It’s no secret to regular readers of this blog, or regular readers from the summer of 2009 at least, that I get pretty excited about going to the farmers market, especially Minneapolis’s Midtown Farmers Market. When asparagus, tomatoes, or sweet corn show up on vendors’ tables that excitement is easy enough to understand, but I’m […]

To paraphrase Sara Bareilles, I’m not gonna write you a ratatouille recipe. (I promise that will be the last Sara Bareilles reference – ever – on this blog.) I’ve done it before, and with farmers markets overflowing with more zucchini and eggplant than a blogger knows what to do with, you can be sure you’ll […]

There are few things more satisfying on a cold winter’s evening than sitting down to a meal brought about by your own craft and ingenuity. When a morning spent tracking rabbits across the snowed-in woodlands yields a young hare to serve as the centerpiece to a meal, garnished by shallots from the root cellar, carefully […]

Call me a pessimist, but in spite of all the amazing advances being made in the realm of cold weather fruits I don’t think anybody’s ever going to grow citrus in Minnesota. So what’s the hard-core locavore fundamentalist zealot to do when he finds himself in the North country and craving a glass or two […]

All the time she spends away from our land – with what seems like most of the year seized by Old Man Winter’s cold, dead hands – makes the return of the Green Goddess to our fields and forests so much more sweet; an unrivaled cause for celebration. The objects of her cult are easily […]

As much as I love the fresh vegetables at the Midtown Farmers Market, the joy of shopping there comes from more than just the products you can buy. Today, that joy was most aptly expressed by the beautiful weather: after a season-opener featuring gale-force winds and a second week where we endured a frigid bike […]

Ah, springtime. Its combination of tender green vegetables and temperatures often still cold enough to allow keeping the oven at 500ºF for a few hours make it almost the perfect time to cook pizza. Almost, were it not for the fact that tomatoes are still months away. But tomatoes – while crucial to many pies […]

We’re not accustomed to visiting the May farmers market the morning after some (very slight) snowfall, but the morning’s bright blue skies  were enough to encourage us to hop on our bikes and head down to the Midtown Farmers Market. Though old man winter has stretched out one shivering, icy finger in a desperate attempt […]

It’s finally here! It’s been pretty warm in Minnesota for about a month, but that only made the lack of fresh local produce seem even crueler. As of yesterday, the food drought was over with the advent of the Midtown Farmers Market. Martha and I were so excited that we arrived shortly after market open […]

It’s springtime again, which means the Internet is running rampant with reports of ramps. Amidst all the gushing over this early allium, I read probably the best assessment of ramps ever written: Most “spring” menus are cruel teases. The good stuff we really want, like local peas and asparagus, doesn’t turn up for at least […]