Heirloom Tomatoes

This week at the Phipps farmers market there were some fantastic heirloom tomato varieties.  There were black tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, yellow with red stripes tomatoes, a green one they called "green zebra" and a peach tomato (that is actually fuzzy)!  After trying them all, the peach tomato is definitely my favorite.  I'm going to have to buy some peach tomato seeds for next years garden.  The Seed Savers Exchange has a great catalog for heirloom vegetables.  I highly recommend checking out their catalog, you won't believe all the varieties of vegetables there are (and members have access to even more)!

Green Zebra and Peach tomato

The local food adventure begins!

Tonight is the start of our local food year!  We got our farm share this evening, which included spinach, lettuce, onions, asparagus, eggs, bread, jam, and a basil plant.  For our first meal I made a sauce of local spinach, homemade chevre (goat cheese), onions, and butter, served on top of homemade pasta, that I made with local eggs.  The only non-local ingredients were a little bit of chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, italian herb seasoning, and the flour to make the pasta dough.  I had frozen the pasta from a large batch I made a few weeks ago- so the meal only took me about 20 minutes to make.  So far eating local is easy and tasty!

Local Vinegar!

Today was the first day of the Farmer's Market at Phipps Conservatory.  I love this market because it has a great variety of meats, cheese, honey, eggs, and veggies.  And today I discovered another special item: local vinegar!  Not only was it local, it was the best vinegar Mark or I have ever had!  It was made by Sonshine Farm.  The farmer said the secret was the "mother".  I had no idea what she meant, and I didn't want to sound like I didn't know anything about where my food comes from, so I just asked wikipedia:


Mother of vinegar is a substance composed of a form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria that develops on fermenting alcoholic liquids, which turns alcohol into acetic acid with the help of oxygen in the air.  It is added to wine, cider or other alcoholic liquids to produce vinegar.


I'm very excited to be learning more about where (and how) food is made.  And I've got some fantastic local vinegar!

The Demon in the Milk

I recently found out that the raw (unpasturized) milk Mark and I have been drinking may have been contaminated with campylobacter bacteria.  If we were exposed to it, it didn't have much of an affect, lucky for us.  Unfortunately another family wasn't so lucky.  The Pittsburgh Tribune reported on their story:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_677255.html

It's very sad that that happened to Mr. Orchard, however, I really don't think they should be suing the farmer.  There are known risks from drinking unpasturized milk, and there is a warning label letting the consumer know about these risks.  I really hope that the state doesn't decide to make selling raw milk illegal based on this event.  I believe we should still have the right to choose to buy unpasturized milk (although I probably won't be buying it again for a while).  But hey, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?