I’m fully aware of how empty my early farmers market boosterism sounds: “Really, even though you’ll only be able to buy a pint of strawberries and a head of lettuce, it’s totally worth making the trip to the market! Just think what you might find!” Okay, Tom. Whatever.

Well I’m happy to say those weeks are definitively over! As of last weekend, the first Saturday market in June, the market has finally hit its full stride. I could barely contain myself as I went from stall to stall, seizing on the fresh — and small in a cute way — vegetables: Chard! Snap peas! Garlic! New potatoes! Kale! Friseé! Basil! Leeks! Rhubarb! Strawberries! Finally, the makings of a feast.

Markets like these — rife with fresh and tender vegetables — allow me to make my favorite post-farmers market lunch: produce, steamed or blanched, with homemade mayonnaise, hummus, or any other sauce you like to dip them in. I did cheat and supplement the Midtown new potatoes and snap peas with asparagus from The Wedge (but hey, they’re my year round farmers market).

All that and I barely made a dent in the week’s haul. There will be plenty more meals this week derived almost entirely from market produce. The fun is just beginning.

May in Minnesota, however mild, is not exactly a month of abundant agricultural production. Plants just haven’t had enough time to shake off the winter chill and start the reproductive cycle that brings us delicious veggies all summer. Given that fresh local produce is hard to come by in this early month, one might question why Martha and I bother to strap on bike helmets every Saturday morning and pedal down to the Midtown Farmers Market. Why not wait till June?

The answer is, of course, that there is more to the market than the vegetables. In addition to talented artists and some intriguing specialty food options, Midtown is boasting a very impressive lineup of prepared food vendors this year. There are the favorites from last season: the Magic Bus Cafe, Crêperie Mala, Taco Taxi, and Fireroast Mountain Cafe (who fill the much-needed tamale niche). But there are also some exciting new vendors: this week brought the debut of Olive Pizza, who are cooking wood-fired pizzas to order at the market.

Olive Pizza is the brainchild of Elizabeth Vossen, who also serves as lead pizzaiola. After a summer spent lugging pizza screens to friends houses to satisfy a seemingly-never ending demand for grilled pizza, Elizabeth and her husband decided it might be fun to try their hand churning out pizzas professionally at the farmers market. Although they loved their grilled pizzas, they figured the seven minutes it took to bake them would be a little too long for a production environment. And so they took the plunge and invested in a very impressive mobile set-up, with a brand new trailer made in Colorado (still boasting a temporary CO license!) and an oven from Forno Bravo.

When I asked Elizabeth if she had any previous food service experience she replied, “Only if you count working at Dairy Queen in high school.” Experienced or not, I was impressed by the professional operation they were running. I ordered, paid for, and received my pizza all within a few minutes, and enjoyed passing the time in between chatting with fellow pizza nerds.

As for the pizzas themselves, they are excellent. With wood-fired pizzas, the crust is paramount, and the Olive Pizza crust is just as it should be: cracker crisp on the edges but soft and slightly chewy throughout and, most importantly, spottily charred—top and bottom. The sauce is bright with acid and just slightly sweet. I ordered the mushroom and Italian sausage pizza and Martha the pesto-tomato. The toppings were great — I am excited to see what they will do with some of the fresh market produce as it begins to arrive in the weeks to come.

Oh, speaking of produce, there’s some of that, too. Gardens of Eagan continues to bring some of the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever had, as well as a variety of lettuces including some artful baby romaine new this week. Rhubarb also made its first appearance, so I made sure to buy way too much of that as well. It’s a small variety of vegetables to be sure, and lacking these early arrivals I’m not sure I’d be able to bring myself to come; but then again, the wood-fired pizza alone might be worth the trip.

After a long hibernation, this morning was my first opportunity to return to work in the Common Roots Garden since the final fall harvest. Danny Schwartzman, owner of Common Roots, was up early to help me and fellow volunteer Elise (pictured below) to get some of the early seeds into the ground.

As you can see in the images here, some of the plants from last year (garlic and lettuces) are already coming back on their own. Other pieces of last year’s harvest also remain. A few frozen beets with their bright flesh stuck out from the now-thawed earth, leftover dried bean-pods spilled their contents, and turnips littered the freshly turned soil.

Today’s work went toward planting peas, spinach, arugula, and radishes and re-stringing the twine surrounding the planted beds both to help us know where we’d already planted seeds and to prevent others from walking over the beds. Danny took care of spreading fertilizer over the planted areas, using a liquid sourced naturally from worms fed on coffee grounds.

In its second year, the Common Roots Garden is still in need of volunteers for mulching, planting, and weeding throughout the season. If you lent a hand last year and would like to return again or if you’re looking for a new volunteer opportunity, contact the café at info (at) commonrootscafe (dot) com.

We visited the Art Shanty Projects at Medicine Lake this afternoon with Hailey. Despite the rain and perhaps because today is the WARMEST DAY OF THE YEAR at thirty-six degrees, we enjoyed our first visit to the shanties. Having come prepared (thanks to Mel) with art to share, all three of us exchanged art at the Ice Art Swap Shanty. Tom took home an antler-themed picture frame, I found a set of notecards, and Hailey traded for a piece of pottery.

Our favorite was Tiny Shanty, the smallest three story mansion on the ice where visitors can create tiny art and enjoy tiny tea time courtesy of the tiny wood stove’s tiny log fire.

Thanks to Scott and Caly for welcoming us to their tiny home. Check out Tiny Shanty’s gallery for more pictures or the Projects’ flickr page.

Click the image to see this photo set on Flickr.

Seven local designers, two great calendars. See below for details on how to get yours.

happify

For the fourth year running, happify brings a 2010 calendar in the form of 12 postcards, offset printed in a rich chocolate brown on an extra-thick (110#) recycled cream 5″x7″ cardstock. On the reverse side there’s space for writing a note and sending them off as postcards to friends and family. These may be oversized according to USPS standards, but they’re well worth the 44¢ stamp. Calendars are shipping now at happify.etsy.com.

$12, plus shipping ($2 in the U.S., $3 to Canada, and $5 to anywhere else). Free shipping when ordering 2 or more calendars.

Through December 31, 2009, Martha and Tom readers will receive complimentary shipping on all happify orders (by including M-AND-T in the space labeled Message to the seller, optional) and get $2 off additional calendars when ordering more than one calendar. Please note that the discount may not be reflected immediately. Happify will refund any shipping charges through paypal.

redblackbrown

Redblackbrown‘s second annual calendar is the work of six Minneapolis designers. Each month is based on a different fortune cookie fortune from local Asian restaurants. The redblackbrown calendar is screenprinted on cover weight kraft paper in white and brown cut to 4.65″x5.4″ sheets. See all twelve months here.

$20, plus shipping ($4 in the U.S.).

Order soon: redblackbrown printed this year’s calendar in a limited run of 100. Find your calendar at redblackbrown’s Big Cartel shop.

Note that Minneapolis locals can place orders for pickup by emailing hello (at) redblackbrown (dot) com.

Images :: happify and redblackbrown

Do It Green! Annual Green Gifts Fair

• Saturday, November 21st, 2009
• 10am to 5pm
• Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis on Lake St. & Chicago. Ave.
• FREE entrance (vendors accepting cash or check only, though, so come prepared!)

Do It Green! Minnesota’s Green Gifts Fair takes place this Saturday, conveniently before the crazed post-Thanksgiving shopping. Organizers envision the event as an introduction to green giving and low impact ideas to celebrate the holidays with over 70 vendors to explore. Shoppers are encouraged to bring their own bags and coffee mugs. If you plan to eat at Midtown while you shop, consider bringing silverware and a reusable napkin as well. Those who bike, bus, or carpool will receive a free gift at the event. More information doitgreen.org.

Gastro Non Grata: A Salute to Comfort Food and Cans

• Sunday, November 22, 2009
• Doors at 6pm
• 21+
• At the TRIPLE ROCK, 629 Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis
• $5 at the door, additional donations help Craig & Jeff break even.

Beer, food, and music! What more could you want? Northern Brewer will start the night with a Lambic tasting and chef Landon Schoenfeld will present three sample courses as the night goes on. The beer guest for the night is 21st Amendment Brewery. Music by Falcon Crest, Arctic Universe, School of Rock, Cadillac Kolstad, Cornbread Harris, and The Annandale Cardinals. As before, Clancey’s Meat and Fish will provide meat door prizes as only they can. More info at Gastro Non Grata’s blog.

Midtown Farmers’ Market‘s Thanksgiving Market

• Wednesday, November 25, 2009
• 1pm to 4pm
• Lake Street and 22nd Ave S near the Light Rail in Minneapolis

Meat, vegetables, apples, bread, chocolates, and canned goods will all be available. Weather permitting there may be crafts as well. Real Bread bread will be available by advanced order: contact Brett at brettlaidlaw (at) eckmeier (dot) com for options. Hilltop Pastures will be at the market as well. According to the market website, they have a waiting list for turkeys, but they’ll be dropping off orders and selling other products on Wednesday. Thanks to midtownfarmersmarket.org for the details!

No exclamation points were harmed in the writing of this post!

True, Halloween hasn’t even happened yet, but Thanksgiving is growing near. The Wedge, the source of the turkey pictured here, has already posted their Thanksgiving hours on their homepage and will begin taking turkey orders on Monday, November 2. Tomorrow will be the last day for the Midtown Farmers’ Market, but as Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine recently noted, if you’re a Mill City shopper:

you should be aware that you can order Wild Acres turkeys from the Mill City Farmers Market. But don’t dawdle, supplies are limited and the deadline is Nov. 13.

This year we’re ordering our turkey from Clancey’s Meats and Fish in Linden Hills, where they just began taking orders. From what I know thus far, Clancey’s turkeys are never frozen: orders are taken, sent to the turkey farm, and the turkeys are slaughtered and delivered for pickup just before the big day. (Also good to know: Clancey’s can connect you with sources for heritage breeds if you’re interested.) The birds start at 10–15 lbs. and go up from there in 5 lb. increments. At this point I’m not sure how many will be joining us for Thanksgiving dinner so it’s hard to estimate how much turkey we’ll need. I’m curious—what size bird are you ordering? Are there any other great sources for turkeys we should know about?

There’s something perverse about biking across a snow-covered city to get to the farmers’ market — particularly when it’s only 10 days in to October. But that was the situation we faced this morning as we headed out to the Midtown Farmers’ Market. There are a few weekends left for the market, but with snow (and, more critically, frost) here the vegetables will be thinning out (Gardens of Eagan recently tweeted about a slushy head of broccoli they pulled from the field) as will the market shoppers, until only the die-hards remain.

Frost only came in the last week, so farmers still had plenty to offer. Feeling that our diet was lacking in things green — a problem which only worsens during the winter — we bought broccoli, parsley and kale. We also bought three kinds of squash: acorn, spaghetti and delicata. With the squash from last week, I now have five distinct varieties of squash sitting in a bowl in my dining room. Clearly, some kind of squashstravaganza is called for.

As if five squash weren’t enough starchy, orange-fleshed, sweet vegetable, we bought sweet potatoes, in a 2 for $5 with Russets. We also bought garlic to store (although garlic doesn’t last long around here). And, after a successful apple tart last night, we bought more of the Haralsons that were sold to us last week as the ultimate baking apple . Finally, we got a loaf of honey-wheat bread from Brett and Mary of Real Bread.

As we were buying the sweet potatoes from Julie of Pflaum Farms she mentioned that her mom kept talking about sweet potato fries. That seemed like a good idea to us; when we got home we roasted a few of the sweet potatoes, cut into sticks and tossed with oil, salt, pepper and thyme. The fries accompanied sandwiches made on Brett and Mary’s bread with mayo, turkey from last night’s dinner, roasted red peppers and black beans. Washed down with cider, this made for a nice lunch on a snowy fall day.