Europe. But a handful of potato varieties travelled with the Spanish directly to North America up the West Coast in the late 1700s. One of these is the Ozette potato, named for the Makah Nation that has called them a staple of their diet for over 200 years — since the Spanish hastily abandoned their Neah Bay outpost after only one year in 1792 because the great conquerers couldn’t handle our Northwest winter. (Sissies. I mean, could you imagine Mayor Nickels doing that? Uh. Whoops.) Anywho, the result is we have our very own native potato now that is even recognized by Slow Food for its importance, and you can get some from Oxbow Farm today.

Wild blue huckleberries from Foraged & Found Edibles. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

It’s wild huckleberry season, and Foraged & Found Edibles has plenty of them. In fact, this is the time of year these folks really get cranking with all sorts of goodies they find just growing out there in the mighty forests and wildlands of Washington. For instance, with the help of our recent week of rain, they’ve now also got chanterelle and lobster mushrooms, too, with more fun stuff arriving over the coming weeks as our days grow shorter.

Cranberry shelling beans from Alm Hill. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Okay, maybe they aren’t so much unique or wild, but some fine researchers at Washington State University have been carefully testing shelling bean varieties over the last decade to see which ones grow best here. After all, different crops will succeed or fail based on a region’s climate, soil conditions, etc. The result is that many of our market farmers now offer all sorts of shelling beans to us at the Market. This was not the case just five years ago. Above is an example of cranberry beans from Alm Hill. And below are black turtle beans from Growing Things. And, of course, you can usually get many of these beans dried from Stoney Plains or Alvarez.

Black turtle shelling beans from Growing Things. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Fine research, or perhaps mad science, has led to an extraordinary proliferation of incredible stone fruits in recent years, and with farms like Tiny’s, Collins and ACMA diversifying their orchards, we get to enjoy many of them. In fact, while it is not so much the case, as some would have you think, that crops like tomatoes, eggplant and potatoes change every week, when it comes to tree fruit, succession is the name of the game. Every fruit has is day, literally, so market farmers diversify not just to wow us, but more importantly to extend their season. If they just grew two kinds of cherries, one apricot and a couple of peaches, their Market presence would be very short lived indeed. Instead, they plant all different kinds of fruit that is constantly coming into and going out of season. The result is that you must, in fact, come to the Market every week to see what’s new. From plums and pluots to apricots and apriums; from apples and pears to nectarines and peaches, there are literally dozens os varieties, with Market displays changing constantly. For instance, these Sun Plums, below, from Tiny’s will be in season just a few weeks at most, and then they will be replaced by something else.

Brilliant sun plums from Tiny's. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Another family of crops being championed by WSU researchers are melons, and in particular, the small melons categorically referred to as “ice box melons.”  Again, the result is that we are seeing many more melons in the Market than we used to, because local farmers have many more reliable seeds to work with, courtesy of WSU. Take these French Mush melons from Full Circle Farm, for instance. They are so small, they fit in the palm of your hand.

French Musk melons from Full Circle Farm. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Finally today, this has nothing to do with WSU research, wild, native or unique crops, or even fruits and vegetables, but it does have to do with embracing old-world meat-curing techniques to produce superb products for our kitchen and table. I speak of Sea Breeze Farm and their latest example of animaliciousness: pancetta. Ah, the sweet, dry-aged ripeness of pork bellies salted, seasoned and preserved as they have been for centuries in Italy. Thankfully, the boys from Vashon are making it closer to home, and bringing it to us at the Market. Enjoy!

Pancetta from Sea Breeze Farm. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

So spread the word far and wide. It is time to descend upon Ballard Farmers Market for another glorious week to revel in the bounty of Washington, one of the truly great food regions on earth. Of course, you might want to get a head start on your family and friends before you tweet, just in case.