After my surprise at seeing squash and brussels sprouts at the Midtown Farmers’ Market last week left me anxious about the coming of the end of the growing season in Minnesota, it was nice to notice this week that in spite of the appearance of these late-season vegetables the summer growing season remains in swing. There’s still time left to get some of the most beautiful produce this state has to offer.

Every time we arrive at the market I worry that there won’t be any more tomatoes. Not this week, though: we got our mixed heirlooms and Sungold tomatoes from Honey Creek Farm, and picked up some romas for sauce purposes. I found summer squash with the most intensely-yellow skin I have ever seen and long, flawless Japanese eggplants whose deep-purple color made me think of royal robes or red wine. Multicolored peppers can be had for a fraction of what they cost at the supermarket the rest of the year. Everything is getting bigger, too: huge heads of broccoli and cauliflower, baseball-sized potatoes, and for $2 more fennel than I normally eat in a whole year. Everything seems to be at its peak of ripeness and beauty—this is the time of year to be at the market.

And as if the amazing produce wasn’t reason enough to go to the Midtown Farmers’ Market, it was also Scandinavian day! We sampled some Danish Æbleskiver with Martha’s parents—our guests for the weekend. Juan and Linda were initially drawn to the æbleskiver for their similar size and shape to buñuelos, a Colombian cheese bread.

Like spherical pancakes, the æbleskiver were light and fluffy, dusted with powdered sugar and served with strawberry (as opposed to, say, lingonberry) jam.

Only in Minnesota!

With the canning season beginning and (nearly) two jars of tomato sauce under our belts (note that jar #2 is not quite so full as jar #1), I got curious about meat sauces. Aside from the type of canned food I’d generally stay away from, you don’t often see pasta sauces with meat in the grocery aisle. If we’re using a pre-made sauce, most of us are adding meat at home. With that in mind, I began to wonder what sort of conditions one would need to can a home-made meat sauce: would it be much different from the process of canning vegetarian tomato sauce? I asked this question of the canning expert of the moment over at Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn. Marisa McClellan, author of Food in Jars, gave her answer.

It’s actually a very different process. The reason we’re able to can fruits and some vegetables in nothing more than a boiling water canner is that they are high acid foods…. However, meat is a low acid food, which is the ideal environment for botulism. Because of this, low acid foods need to be processed in a pressure canner.

Read her full explanation here.

With all the positive attention the “local food movement” is getting these days, some reaction is inevitable. While I think there are fair criticisms to be leveled at locavores, a lot of what is written against eating local leaves me scratching my head. Such was my reaction when, reading a review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a critic discussing the practicality of local eating for non-upper-middle-class folks asked the question “After all, when was the last time you heard someone talk about the great bargain they found at a farmer’s market?”

It seems like I always get a good deal at the Midtown Farmers Market. I look forward to the summer farmers’ market season not only as a time to enjoy delicious fresh produce but also because my grocery bills will be significantly lower. You can get a lot of local vegetables for twenty bucks. This was just a gut feeling, though; I had never actually compared what I spend at the farmers’ market to what it would cost to buy the same food at the supermarket. But with my curiosity piqued by the locavore naysayers, I thought I’d try to put together some numbers.

I started by going to the Midtown Farmers’ Market on Saturday (Week 18 if you’re keeping track) and buying produce as I usually do (impulsively). I ended up with 3 Gingergold Apples, green/yellow beans, Celery still attached to its root (celeriac), sweet banana peppers, red peppers, six ears of corn, a pint of cherry tomatoes and a quart of beautiful heirloom tomatoes (I have been buying this exact tomato order from Honey Creek Farm for the past three weeks and will continue to until that sad day when there are no more tomatoes). The total for all this? $26.

For comparison, I went to two grocery stores. I chose the Wedge, our local co-op, because it is the place where I do most of my grocery shopping when the farmers’ market is not available. But since it won’t surprise anybody from the Twin Cities for me to say the Wedge is kind of expensive, I also checked out the prices at Rainbow, which is a generic, low-priced grocery store. For my readers in Michigan, Rainbow is kind of like Kroger or Meijer (not as extensive as Meijer though). The results of my shopping are summarized in the table below with the low price for each item highlighted.

I started by weighing the produce at home, since most produce is sold by weight, and calculating the price per pound at the farmers’ market based on what I paid. Next I set off for the Wedge and Rainbow to record their prices. Back at home, I calculated what the same mass of vegetables would have cost at each store (I did not use mass for corn since it is sold by the ear, and instead used the price per ear). I was able to find the exact same produce at the Wedge as I could at the farmers’ market (not all of it local, though). Rainbow was slimmer pickings, with no celeriac, parsnips, or heirloom tomatoes. For the latter, I used the price of the beefsteak tomatoes they did have.

If I had bought everything at the Wedge, my $26 dollars worth of vegetables would have cost $49.38, almost twice as much. At Rainbow, ignoring the two vegetables that were not available and substituting bland beefsteaks for sweet, delicious heirlooms I still would have spent slightly more, $27.57. And if I subtract the parsnips and celeriac from the farmers’ market total to reflect the goods available at Rainbow, the total for the farmers’ market was only $22. The farmers’ market is unequivocally cheaper than even a pretty cheap grocery store. This makes sense: at a farmers’ market you should be cutting out one or several middle men, dealing directly with the producer.

I don’t want to overstate my case: even if the raw cost of the goods is lower, there are a lot of other costs associated with shopping at the farmers’ market. It takes more time to shop at the farmers’ market; you have to pick out the goods, choosing between stalls that have similar produce. And, the market is only open on one or two days during the week, which can be inconvenient for someone with a busy work schedule. You probably still need to go to the grocery store to get additional items, more food-buying time. Then when you get home you have to clean and store the produce — I have spent more hours than I’d care to admit washing, drying and bagging greens. And then you have to know how to cook what you bought, a skill that takes time to develop.  There’s not much at the farmers’ market that is ready to eat after four minutes in the microwave (then again, there is plenty that is delicious to eat raw). It doesn’t hurt that all this shopping, storage and cooking is very fun, but it does seem to require that one be willing a fair amount of leisure time to food.

But when people talk about “getting a bargain” they’re usually just referring to the final price. By that standard, the last time I got a “great bargain” at the farmers’ market was the last time I went.

When Surly Hell was released last week, I prepared myself for what would be my one opportunity to try it (it sold out very quickly) by reading up on the style.  ’Hell’ is German for ‘light’ or ‘pale’, and according to my sage for all things beer, Garrett Oliver, the Helles style was developed as the Bavarian answer to the popularity of Bohemian pilsner. Traditional Bavarian lager was dark and with deeper flavor, Hellesbier was pale, golden and crisp. I found Surly Hell to fit the bill for this style exactly. While it was not a particularly unique beer, it was an excellent one — refreshing and actually quite fun to drink. It’s a shame the production was so limited.

But even if I’ll never get to drink it again, Surly Hell got me interested in Helles beers. On my most recent trip to the Four Firkins, the Helles Schlenkerla Lagerbier caught my eye. When I mentioned to the clerk that I was interested in this beer after trying Hell, he told me that this would be totally different. As it turns out, the Schlenkerla Brewery in Bamberg, the brewer of the Helles in question, is famous for a different beer: smokebeer. Smokebeer is made by smoking the barley malt before brewing. While the Helles I was in the process of buying is not smoked, it’s made with the same equipment as smokebeer, so it has a lot of residual smokiness. I’m not one to be dissuaded at the cash register: smoky Helles it was.

Trying the beer, I can’t say I agree with the clerk about it being totally different from Hell. The underlying beer was quite similar: crisp and sprightly, light-bodied and refreshing. But then there was the smoke. Even though the beer was not smoked, the smoke flavor was fairly strong; a bit like the flavor you got from smelling burning alder or cedar as you smoke a trout (for example). The flavor was not so strong as to drown out everything else that was going on with the beer, but the flavor of smoke was unmistakably there.

What to eat with this golden smoky beer? Barbecue, obviously. But what if you don’t have a grill? Well, then you need to get creative. I was looking for something that would match the smoke in the beer, but, lacking the capacity to actually make smoke, I thought a deep roasting might do the trick. I cut summer squash, zucchini and eggplant from the farmers’ market into large chunks, salted them and let them sit in the colander for an hour to exude some water. I then added a coarsely chopped onion and tossed everything in oil, salt and pepper. I placed everything on a half-sheet pan in the oven for about a half an hour until the vegetables were deeply browned and starting to burn. B

Once the roasted vegetables had cooled slightly, I tossed them with cooked quinoa, big chunks of heirloom tomatoes (these tomatoes were so good off the vine that it seemed a shame to roast them; that would be a good option for improving inferior tomatoes), minced parsley and a lemon vinaigrette (lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper). I thought the zippiness of the beer would be complimented by a lemony salad. And since Helles is so light and refreshing, I had some leeway to make the salad richer, which I accomplished with 4 oz of crumbled goat cheese that immediately became melted goat cheese.

For all the thought that went into constructing the salad around the beer, this pairing was a dud. I thought the Helles aspects of the beer worked well with the pockets of fresh tomato in the salad, the acid of the lemon juice, and as relief from the rich goat cheese. But there was nothing in the salad that could do anything with the beer’s smoke. Roasted vegetables, as much as I might want them to, do not taste smoky — they taste sweet. Perhaps grilling the vegetables over charcoal would fix this problem, but for me that is not an option. After trying the beer, the choice of barbecue seemed so obvious: drinking this beer would be like adding liquid smoke to the barbecue sauce; there would be total continuity between the food and the beer. In fact it’s hard to imagine a more perfect pairing.

As for the salad, I don’t think the idea of pairing with a traditional Helles is a bad one; it was the smoke that was so off-putting. Perhaps if they make another batch of Surly Hell I’ll make this salad again to celebrate.

This was a good beer and a good salad, they just weren’t very good together. Such is the magic of pairings.

I hate to toot my own horn, but I did an awesome job going through all my produce from the farmers’ market last week.  Between pickling, trying new recipes, and actually eating all our leftovers, by the end of the week our fridge, even our vegetable drawer, was looking empty. We even had to go to the grocery store for dinner Friday night since there was nothing left to eat in the house.

With this blank canvas to fill, I think I might have overdone it this morning. It didn’t help that this week instead of my usual school-size backpack I wore my Duluth Pack — something about that giant backpack makes you want to fill it. And with the variety and quality of produce available this time of year, it’s pretty hard to resist. Especially when $3 trays are 2 for $5. But what am I going to do with all this?

The haul for this week was: 3 onions, 8# generic tomatoes, basil, cantaloupe, fennel, garlic, potatoes, salad turnips, poblanos, honey gold tomatoes, variety heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and summer squash and radishes. The cantaloupes are new for me this week but Brett and Mary of Real Bread recommended them strongly.

I made sure to return to the Honey Creek Farm stand where last week we bought edamame and sun gold and heirloom tomatoes that made some of the best caprese and Greek salads of all time. More tomatoes, for eating raw, were a must and although there were no edamame this week, there was another interesting vegetable: salad turnips. Apparently these Japanese vegetables taste like a mild radish. Although I like my radishes sharp and spicy, I couldn’t turn down a new vegetable to try.

As for those eight pounds of tomatoes, I bought those with the idea that it is time for me to finally start putting up tomato sauce for the winter. I kick myself every year for failing to do so, so this is the year. I am planning on following Hank Shaw’s instructions for making and bottling the stuff. I figure 8# should give me 3 quart sized jars, a good start.

As for the rest, well, I have no idea. But hopefully I’ll come up with something before next Saturday when it’s time to load up again.