Remember when my child was given the budget a few weeks ago, and remember how he had absolutely no interest in purchasing mustard greens? None. Well folks, last week I was prepared for payback.

Yes, I am that parent 😉

I saw Zaklan Heritage Farm had a full supply of mustard greens, as well as several other greens. Ossome Acres, Ripple Creek, and Nature Village Farms also had a wide variety of salad greens to choose from. Hmmm, I thought. Why not fill the bag full of greens. Not just mustards, but purple and green and spiky lettuces and kales. That’ll show the boy. We’ll have greens every day, and not just in salads, I thought. We’ll cook them, have them as side dishes, combine them into the main courses.

It will be a greens-o-ganza.

That was the plan.

I loaded up on greens. Nearly half the budget went to greens.

But the thing is, this past week, we had several social engagements; we barely ate at home. As such, those greens sat and sat and sat. Some of them fared quite well (the spiky purple lettuce is a champ for durability) but others like the arugula and kale wilted and became limp by Monday.

What to do? What to do?

Heyyyy, wait a second.

About a month ago, the market featured Love Food Hate Waste, an organization with the sole purpose of reducing food waste in Metro Vancouver. I remember grabbing a few recipe cards, and after rifling through a stack of papers, I found the one I wanted:

Fridge Harvest Stew.

Although I didn’t follow this recipe to a tee, I did use up all the wilted greens, as well as leftover chicken that had been in the fridge for several days, shrivelling tomatoes, a wrinkling zucchini, an onion that I purchased two weeks ago, and aged sweet peppers. I didn’t have cannelloni beans, but did have chickpeas and black beans.

Based on the size of the pot, I figure I’ve got at least five freezable lunches in there.

I loved the concept of this meal. It helped clean out my fridge of foods that likely would have been composted otherwise. I do not eat raw tomatoes or peppers once they start wrinkling, nor wilted greens. But when cooked, none of that matters. It’s no longer a texture issue, it’s just pure taste.

According to Love Food Hate Waste, a 2014 study showed that in Metro Vancouver we are wasting over 100,000 tonnes of avoidable food a year – things that could still be eaten with a little creativity. Broken down further, that’s the equivalent of 16,000 heads of lettuce, 40,000 tomatoes, 80,000 potatoes, 32,000 loaves of bread, 55,000 apples, 70,000 cups of milk, and 30,000 eggs – In. A. Day.

That’s huge.

And it’s costing households approximately $700 a year.

I don’t have that kind of money to spare.

It annoys me to no end when I have to toss aged foods from my crisper and fridge shelves.

This recipe, and hopefully others on lovefoodhatewaste.ca, has helped breathed new creativity in using up those so-called wasted foods.

Market Loot

Zaklan Heritage Farms

• mini head of lettuce $1
• 1 head spiky purple salanova $2.50
• 1 bunch mizuna mustard greens $3
• 1 bunch radishes $2.50

Ripple Creek Farms

• 1 bag arugula $4
• 2 pounds German butter potatoes $4.50
• 2 tri-coloured peppers $1.75

Ossome Acres

• 1 bunch ursula kale $3
• 1 garlic $1.20

Mandair Farms

• 1 bunch fall-coloured dahlias $5

Harvest Direct Farms

• 1 basket plums $5
• 1 basket sunrise apples $5

Fresh Quality Produce

• 1 large bag English snap peas $1.55

Total spent: $40

There are a couple things to note here.

The English snap peas were my son’s choice. After giving him full reign a few weeks ago, he’s taken a keen interest in the shopping side of things at the market. It’s no longer just about running the bridges and getting his face painted, he wants to be able to choose at least one item of the shop. This week it was the snap peas – he LOVES snap peas!

Also noteworthy, the apples.

For one of our dinner excursions, I was charged with making dessert. With a basket of in-season apples, there was only one thing to make: Apfelkuchen!

Yum. Yum.

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Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of. 

When you’re given a $20 pack of chicken tenders, there’s really only one thing to do: build the budget around that chicken.

A few weeks ago, I did a comparison of chicken breasts, comparing Rockweld Farms to that of a supermarket. The results, although not bad, were not resounding. We thought Rockweld’s chicken certainly had more flavour, but was drier than the supermarket’s bird. We acknowledged the dryness was likely an error in our cooking approach given that chain chicken is so often loaded with water and other such fillers, whereas Rockweld’s chicken is more au naturel.

Still, Aaron at Rockweld Farms did not want our taste buds to have that memory.

He called me into his truck. We chatted about his chicken. He told me that he, himself, does a tender check of each bird he cuts to ensure its quality. He said his chicken requires minimal grilling time, just a couple minutes for each side. Comparatively the chicken we get from the grocery store is typically on the grill for 8-9 minutes.

Aaron handed me a pack of his “fail-proof” chicken tenders, a part of the bird, he said, you can’t go wrong with. He would not take payment.

“Tell me what you think after trying these,” he said.

With chicken in hand, I had a plan.

This week was all about fajitas!

Market Loot

Rockweld Farms

• Package of 11 chicken tenders -$20.60

Zaklan Heritage Farms

• 1 head spiky purple salanova $2.50
• 6 long red tomatoes $3.25
• 1 pound tomatillos $4.35
• 1 bunch cilantro $2
• 1 bunch radishes $2.50

Ripple Creek Farms

• 1 cucumber $1.50
• 1 bunch (of 2) giant white onions $3.50

Ossome Acres

• 1 garlic bulb $2

Mandair Farms

• 1 pint of slightly spicy peppers $3
• Harvest Direct Farms
• 1 basket peaches (5) $5

Fresh Quality Produce

• 4 ears corn $3

Steel and Oak

• 1 bomber smoked hefeweizen  beer $7

Total spent: $39.60

It was a meal that maybe would have been suited more to Cinco de Mayo than a random Saturday, but then, we wouldn’t have had fresh tomatillos or local corn. And that, just would not do.

These fajitas were bursting with flavour.

My husband made salsa verdé, roasting and chopping the tomatillos, peppers, onion, tomato and garlic , and then combining with cilantro, lime juice and salt. The only non-market ingredients were the lime juice and salt.

I wasn’t expecting the heat that came off the peppers. My eyes weren’t quite watering like they were when I took a bite of the cherry red pepper offered by Jasbir at Mandair Farms, but my taste buds were certainly on alert. (Note: I am somewhat of a wimp when it comes to fiery spice.) And yet, without that added heat, I don’t think the salsa verdé would have been as good. All the ingredients were perfectly complimentary. The flavours, the freshness, the texture, the combination of colours, they were so beautiful, so Mexican.

 

 

Housed in a corn tortilla, we piled in caramelized onion and peppers, strips of chicken tenders, cheese, and the homemade salsa verdé. That combination of market-fresh ingredients, from the tomatillos right down to the chicken, was a taste explosion in my mouth. On the side, we had barbecued corn, and a salad of salanova greens, along with a pint of Steel and Oak smoked hefeweizen.

It was light. It was refreshing. It was summer perfect.

Beyond the fajitas, though, how did the chicken fare on its own? Did we cook it properly this time? Or would it again be flavourful, but dry?

Like the breast we purchased weeks ago, the chicken tenders were grilled as well, but at a much more reduced time. The results were significant.

They were tender and moist, and they presented intense flavour. There was no dryness whatsoever. On a bed of salad, they added to the overall taste. They weren’t just an additional, meaty texture. They had substance. I felt my stomach filling faster with less than I usually do with store-bought chicken breasts. They demonstrated, with great panache, that they belonged – on salad, in fajitas, on their own.

My son, who sometimes balks at that amount of chicken we eat, asked for a second helping. With chicken, that rarely happens.

The package had a total of 11 meaty sized tenders, giving us one full meal for three, plus three adult lunches, and a kid’s meal.

At $20, for us, it is still a splurge. Seeing that $20 tag, if I had to pay for it, I would have had to think real hard about whether it was a necessity or a treat. I would have thought of all the other things I could get, and how fuller my bag would be, without the cost of the chicken cutting into my budget.

As a single-income family, we don’t have the luxury to be able to splurge weekly on locally farmed chicken no matter how enjoyable it is. But now knowing Aaron, learning more about his farm and the practices at his farm, seeing his passion for his chicken, and, yes, experiencing that flavour too, it is a splurge I would be interested to indulge in again one day soon.

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Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of. 

Full disclosure, I went over budget.

I tried not to. I tried to stay within the $40 limit, I really tried, but my hands were tied. Tied by a near five-year-old’s stomach’s desires.

Last week I handed over the $40 market budget to my son.

Brave or ridiculously silly, I’m still not sure.

 

As a future dietitian, I try to instil in my son the knowledge of healthful eating, and the empowerment of knowing where your food comes from, how it was grown, and who grew it. In my view, you are never too young, or too old for that matter, to take up this practice.

My son has picked out vegetables and fruits before, but he’s never been in charge of the whole budget.

I gave him a few guiding principles: I told him we had to try and be more healthful than not; I told him sweets were okay, but they needed to be balanced with fresh fruits, greens, and other such vegetables. I also encouraged him to select a protein as well.

 

Oh no.

My brain was fraught with fear. Had my guiding principles gone in one ear and out the other? Were we doomed to be going home with a bag full of pastries, popsicles, pies and cookies?

No, we were not.

With caramel corn in one hand, he ran over to Ripple Creek Organic Farm and shouted with glee: tomatoes!!!! He picked a pint of sweet orange cherry tomatoes that I believe are called sunrise; they were super sweet, although my son liked the reds better. He purposely sauntered over to Zaklan Heritage Farm where there was a huge selection of greens, onions, radishes, and other such produce. Yet, his eyes were fixed on tomatoes.

 

 

 

He also grabbed a bunch of rainbow carrots (the colours win him over every time), he hemmed and hawed over radishes, but in the end determined they were too spicy, and instead grabbed a mini head of green lettuce because it looked “ninja green!”

He searched for the ice cream truck, but – thankfully for me and my desires for more produce – Rocky Point ice cream was not on the schedule.

He walked up the steps of Wild Westcoast Seafoods like he owned the truck. With his fingers curled on the surface of the freezer windows he peered inside to see if he could find anything appealing. We love fish in our house and when Ron pulled out a slab of tuna, the boy took one look and exclaimed “yum!”

When my son was mulling over a $20 container of cherries from the Harvest Direct stand, we were given a valuable teaching lesson. I suggested he look at the market money in his hands and count how much money he had left. At that point we had $6.50. Do we have $20, I asked him. No, he said. Do we have $5, I asked him. Yes, he said. I pointed to the containers of apples, plums, peaches and nectarines and told him that was the selection we were limited to. He grabbed the nectarines and was ready to go to the next stop.

 

We had $1.50 left to spend. I told him the options: we could get 2 zucchinis at Fresh Quality Produce for $1.50, or 2 cucumbers at Ripple Creek for approximately $2, or 2 ears of corn at both Fresh Quality Produce and Mandair Farms for $2, putting us over budget by 50 cents, or a (pretty, pretty, pretty please) head of spiky purple lettuce for $2.50. He flat out said no to the lettuce and the zucchini 🙁

I thought for sure he’d opt for the corn as he LOVES corn, and he almost did. He squeezed in next to the ladies husking the cobs and was about to pounce on the perfect two, when his eyes veered over to the brown box of green beans.

He thought they were peas. I told him they were green beans, which we often have on the barbecue. He looked at the corn, looked at the green beans, walked away from the corn, and grabbed a bag to fill with beans.

I’m not sure if he recognized that he would get more by choosing green beans over corn, but it was pretty hilarious watching him fill his bag – meticulously counting every single bean he placed in the bag. At 20 beans, he went over to the scale. We had 77 cents worth. I told him to grab 20 more. Jeff, the vendor, was howling as he watched him count. He went back to the scale. Gilda, who was manning the cash, told him to run back and grab three more. She told him he could leave the bag with her. He gave her an incredulous look. Are you kidding? No way, nope, he was not gonna leave that bag unprotected. He got his three more beans, giving us 43 beans in total, and we were right at $1.50.

This kid knows budget!

Market Loot

Gary’s Kettle Corn

• 1 small bag caramel corn $3.50

Ripple Creek Organic Farm

• 1 pint sunrise tomatoes $5

Zaklan Heritage Farm

• 1 mini ninja lettuce $2
• 1 bunch rainbow carrots $3.50
• 1 pint rainbow cherry tomatoes $4.50

Wild Westcoast Seafood

• 1 lb tuna $15

Harvest Direct Farms

• 1 container nectarines $5

Fresh Quality Produce

• 43 green beans $1.50

Total spent: $40

Now, while my kid had the budget down, I did not. It was a bit hard for me to give up control. I tried. I really, really did. But I could NOT walk away from a farmers’ market without a bunch of mustard greens and purple spiky lettuce in my hands. They might not be there the next week, I told myself. We would have to buy more greens mid week; the mini head would not get us through, I reasoned. I needed more greens.

When the boy wasn’t looking, I scooted under the Zaklan tent and added to the weekly loot.

Over-budget loot

Zaklan Heritage Farms

• 1 bunch mizuna mustard greens $3
• 1 head purple spiky lettuce $2.50

Total in the red: $5.50

After the market adventure, our hungry bellies went home for dinner. The first thing the boy asked for was a salad of his own that included his green ninja lettuce, his purple carrots, and a huge handful of his tomatoes.

 

Yep, pretty sure that’s a win 🙂

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Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of. 

I was under the Zaklan Heritage Farm tent and my $40 budget was fast dwindling. I had $6 allotted to spend on fingerling potatoes. The German butter potatoes of the week before were so melt-in-your-mouth good, we wanted to see how the fingerlings would compare. I didn’t want to go over budget, and I didn’t want to go under. I wanted $6 exactly.

I grabbed a handful of the potatoes and put them on the scale. I was under budget. For two to three minutes more, I kept running back and forth adding one potato at a time. When I surpassed $5, I methodically searched the pile and removed the smallest ones to bring the cost back down. Courtney, the woman behind the Zaklan cash table, couldn’t help but laugh and tease me every time I changed the amount on the scale. She didn’t roll her eyes, she didn’t get exasperated, she thought it was pretty silly, but she was willing to appease me, especially given there were no others behind me.

This is a regular occurrence for me. I’ve done it with English snap peas, green beans, pickling cucumbers, broccoli, and more at various tents.

I would never do this at the grocery store, or even the local mom and pop vegetable stand.

What’s different?

The farmers.

The market is not a quick in-and-out shop for me, and I don’t want it to be. I enjoy the relationships that I have built with our farmers. I enjoy the casual chit chat, and education they give me nearly every week. These farmers are so invested in their vision, it’s not put on the backburner for a quick sale.

They want you to be happy. They want you to be more than satisfied with their products. They go the extra mile. They give you $1.50 worth of green beans when all you’ve got to spare is 60 cents. They round down, not up. They tell you, in depth, about what they’re growing, how they’re growing it, and why they’re growing it in a specific way. They work with you.

They even put up with your odd idiosyncrasies (see above).

It’s not just me they’re doing this for. I’ve seen it done countlessly for others as well. Just last week, a shopper was standing before all the fresh Okanagan fruits at the Harvest Direct stand. She didn’t want a basket of just one fruit, she wanted a little bit of everything. So, she asked. Ask and you shall receive: Param made her up a $10 basket that included apples, peaches, plums, and apricots. He didn’t look put out at all. In fact, he asked if there was one fruit in particular that she’d like more of than the others.

Beyond local, it is service like that that makes me keep wanting to come back for more.

It makes a difference.

This week’s loot:

Zaklan Heritage Farm

• 1 bunch pizzo mustard greens $3
• 1 bunch mizuna mustard greens $3
• 1 bunch radishes $2.50
• 1 bunch rainbow carrots $3.50
• 1 garlic $2.85
• 2.04 lbs fingerling potatoes $6

Ripple Creek Organic Farm

• 1 cucumber $1
• 1 GIANT head red-leaf lettuce $3.50

Harvest Direct Farms

• 1 basket plums $5
• 1 basket sunrise apples $5

Fresh Quality Produce

• 2 zucchinis $1.5
  1 bag of green beans $3

Total spent: $39.85

The mustard greens made their way into 5 dinner salads and 4 lunch salads with leftovers for the week ahead. The red leaf lettuce was so huge, as of Wednesday afternoon, its leaves were still filling the salad spinner. There were six carrots that were used in both salads and snacks. The bunch of light pink radishes, which had a mighty kick, were allotted mostly for side dishes and salads, and were still abundant as of writing this post. The small dark purple plums were a burst of tartness that we ate on their own, in salads, or mixed in berry fruit bowls. The sunrise apples were a combination of sweet and tart, and were the perfect snack-sized apple. We grilled the green beans, zucchini and fingerling potatoes.

When I asked about the fingerling potatoes, I was told they were somewhat similar to the German butter potatoes. And when I heard that, I translated it as being exactly the same.
They were not.

When grilled, the German butter potatoes were a rich, melt-in-your mouth smoothness on the inside, yet crispy with a touch of sweetness on the outside. The fingerlings were not. I felt they were more starchy in taste, and the inside was more of a mealy texture, the kind you get from regular old potatoes.

I guess once you’ve had German butter, no other compares.

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Originally published on local blog Tenth to the Fraser, The Farmers Market Challenge, written by Katie Bartel (and the odd guest star) seeks to challenge the notice that you can’t get hardly anything for $40 at the farmers market. Each market, Katie explores what’s the best deal, and discovers food she’s never heard of.