What's Up Behind The Scenes?

Do you find yourself craving those warm spring temperatures and longing for the days when our neighbourhood roads are clear of gigantic snow piles, rock-hard ice & deep ruts? Believe it or not, those days are right around the corner.

It is less than two months until spring… and that means that outdoor market season is almost upon us! Now is the time when farmers have ordered and are receiving their seeds. By the time March hits… just a few short weeks away… greenhouse growers will open up their greenhouses and start their vegetable, tomato, herb and bedding plant seedlings. As the days grow longer and warmer, calving and lambing season will start. Farmers everywhere will soon be ramping up production for the year. Yup, those warm spring days are right around the corner!

Behind the scenes, the volunteers at the Southwest Edmonton Farmers’ Market are busy planning their 2014 season. This is the time when we reach out to vendors and find out who is returning and who is not, and it is a time when we work hard recruiting new vendors… amazing people who bring top quality food, fruit, veggies, plants and creative and artistic items to market. It is really important that the vendors we find and support sell items that are sourced locally, as that determines our market’s “Alberta Approved” status, and our decisions play an extremely important role in stimulating the local economy.

Our other challenge involves finding just the right mix of artisans, buskers, fruit vendors, veggie vendors, meat vendors, food producers and food trucks to produce a line-up that is competitive, interesting and varied enough to make shopping at the market a fun-filled, worthwhile experience for both shoppers and vendors, so that they will return year after year.

Some of the other behind-the-scenes work involves developing new signage, recruiting volunteers, soliciting sponsorships (because we can't survive without them!), sorting through the stacks of vendor applications, making difficult decisions about who to accept into the market line-up and who to reject, planning educational events, contacting community non-profit groups to use the market’s community tent space, working with organizations like Edmonton’s Food Bank to plan special events, writing the blog posts and figuring out the annual budget.

Think the market just happens, organically? Think again. It takes a tremendous amount of work to make it the vibrant, happening, community scene that you’ve come to love. Your community market is made possible by the financial support of its community-minded sponsors and by the tireless work of its volunteers.  From doing graphic design work to writing newsletters and articles, from website maintenance to photography, from gathering market statistics to setting up tables, from navigating the social media sphere to manning the crosswalks, from sitting on the Steering Committee to directing traffic, there are countless opportunities for you to get involved and to help create a vibrant, sustainable and locally-driven market experience for the entire Southwest community.

If you’d like to be more involved, follow this link: http://www.swefm.ca/become-a-volunteer.html. And check out the market website, at http://www.swefm.ca for recipes, inspiration, information, fun photos and great local links. And if there’s a vendor you’d like approached, follow the “contact us” links on the website and let the SWEFM Steering Committee know. They’ll do their best to track them down.

Getting excited? Mark your calendar for Wednesday, May 14^th… opening day for 2014!

Vendor applications are beginning to trickle in. Here is a list of vendors who are on top of their paperwork and intend to return next year... and there's a new one in there too! See if you can figure out which one it is...

• Bully Food Truck (every week)
• Yellow Bird Café Truck (every week)
• Sailin' On Food Truck (once a month)
• Dargatz Family Farm (veggies, eggs, pickles)
• S4 (formerly TR Greenhouses) (hothouse veggies)
• Holden Colony (veggies, eggs, pickles)
• Riverbend Gardens (veggies)
• AIG (BC fruit)
• Steve & Dan's (BC Fruit)
• Sunworks Organics (Chicken, Beef)
• Strawman Farm (Bison)
• Expressions by Lori (clothing)
• Ada's Soap Shop (handcrafted artisan soap)
• Morrie's Handcrafts (turned bowls, cut words, wooden branch coat racks)
• The Pink Kernel (snow cones, cotton candy, concession items)
• Original Canadian Kettle Corn
• Theo's Greek Kouzina
• Fat Frank's (hot dogs & smokies)
• Mini Kitchen (Indian & Thai food)
• Celebrate, Gluten Free (baking)
• Raspberry & Cocoa (baking)
• Sweet Stuff (cupcakes & cookies)
• Birds & Bees Winery
• The Mallow Fellow (gourmet marshmallows)

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca

Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca

Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Organics Is About More Than Just The Food

This week we have a guest blogger, Sheila Hamilton, of Sunworks Farm. Her farm is located just outside of Armena, Alberta. She and her husband Ron are committed to raising and selling "environmentally friendly food." They supply some of the best markets in town (one of which is ours) with their delicious chickens, turkeys, beef and pork products... all are pasture raised or free range and certified organic... qualities that are extremely important to them and to their life philosophy. Here, Sheila explores what it means to be totally committed to "organics." With their commitment to biodiversity, they are tremendous stewards of the land.

Organics is about more than just the food. Often on the news you see studies that compare organic products to their non-organic equivalent. These studies most often look at nutrition and pesticide residues. But eating and buying organic has a much greater effect than just the food that you put in the body. Organics is also about the environment that we all live in. For every certified organic product grown, there are less chemicals being added to the environment. 

For us this encompasses our attitude toward the environment and the world around us. We use the ancient Haida saying “We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." We believe that we have to leave the land in better condition than the land we received. We strongly believe that we have to be stewards of the land and of the environment. We feel that by being certified organic and using holistic management, we can be active stewards of the land. We also believe that we can be beyond organic. We have to look at all of our practices and be as sustainable as possible and be the best keepers of the earth as we can be. 

There are many ways that we do this. We use time controlled grazing for our cattle. This is a method of grazing that prevents the overgrazing of the land which prevents erosion, allows the grass to naturally reseed itself and provides habitat for wildlife. We also let the grass grow in the fall, this allows for longer winter grazing which in turn allows the manure to be spread out over the land rather than being accumulated in one place. 

We want to continue to improve the land. Our goal is to grow topsoil. We use our composted chicken manure as a way to do this. The manure is composted in 2 large in vessel composter units. This compost is then spread on our land and other neighbouring farmers' land. The composting breaks down the manure and makes it safe to spread onto the land. Rotational grazing also allows a lot of organic matter to be put back into the soil. We feed our cattle in the winter on the poorest part of our land. This allows the leftover hay and the manure to improve the soil. Our moveable chicken shelters have no bottom and this allows the manure to be put directly onto the land and then be exposed to the sun. The grass thrives on this mix of organic matter and manure. The grass is often waist high and extremely thick. We see improvement in the soil every year. We also do not use any herbicides or pesticides on the land. This results in a wonderful soil ecosystem full of microbes, bugs and worms. 

Water is an essential and important resource for animals and plants and we try to take care of this precious resource. We are part of the Battle River watershed. We maintain and do not alter the natural watershed areas allowing the water to naturally flow towards the Battle River. We collect surface water in ponds (dugouts) allowing natural drinking water to be pumped for our cattle and all of our livestock. The dugouts and natural wetlands are fenced off protecting them from the cattle and allowing wildlife (ducks, geese, deer, coyotes) to use and thrive in the clean water. No herbicides or pesticides are used on our land.

Because of the lay of our land, the water that fills our dugouts only comes from our property. This prevents chemical runoff from neighboring farms from collecting in the wetlands allowing frogs and reptiles to thrive. We love our frogs! 

Biodiversity is essential and we believe that all wildlife is important to the ecosystem. We only take one cut of hay so wildlife can have plenty to eat for the winter. This also allows for more snow to collect on the land in the winter providing more moisture to the land and to the wetlands in the spring. We have buffer zones around our land that allow natural untouched habitat for birds, this allows them to nest and raise their young undisturbed. Bird houses are put up to encourage birds to nest; blue birds are a common sight.  

We use electric netting around the perimeter of the outdoor chicken shelters to protect the chickens from the foxes, skunks and coyotes. This allows them to live on the land right beside the chickens.  We also have planted trees and continue to plant trees. We have seen many different types of wildlife flourish here and have seen more and more diversity every year.  Mice, shrews, moles, gophers, badgers, coyotes, porcupines, deer and moose live on our land and we have seen a cougar. Owls, hawks, bluebirds, swallows, sparrows, starlings, robins, crows, magpies, grouse, ducks, geese, shore birds, frogs, snakes and salamanders make their homes here as well. 

In the choices that we make we can affect the whole environment, not just our own land. We drive a Toyota Hybrid vehicle. All our buildings are powered through wind and solar sources using Bullfrog power. We try and reduce and reuse and we recycle through a local recycling company, TK Environmental out of Camrose.  All our buildings are newer and were built with energy efficiency in mind and our house is a R2000 house. Solar powered watering systems are used for the cattle.  We also personally purchase organic, local and environmentally friendly products wherever possible. We are constantly looking for ways that we can reduce our environmental footprint on the earth. 

We believe that being organic is about more than the food. It is about a way of life and a way of business that keeps the environment and human health in the forefront. By using these practices we strive to not only provide our customers with the best and cleanest food possible but also food that has a positive impact on the health of our environment as a whole. 

Sheila Hamilton

See more at: www.sunworksfarm.com
Follow them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SunworksFarm

Contributed by Sheila Hamilton, of Sunworks Farm
Intro by Sheri Hendsbee

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca

Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca

Black Bean Soup with Yogourt & Spicy Salsa

In the winter, if your goal is to cook what is in season and fresh, (and if your goal is to cook more economically when fresh vegetables can be quite pricey) it can be challenging to stray from the root vegetable category. One way to broaden your scope is to include dried beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils in your home cooking. They are nourishing, they keep a very, very long time, and they are extremely inexpensive, if you work with them from their dried state.

Beans are loaded with fibre, a characteristic that is associated with lowering the risk of diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease. They are a source of protein, and in great part due to this & due to the astonishing amount of fibre they contain, you digest them very slowly so you feel full longer... they give you energy for longer, releasing it slowly, helping to level out spikes in blood sugar. They lower cholesterol. They're loaded with protective antioxidants, phytochemicals and vitamins. In short, they're a super food! (And right up there in the 150 Healthiest Foods On Earth). To read up on all of the fascinating health benefits, and believe me, the evidence presented is astounding!) read more in that book.

Do not be intimidated by dried beans. It is super easy to prepare them at home, and by not relying on the canned beans at the grocery store you are doing a few good things:

1. Your beans have a far better texture and are not mushy in your prepared dishes.
2. There is not as much environmental waste (the tins that you throw out), and their weight, transported in a tinned state, is far greater than their dry weight when it comes to the space & fuel used in trucking them to your local grocery store over long distances.
3. You reduce your sodium intake (it's used as a preservative in the tinned beans and you can eliminate that entirely on the home front).
4. You create more storage in your pantry shelf at home.
5. You are saving yourself money (dried beans cost a few pennies... I know the penny doesn't exist anymore, but dried beans are one of the few food items in the pantry that can be that cheap!).

Look at the price tags... for almost 1lb bags!

One of the best places to buy dried beans, peas and lentils is at an Indian grocery store. Go along 34th Ave., east of Calgary Trail, and you'll find plenty of local shops there. You can buy beans in large kilo bags (or even larger, if you'd like). Spices are often a tremendous deal there too... stock your pantry with spices like cumin, coriander, black pepper, different coloured salts (white, black, pink), cayenne, turmeric, and peppercorns. They're a fraction of the price there that you'd pay in your local grocery store. If you cook a lot from scratch, it's an excellent bargain. (I like the grocery store attached to the Zaika restaurant on 91 Street, one block south of the Henday).

Black Bean Soup with yogurt & spicy salsa

Here is a simple recipe, full of excellent nutrition, great texture & surprisingly good taste that uses black beans. It's from one of my favourite cookbook author's... Canadian, Bonnie Stern. Don't scrimp on the jalepeños in this recipe... the long cooking time brings their spicy heat down tremendously and you need them to help flavour the beans, which otherwise are very plain.

This would look even better with the cilantro in it!

If you like more heat, substitute red chiles or the smaller Thai chillies, for the jalepeños, especially in the fresh salsa. Contrary to popular belief, jalepeños are really not spicy at all, being the least spicy of all the hot peppers available on the market.

The salsa makes this soup, so don't leave it out! There's something about the hot & the cold (the soup & the salsa/yogurt), the smooth (yogurt & soup) & the crunch (onions & peppers), the creamy (soup & yogurt) & the tart & tangy (the lime salsa) that work so well in this recipe. On their own, the two parts of this soup are average at best... but together they're wonderful.

Makes 10 servings

ingredients

SOUP:
1 lb. (500g) dried black beans

2 t. olive oil

1 onion, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (I leave these out)

1 T. cumin

1 T. paprika

½ t. cayenne

8 c. vegetable stock, chicken stock or water

3 jalepeños, seeded & chopped (or spicier chilies)

salt to taste

SPICY SALSA:

2 T. very finely chopped red onion

2 tomatoes, diced (4-6 camparis)

1 jalepeño, seeded & chopped (or spicier chillies)

1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro or parsley
juice of a lime

½ c. unflavoured low-fat yogourt

directions

In the morning, cover the beans with 3 times the volume of water and soak for a few hours at room temperature or soak them overnight until you are ready to use them in the fridge. Rinse & drain.

An hour and a half before you plan to eat the soup, heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion & garlic (if using) and cook gently for a few minutes, or until fragrant. Add the cumin, paprika & cayenne. Cook for about 30 seconds. Add stock, jalepeños and beans & bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat & simmer for 1½ hours until the beans are very tender. Purée the soup in a blender or food processor, or with an immersion blender until smooth. Taste to adjust the seasonings, adding salt if necessary.

To prepare the salsa, combine the onion, tomato, jalepeño, cilantro & lime juice. To serve, ladle hot soup into shallow bowls. Spoon a little cold yogourt on each serving & top with a generous spoonful of fresh salsa.

To make this soup absolutely divine, coarsely chop a pound of mushrooms (Portobellos & creminis, for eg.) and thinly wedge a red onion. Sauté in a pat of butter & a splash of olive oil & a few grinds of a pepper mill. When the liquid starts to come out of the mushrooms & the volume decreases, add about 1/2 c. red wine & simmer slowly until all of the liquid is absorbed. Heap a mound of mushrooms in the bottom of each soup bowl. Ladle in soup to cover & top as usual with salsa & yogurt. It is divine!

Nutritional info from The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
Recipe adapted slightly from The Best of HeartSmart Cooking, by Bonnie Stern, p. 101

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca

Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca

Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

How to Roast a Turkey (Tips for a Successful Holiday Meal)

With Christmas & New Years around the corner, you are no doubt planning a big meal for your family, and perhaps for your friends. A farmers' market is the perfect place to pick up most of the ingredients you need for a spectacular holiday feast.

There, you can preorder turkey from vendors like Sunworks Organic Farm (I'll be picking ours up bright & early tomorrow morning down at the Old Strathcona Farmers' Market). And while you're there, you can pick up winter squashes and potatoes that round out a traditional turkey dinner so well, you can get wonderfully rustic breads that make THE best turkey stuffing, pick up a perfect homemade pie, spectacular breads & buns, and you can get the ingredients for delicious side dishes too... red and golden beats, sweet carrots, hothouse beans, garlic, etc. Yup. A farmers' market is Feast Central... and its goods are locally shipped to market, costing less (environmentally speaking), and the money that you spend there stays in the local economy which will make our city & surrounding area a more prosperous & economically healthy place in which to live.

There's no doubt about it. Planning a big meal like this takes work, but the results are so worth it... the smell of a roasting bird filling up the house, family gathered around a beautifully set table, soft candlelight to set the mood... maybe even carols on in the background, playing softly to fill out the atmosphere of the occasion. Good company. Great food (and leftovers). A wonderful time spent together. Memories carved out, like that turkey, weighted heavily by that wonderful family binder... tradition. Yup... so worth it. But a lot of work.

Thankfully, the airwaves and the internet are full of simple how-to tips take the chaos and the intensity out of holiday meal prep. I was listening to CBC the other day, and they were interviewing some domestic engineers (yup, that's what I call 'em... you know the type... they are incredibly proficient in the kitchen, can knock recipes and tantalizing creations off the tips of their fingers without recipes, know how to display food beautifully and creatively... and most impossibly, can time meals perfectly. Domestic Engineers.). These women were from Atco's Blue Flame Kitchen spouting off some very simple, very timely advice as part of CBC's Turkey Drive. http://www.cbc.ca/edmonton/turkeydrive/

I thought I'd share some of what I heard here with you to try to take some of the guess work out of the holiday meal prep.

• Generally, allow one pound per person when deciding on the weight of the turkey that you will be purchasing. The larger the turkey, the better the deal because your ratio of meat to bone is higher.

• For a frozen bird, thaw 5 hours/pound in the fridge. This is the safest way to thaw a turkey & ensure that your family & guests do not end up tossing their cookies!)

• Over and over again I hear that you should prepare the stuffing outside of the bird... either wrapped in a tinfoil pouch or made in the slow cooker. This is the safest way to prepare it, and it allows the turkey to cook more evenly, cook more quickly, and stay juicier. I'm planning to try it this way this year. Here are some links to stuffing recipes from the Blue Flame Kitchen...

• Traditional Stuffing

• Pumpernickel & Sausage Stuffing

• Rice & Currant Stuffing

• Sausage Stuffing

• Be sure to remove the packages of giblets & the neck from the cavity of the bird! Store these in the fridge to make soup or stock from the carcas the next day, if you'd like. Wash the turkey with cold water and pat dry with paper towels. 

• Atco's Blue Flame Kitchen shares this roasting timetable for an unstuffed, thawed bird.

• 10 lb (4.5 kg): 2 3/4 - 3 hours

• 15 lb (7.0 kg): 3 - 3 1/2 hours

• 20 lb (9.0 kg): 4 - 4 1/2 hours

• 26 lb (12.0 kg): 4 1/2 - 5 hours 

• Cook at 425F for the first half hour, then 325F for the rest of the time in a roasting pan, gently tented with foil. Remove the foil for the last 30-40 minutes.

• And last but not least, click this link... How to carve a turkey!

When I was preparing this blog post, I looked back through the photos of Christmasses past and realized that I had never stopped to take a photo of our table or of the meal that we were about to eat... year after year after year! I reached out to a few people to see if they had photos I could use for this post. My sister in law came through... but not in the way that I expected, thanks to her irreverent sense of humour! Let me leave you with one last image...

Have a wonderful Christmas, a spectacular holiday and a terrific New Year from all of us at SWEFM!

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca

Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca

Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

3 Ways to Play with Sweet Potatoes

My goal each week is to bring you recipes that are first and foremost, easy to make, and second, that use meat & produce that are in season (and during market season, that are available at our market). In that vein, I just can't possibly be done with sweet potatoes.... 

As we learned last week, sweet potatoes are a fantastic vegetable. Remember, a general rule when considering nutrition science in your home kitchen is that the more vibrantly coloured a fruit or vegetable is, the more packed it is with nutrients and antioxidants. That holds very true for the humble sweet potato. High in fibre (especially if you eat the skin), potassium, antioxidants, betacarotene and vitamins E, A & C, sweet potatoes help to arm you against heart disease & cancer and delay the effects of aging on the brain. And because sweet potatoes have so much fibre, they are a far better choice for diabetics than white potatoes because the fibre helps to keep blood glucose levels from spiking. So even though they have a far sweeter mouth taste, they have a lower glycemic index and are a far better choice.

Sweet potatoes are a wonderfully versatile vegetable... and this week we explore that versatility with a few simple recipes. Sweet potatoes can become delicious oven-baked fries, they can add thickness and be the sweet basis of delicious creamed soups (like last weeks sweet potato ginger soup), they can add flavour and colour and creamy texture to slow-cooked stews, they can be mashed and accompany roast chicken or turkey or ham, and they can even form the basis of pancakes or waffles! Yup, sweet potatoes are a great ingredient in your kitchen arsenal.

oven roasted sweet potato fries
Who does't love fast food french fries? It's too bad that they're so bad for you! Oven roasted fries are a great compromise as they're far better for you than the ones served up at the heart-attack-on-a-plate fast food joints. And they are very, very simple to do.

Roasting brings out the inherent sweetness in this wonderful veggie. I never peel my potatoes, whether they be sweet potatoes or regular potatoes, as the peels are good for you and have a terrific amount of fibre in them. Simply scrub your potatoes, cut out any blemishes (dark spots, digging scrapes & scars), then cut them in half, then into wedges. Depending on the size of the potato you are working with, you might need to still slice the wedges again... what you are going for here are a series of potato slices or wedges that are all approximately of uniform thickness. If you don't have to watch your salt intake, sprinkle on pickling or coarse sea salt instead of the regular grained salt called for below. Personally, I love the crunch that the big crystals give the roasted fries.

ingredients
3-4 sweet potatoes (to make enough wedges to cover your cookie sheet)
1-2 T. olive oil
1-2 t. salt
1-2 t. pepper
2-3 t. rosemary or other favourite herb (optional)

Then, toss in a bowl with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, a teaspoon or so of sea salt and a generous pinch or two (or three or four) of your favourite herbs (I love rosemary & black pepper, freshly muddled together in a mortar & pestle). Bake on a parchment paper lined cookie tray for about 15-20 minutes at 400F, or until slightly starting to crisp & char on the outside. The length of time will depend on the thickness of your potato wedges... less time for thin; more time for thick.

maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes
ingredients
3-4 sweet potatoes
1-2 T. butter
1-2 T. maple syrup
salt to taste

Simply boil up a batch of sweet potato cubes until soft (about 10 minutes... way faster than regular white potatoes), then drain and mash them with a pat of butter and a tablespoon or two of maple syrup. The maple flavour brings out the inherent sweetness in the potato leaving you with something that melts in your mouth! And the texture of the sweet potato mash is so soft & light that the end result is something divine! If you want your mash to have a smooth texture, peel them first. If you want a more rustic hash, leave the skins on.

The Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics cookbook invites playing with sweet mashed potatoes... if you feel like experimenting, try adding one of the following combinations to your mash:

• maple syrup & ground cardamomom
• bourbon, pears, pecans & brown sugar
• coconut milk, thyme, and ground allspice or ground nutmeg
• grated fresh ginger root and ground cinnamon
• horseradish or wasabi

sweet potato pancakes 
Think sweet potatoes don't have a place at your breakfast table? Think again! Delightfully delicate and permeated with the enticing aroma of lemon, these deep golden-brown pancakes are moist inside with crisp edges. No one will ever know that there's veggies in them!

For breakfast, serve them plain or with butter or maple syrup. For lunch or supper, top them with sour cream and put a chunky salsa on the side. For dessert, serve at room temperature, drizzled with equal parts lemon juice & honey stirred together & top with whipped cream. For another simple lemon syrup, stir together 2 T. of fresh lemon juice with 1/2 cup of pure maple syrup.

For ease of cooking, combine the wet ingredients in a 1-quart measuring cup with a pouring lip, stir in the dry ingredients, and then pour the batter directly onto a hot skillet.

Serves 4
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 3 minutes per batch
Total Time: about 35 minutes

ingredients
1 cup peeled & grated raw sweet potato (grate finely... or grate in a food processor, then switch the blade to chop it into a thick paste)
1/2 t. freshly grated lemon peel
1 large egg or 2 medium eggs
1 cup milk
2 T. oil or melted butter
1 c. unbleached white flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
2 T. sugar

directions
In a bowl, combine the grated sweet potatoes, lemon peel, egg, milk & oil or butter. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, salt & sugar. Gently stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients just enough to combine. Do not beat or over stir. Set aside to rest for 5-10 minutes.

Warm a lightly oiled skillet on medium-high heat. When a drop of water bounces on the skillet, and before the oil smokes, pour on a scant 1/4 cup of batter to form each round pancake. After about 2 minutes, when the pancakes are evenly dotted with bubbles and about half the bubbles have broken, flip the pancakes. Cook the second side until lightly browned, about 1 minute. Continue to cook batches of pancakes until all of the batter is used.

Serve right away or keep warm in a 250F oven. If you plan to serve at room temperature or reheat later, cool the pancakes in a single layer on a flat surface and then stack for storage. If storing for more than a few hours, refrigerate.

These make really great, easily portable snacks, quick to grab on the go. Call them "Lemon Pancakes" (that's the predominant flavour anyway) and your kids will never know that they're about half veggie!

For inspiration: Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics, p. 129
Sweet Potato Pancake Recipe: Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics, p. 47
Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca

Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca

Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Sweet Potato & Ginger Soup

Following along with our winter "what's-in-season" cooking theme is a wonderful root vegetable that keeps, like the hard spaghetti squash of last week, so well over the course of the winter.

Typical sweet potatoes available in our Canadian market

Sweet potatoes are a tad confusing because they come in so many shapes, sizes, colours and varieties... and because they are often confused with yams. They can be knobbly or smooth, long, skinny & pointy, or round and fat. Adding to the confusion is the fact that a sweet potato, despite being a tuber, isn't a potato at all! Sweet potatoes are New World vegetables and feature heavily in South American & Southern U.S. cooking. They are one of the oldest vegetables known and have been around since prehistoric times. Native to South America, they cook faster than white potatoes and can be baked, fried, boiled, nuked (microwaved), roasted and eaten raw. For the purposes of most recipes, the differences between them matter little.

Brigette, our SWEFM volunteer
coordinator, used to see Pete in
his Greengrocer's shop when she
lived in Halifax. It's a small world!

According to Pete Luckett, the most common variety of sweet potato in Canada is the copper skinned variety with bright orange flesh. The flavour will depend on the variety... as a general rule, lighter-fleshed sweet potatoes are more delicate, nutty rather than sweet, while darker ones have the distinctly spicy-sweet taste most of us would expect. He also advises that you never peel sweet potatoes, as their flesh darkens as soon as it is exposed to air. Simply wash them off, giving them a light scrub.

Sweet potatoes are wonderfully versatile... they can become delicious oven-baked fries, they can add thickness and be the sweet basis of delicious creamed soups and slow-cooked stews, they can be mashed and accompany a succulent chicken or turkey or ham roast, and they can even form the basis of pancakes or waffles! Yup, sweet potatoes are a great ingredient in your kitchen arsenal.

Still not convinced that they should be a part of your culinary repertoire? Then you have to consider the health benefits. A general rule when considering nutrition science in your home kitchen is that the more vibrantly coloured a fruit or vegetable is, the more packed it is with nutrients and antioxidants. That holds very true for the humble sweet potato. High in fibre (especially if you eat the skin), potassium, antioxidants, betacarotene and vitamins E, A & C, sweet potatoes help to arm you against heart disease & cancer and delay the effects of aging on the brain. And because sweet potatoes have so much fibre, they are a far better choice for diabetics than white potatoes because the fibre helps to keep blood glucose levels from spiking. So even though they have a far sweeter mouth taste, they have a lower glycemic index and are a far better choice.

Sweet Potatoes are more perishable than other types of potatoes because their skin is thin, delicate and susceptible to scraping and bruising. To avoid shortening their shelf life, The Sweet Potato Buyers Guide from A.V. Thomas Produce recommends that they be kept in a cool dry area with good air flow. Dampness and heat will cause them to spoil, so don't store them near a heat source and don't wash them until you are ready to use them. You might think this means you should refrigerate them, but DON'T! Refrigeration causes the inside of the potato to become hard and will affect its taste.

sweet potato & ginger soup

Frozen ginger grated with the Lee
Valley wood rasp.

This is a very creamy Thai soup, packed with flavour, that has been a favourite of mine for many years. Yup, it's a Thai recipe. 

We think of sweet potatoes as being a North American vegetable that goes hand in hand with a Thanksgiving feast, but did you know that sweet potatoes are even more popular in Asia with 90% of the sweet potato world export market being made up of sweet potatoes from there? 

They cook up very quickly (10 minutes), so they can be ready in a (culinary) heart beat! This recipe is so simple to make, but so creamy in a deliciously smooth, tangy, sweet way, that you just would't think it could possibly be good for you!

Just a little kitchen tip: when grating ginger root, I find it far easier to grate it from frozen. Buy ginger in bulk & put it in the freezer in a ziplock bag. It isn't messy or fibrous when you grate it in a frozen state (and yes, you can grate it with the skin on). I also use a wood rasp... yup, a wood working tool that I got from Lee Valley Tools years ago and it is incredibly sharp (another trick my father taught me). They now sell them with a metal catching trough on them that makes using the rasp in the kitchen a cinch. kitchen wood rasp. And fresh in for christmas stockings this year, they have a hand protecting container that slides along the rasp surface and collects ginger bits in a little glass bowl. Check it out... Zester Mate.

Coconut milk comes in small tins
that are the perfect size for this recipe.

Also, a little shopping tip: buying coconut milk can be a bit confusing as there are many varieties and price points from which to choose. I've found that there really isn't much of a difference between them, except when it comes to "lite" coconut milk (like cloudy water) and regular coconut milk (which has a heavy cream on top... give it a good shake before opening the tin). I usually make a trip to Lucky 97 downtown or T & T at West Edmonton Mall to stock up as it's far cheaper there than at your regular grocery store.  (While I'm there I also stock up on fresh kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass and ginger as they're all infinitely cheaper there and can easily be popped in the freezer & used later with no special prep & no ill effects whatsoever. Rice is far less expensive there too). At those Asian grocery stores, coconut milk can be found in small tins that are the perfect size for this recipe. 

Don't worry about buying "lite" coconut milk. It is used in a very small amount for this recipe, and despite being high in fat, saturated fat, regular coconut milk is high in the right kind of fat... medium chain triglycerides... that are essential for our health, so it is a very nutritious, heart happy, addition to this recipe.

Yield: 8-10 servings

3 simple ingredients... the soup
before blending with just sweet potatoes, stock & ginger.

ingredients

6 c. cubed, peeled sweet potatoes (peeling is optional)

3½ c. chicken or vegetable stock

1T. minced ginger root

½ c. unsweetened, light coconut milk

3T. fresh lime juice

½ t. salt

½ t. pepper

1/4 c. sliced almonds, toasted

1/4 c. chopped, fresh cilantro

instructions

1. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes, stock & ginger. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover & simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.
2. Transfer to a food processor or blender, or use an immersion blender directly in the pot. Purée until smooth.
3. Return to the saucepan. Whisk in the coconut milk (be sure to scrape & include any of the yummy coconut cream that is stuck to the side of the tin), lime juice, salt & pepper. Cook over low heat until just heated through.
4. Ladle into bowls. 
5. Sprinkle with almonds & cilantro.

Vibrantly coloured, creamy & delicious...
this is the soup once it is puréed.

Info from The Greengrocer's Kitchen, by Pete Luckett, and from The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
Recipe from Anne Lindsay's New Light Cooking, p. 66

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Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee