Winter Share 2012-13- Week 10

Pork chops, frozen green beans, frozen strawberries, oats, and more

This week we continue to dive into our frozen stash. The jewel this week is frozen strawberries from Maurer’s Fruit Farm. These will pair very nicely in a smoothie with some delicious Velvet View Yogurt or as a sauce to drizzle over pork chops, or even ice cream!

The pork chops are our signature boneless, thick cut Berkshire chops. For those of you who like to stock up on them, we’ll have extra available at the back of the truck for $6 per lb.

We also have a challenge ingredient this week – sorghum syrup. For anyone who did the winter the last two years, you’ll know I really like this one. It is a natural sweetener made from pulping and boiling the canes of sorghum wheat. It is similar to molasses and can be substituted for that. I use it in apple sauce to add a little sweet yet bitter note (I know that sounds weird, but trust me it has a slight mineral/bitter note). It can also be used to make a tasty glaze for the pork chops, to bake a bread or to make granola, or simply to drizzle over your cereal/oatmeal/granola. Search our blog for more suggestions.

This week wraps up some of the final storage crops as well – turnips and carrots. Depending on how they keep and what the weather has to do, we may have one more blast of them with the beef coming in a few weeks.

Right now all the root veggies – potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, and turnips – are storage crops that were either harvested in the fall (like potatoes) or before the ground freezes hard, so early January (for turnips, rutabaga, carrots, beets, etc). The longer the food stores the more likely it is to go bad, and particularly if the shipping conditions aren’t favorable (like as cold as it has been). We’ll do our best to keep the quality up but if you experience any issues with these storage crops, please let us know and we’ll gladly replace them. I do recommend keeping them refrigerated when you get home as well. Change in temperature is very difficult on veggies, and for us right now, the warmest place in my warehouse is our refrigerator at 37 degrees and when we are out on the delivery route it has often been colder than that.

Don’t forget to signup for Summer 2013. The summer season registration has begun. All existing customers are guaranteed their spot when registering before March 1. Please don’t hesitate – registration only takes seconds. You can do this at this link:

Winter Week 10:
1 package Berkshire pork chops
2 pint frozen green beans
1 half pint sorghum syrup
1.5 lbs rolled oats
3 lbs turnips
1 quart Velvet View yogurt
1 quart frozen strawberries
1 half pint fig roasted cherry tomatoes
1 dozen eggs
1 lb Ohio City Pasta, either spelt rosemary linguini or pumpkin and cracked black pepper linguini
1 quart frozen cauliflower
1 lb carrots