fbpx

Search Results

Searched for: 30
Show only:   News   Pages   Events   Recipes   Show All

Know Our Grower: Cherry Tree House Mushrooms

Our annual Know Our Grower series continues as our growing season thrives. Know Our Grower is an opportunity to connect shoppers with the talented group of local farmers producing our food and to sample recipes that allow their flavors to shine. We will be sharing information about more partner farms and producers as the season progresses throughout the summer, fall and into the early winter.

Jeremy McAdams launched Cherry Tree House Mushrooms (CTHM) in 2009, a mushroom farm that provides log-grown mushrooms to the Twin Cities. CTHM started in many residential yards in south Minneapolis but has recently moved to a new farm in Clayton, WI.

Cherry Tree House Mushrooms will be at the Friendship Store sampling their shiitake mushrooms Friday, Aug. 4 from 3:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.

Natural Sea Recall

On June 14, Natural Sea announced a voluntary recall of its fish fillets with whole wheat breading due to the potential presence of undeclared milk. This recalled product has been removed from the shelf at both of our stores. Between March 16 and June 14, 2017 Seward Co-op may have sold product affected by the recall.

Natural Sea–fish fillets with whole wheat breading–$6.49
8 OZ
UPC: 4256300220
Use by date: 9/02/18

If you purchased this product at Seward Co-op between March 16 and June 14, 2017, it will be fully refunded at either our Franklin or Friendship store Customer Service desk.

Seward-made Sausages

Here at Seward Co-op, we take pride in working directly with local farmers, processing whole carcass animals in-house, and having a large variety of fresh, Seward-made sausages. We work directly with many small local farms that we have had the opportunity to visit and see firsthand how the animals are raised and handled. Check out our new seasonal sausages (left)!

Have you tried the Franklin Frank? Summer is the perfect time, if you haven’t already. Our sausage makers have handcrafted the perfect old-fashioned hot dog! It’s made in our own production facility on Franklin Ave. The ingredients are 100% locally sourced and the herbs and spices are all organic—no filler. Stop by our full-service meat counter and pick up some dogs to grill at the park! Or have us grill it to perfection for you at the café, topped with house-made pickles, onions and mustard. Get creative and check out our amazing selection of locally made condiments. Kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles, mustard, hot sauce—we have it all!

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COMMUNITY FOODS PROGRAM

Seward Co-op Wins Sustainability Star Award

Seward Co-op has been named a Sustainability Star by National Co+op Grocers (NCG) for excellence in our sustainability efforts. The award recognizes food co-ops that demonstrate outstanding leadership by making a positive impact on social, environmental and local economic issues.

At its annual meeting in April, NCG honored Seward Co-op for its commitment to positive environmental impacts and improving sustainable practices where possible, particularly in the area of waste management. Seward Co-op’s three business locations recycling and compost efforts divert approximately 85% of waste from landfill or incineration.

Like all Sustainability Star award winners, Seward Co-op participates in Co+efficient, NCG’s sustainability program that helps co-op grocery stores measure their impacts, drive improvements, and share the story of their important work with community members and other co-ops. This marks the second year that NCG has highlighted co-ops by awarding Sustainability Star honors. Seward Co-op is one of 10 co-ops nationwide recognized for their 2016 performance.

We are proud to share our successes and draw community attention to the many challenges facing ethical and sustainable food production and distribution in an inclusive socially responsible manner. In the last two years, we have expanded our diverse workforce to more than 330 employees earning a living wage.

The cooperative sector has long been an innovator in sustainability. Earning Sustainability Star recognition shows that Seward Co-op is leading the way, not only by excelling in our sustainability pursuits, but by sharing the details and result of our efforts for the benefit of co-ops and communities around the country.

I.M. Healthy Original Creamy SoyNut Butter

On March 3, The SoyNut Butter Co. announced a voluntary recall of its I.M. Healthy Original Creamy SoyNut Butter. This voluntary recall is in response to the FDA alert of a possible link between this product and illnesses regarding E.coli. Both Franklin and Friendship stores have carried the product in the last three months. This recalled product has been removed from the shelf, and we will return the item to the shelf as soon as non-recalled product is available.

I.M. Healthy Original Creamy SoyNut Butter
UPC: 65498991010
Price : $6.59 (15 oz.)
Sell By Dates:
08-30-18 or 08-31-18.
More information from the manufacturer is available at 800-288-1012.

If you purchased this product at Seward Co-op between Dec. 3, 2016 and today, it will be fully refunded at either our Franklin or Friendship store Customer Service desk.

Edna Lewis The Grand Dame of Farm-To-Table

The Farm-to-Table movement promotes the importance of producing food locally and delivering that food to local consumers. Linked to the local food movement, Farm-toTable is mainly promoted by the restaurant communities. Among the well-known patron saints of Farm-to-Table are Michael Pollan, Dan Barber and Alice Waters. There is one name that is just as important to the movement, albeit not as well known to those outside of the culinary world — Edna Lewis.

For centuries, blacks have cooked in Southern kitchens, on plantations, in mansions, in boarding houses and hotels, and on riverboats. This was affirming work that encouraged black women to embrace the myriad ways our foremothers used food for economic freedom and independence, community building, cultural work and to develop personal identity.

Long before it became a movement, Farm-to-Table was a way of life for many Americans in the South. This was true for Edna Lewis. Miss Lewis, as she was called, grew up in Freetown, Va. The name was adopted because the first residents had all been freed from chattel slavery and wanted to be known as a town of free people.

Miss Lewis had no formal culinary training. Her classical presentation of Southern food made you, as Chef Joe Randall says, want “to put the South in your mouth.” She went on to become a celebrated black chef in New York in the late 1940s and 1950s, when there were few, if any, other black or female chefs working in the city. Edna learned to cook alongside her family. They cooked food that was always fresh from the gardens, fields, woodlands, rivers and lakes nearby. The food was simply prepared but made with great care and devotion. Edna wove these lessons into the foundation of her cooking style.

“We lived by the seasons,” she wrote, in The Taste of Country Cooking. Two of the chapter headings read, “An Early Summer Dinner of Veal Scallions and the First Berries” and “Emancipation Day Dinner” in the fall, which she described in a 1993 NPR interview.

She explained, “the food that you would carry would be the food of fall, which included game, and a lot of people carry roast chicken, which was a chicken that had become of age and you no longer could fry. And of course, pork and fall greens like turnip greens or mustard greens. And sweet potatoes and pickles and preserves and yeast bread and some dessert like deep-dish apple pie or damson plum pie.”

Sometimes fried chicken is just about the chicken. In the South, where paradoxes live next door to each other and race, class, and gender clash with particular complexity, it can be about much more. Food can be about families broken and mended, unlikely friendships, and redemption. Examining the complex relationship between racist and realistic characterizations of our food traditions, we must acknowledge the destructive legacy associated with negative images of African American food choices. It is through remembering Miss Lewis’s contribution to the contemporary food movement that we are able to acknowledge and honor that legacy on our plates.

Spicy Collards in Tomato-Onion Sauce

“As a child in Virginia, Miss Lewis says, she didn’t even know there was such a thing as collard greens. And though we knew them in Alabama, we thought of them as crude and didn’t eat them. Now I love them, however, whether simply cooked in pork stock or finished, as here, in a spicy tomato sauce. (Miss Lewis will eat collards when I cook them but seems to have no interest in preparing them herself.) Other greens are also delicious served in this sauce — especially escarole — but most will need far less cooking time than collards.” — Jemimah Code

Ingredients

1 ½ pounds collard greens

6 cups vegetable or beef stock

3 Tbsp. olive oil

1 large onion, chopped (about 1 ¼ cups)

1 Tbsp. minced garlic

½ tsp. crushed red-pepper flakes (more or less, according to taste)

½ tsp. each salt and freshly ground black pepper

38 oz. canned whole, peeled tomatoes, drained

Method

Wash and drain the collards. Remove the stems and discard. Cut the collard leaves crosswise into 1-inch strips. Bring the stock to a rolling boil in a large Dutch oven, drop in the collard greens, and cook, uncovered, for 30–40 minutes, until tender. Drain the greens, and reserve the cooking liquid. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, over moderate heat for 10 minutes, until the pieces are translucent and tender. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. Stir well to distribute the seasonings, and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Add the drained tomatoes and 1 ½ cups of the liquid reserved from cooking the greens. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Taste for seasoning, and adjust as needed. Add the drained collard greens, and simmer for an additional 10 minutes. Taste for seasoning again, and serve hot. Serves 6.

Adapted from The Jemimah Code

A Cooperative Legacy

Until recently, if you asked where cooperatives originated, many people would cite the Rochdale Pioneers. These were the 28 textile mill workers from the town of Rochdale, England, who formed the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society in 1844 in response to poor working conditions, low wages, adulterated food and exploitation. They created the first sustainable cooperative business and are credited with articulating the guiding principles that became what we know today as the International Cooperative Principles.

The story of cooperation, and furthermore cooperative economics, is not exclusive to Europeans; it has been adopted by countless cultures around the globe. This is particularly true in African American history. Cooperative Hall of Famer Jessica Gordon Nembhard opens the door to critical aspects of Black cooperative history in her book “Collective Courage.” Nembhard continues the research of W.E.B. Du Bois from the early 20th century to catalogue the extensive efforts of African American cooperatives. She places co-ops solidly as precursors to and tools used in the Civil Rights Movement. She clearly demonstrates that the co-op narrative belongs to everyone.

Tom Pierson, a local research assistant to Dr. Nembhard, shared in a recent interview with the filmmakers of Radical Roots that the Twin Cities was home to multiple “first wave” cooperative grocery stores — five of which were predominantly African American based. Many of these started in the early 1940s, more than three decades prior to the majority of “new wave” food co-ops that operate today. Pierson discovered many of these co-ops in his research of the Franklin Cooperative Creamery (FCC) for Seward Co-op. FCC built the Creamery building and supported these first wave co-ops. Of the five African American co-ops that existed, a few shared neighborhoods with the food co-ops today: the Sumner Cooperative operated in the Harrison neighborhood of North Minneapolis, near the site of the soon-to-open Wirth Co-op; the Co-ops, Inc. of Minneapolis that served the Bryant and Central neighborhoods with a store at 41st Street and Chicago Avenue, was near Seward’s current Friendship store; and the Credjafawn Co-op Store, a project of the Credjafawn Social Club, was located in St Paul’s Rondo neighborhood near Mississippi Market’s present-day Selby-Dale store.

African American co-ops also formed simultaneously with Seward Co-op and other new wave co-ops. As in the ’40s, these were located in North Minneapolis, Rondo and the Bryant-Central neighborhoods. The Bryant-Central Co-op opened in the mid-1970s and was started by Moe Burton, uncle of Gary Cunningham, the executive director of Metropolitan Economic Development Association and spouse of Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges.

Pierson notes that co-ops in this era were typically run by unpaid volunteers. However, the Bryant-Central Co-op was a pioneer when it came to paying staff and thinking big. They envisioned a store more than twice the size of most large co-ops today. Unable to raise the capital to build to scale, Bryant-Central Co-op closed in 1978. Burton and others in the community attempted to start a new co-op in the mid-1990s, but due to Burton’s untimely death, as well as a lack of resources, the store never materialized.

At Seward Co-op we are proud to honor and build on the legacies of past cooperators. People like W.E.B. Du Bois, Mo Burton and groups like the Credjafawn Sociai Club, not to mention, the countless unnamed individuals that did the physical work of starting first wave co-ops are critical in our understanding of the stories of those who came before us. Communities, like our own, have used cooperatives in order to end oppression and eradicate injustices, particularly in food justice.