Hachiya Persimmons at Seward Co-op.
I first tried a persimmon in my early twenties during my first autumn living in Japan. I had neither heard of nor seen a persimmon before, and I was excited by the chatter of the locals who were eager for persimmons – Japan’s national fruit – to reappear as the temperature dropped and the fruits were harvested.

When the persimmon display went up at my local market, I knew nothing of how to select a ripe persimmon. I chose a firm and unblemished fruit and as a result bit into the most bitter, astringent and distasteful fruit I had ever tried. Rashly and naively, I swore off persimmons after that first taste.

Although some varieties of persimmon are native to North America, the varieties we most often see commercially are Japanese persimmons. The flatter fuyu persimmons resemble a tomato in shape, are yellow-orange in color, and may be eaten firm as an apple and still have a mild sweetness. The persimmon I first tried was likely a hachiya – one of a few astringent varieties that must “blet” (a state of softness or decay brought on by over ripening) to bring them to their prime. The hachiya is more elongated than the fuyu, its skin a deeper orange, and when ripe, it has a honeyed sweetness with notes of apricot. Hachiya persimmons are ready to eat when the skin has become leathery and the flesh jellied. The softer and more water balloon-like the hachiya feels, the sweeter the fruit will be.

In the Midwest, we begin to see persimmons in the late fall and in November there is a flush of both fuyu and hachiya varieties. A few years back when I started working at Seward, I was reintroduced to persimmons and in the spirit of knowing the produce we carry, I pushed aside my reservations and tried them again. This time I was prepared – and delighted.

Persimmons may simply be eaten out of hand. While they are delicious on their own, I prefer scooping out the flesh of a fully bletted hachiya persimmon and serving it alongside Donnay chèvre to spread together on slices of bread or crackers. Persimmon of either variety can be cooked into chutneys or frozen whole and eaten as a simple sorbet.

In Japan, they are available fresh as I found them but the astringent varieties are also hung to dry for weeks to become the delicacy known as hoshigaki. The under ripe persimmons are peeled, dunked in boiling water or alcohol to disinfect the surface and then are hung on cords for several weeks. In Japanese homes and shops, the strings of persimmons are hung outside from the eaves of buildings (see below). Here they could be hung inside in a sunny window to protect from frost and squirrels. After a few days of hanging, the persimmons are gently kneaded or massaged every other day. After a few weeks, the sugars will rise to the surface of the fruit as a white, powdery finish. In 4-6 weeks, the persimmons should be shriveled with a chewy texture and a sweetness comparable to dates – a treat well worth the wait and effort.

Hoshigaki drying in Japan. Photo by Laura Bell via Creative Commons License.

Seward Co-op’s 2014 scorecard and annual report is now available. You can read a downloadable version here or pick up a copy at the Customer Service desk. Check out our financial and social performance for this year and learn from the general manager and the board president about where the co-op is headed in 2015.

A voluntary recall of Essentia Electrolyte Water (1.5 liter) has been issued due to possible mold or yeast problems. No illness has been reported to date; the yeast/mold was discovered during routine sampling. This product was sold at Seward Co-op with a price of $2.69 and a UPC 0657227 00050.

Only product dated between July 22 and July 25th has been recalled. If in doubt, do not consume the product. Recalled products will be fully refunded at our Customer Service desk.

Any additional updates can be found at http://seward.coop/posts/productrecalls

I’m the father of two darn good eaters.

My son can rip through a plate of rice and black beans like a lawn mower and my daughter actually packs cucumbers in her lunch. They aren’t the best eaters (Skittles and Nerds are the bane of my existence), and I always wish they’d eat more at any given sitting. But looking at my 8- and 11-year-old, I can say they do choose healthful foods, and I’m very proud of that.

How did they become such good eaters?

Step one is…

1. Start Early. Recent research shows that a kid’s palate for fruits and veggies actually begins to establish itself before he or she is even born.

You know what that means, partner of Mom-to-be? Making sure Mom is eating healthfully and getting through morning sickness is important, but actually making the trip for an organic yellow watermelon 30 minutes before the co-op closes because that’s what she’s craving is striking a blow for good eating in your kid’s future.

Later, first foods can be fruits and veggies. Avocado mashed up is a perfectly decent first food, and so are bananas, sweet potatoes, applesauce, and mashed potatoes.

As your kid gets a little older, making mealtime fun is key. If all he or she hears is “Don’t eat that,” and “Clean your plate,” you’ll raise a picky non-eater who hates food, guaranteed.

Ask yourself this: Am I having at fun at dinner? If so, your kid probably is, too.

My strategy was always to make up games for my two kids. Here are a couple games that can make dinner time a hoot.

2. The Don’t-Eat Game. This game teaches important lessons like eating well, reverse psychology, and comedic shtick.

Saying to your 3-year-old, “Whatever you do…DON’T…EAT…the BROCOLLI,” is the surest way to create a rabid little broccoli-lover. When they take a bite, be outraged. “You ATE the BROCOLLI?” When they reach for another floret, say, “Hey-hey-hey, I WARNED you!” If they ask for seconds and thirds, then you’re doing it right.

My 8-year-old still asks to play The Don’t-Eat Game, and both my kids still eat the broccoli first in my stir-fries.

3. The Giant. A variation on The Don’t-Eat Game, this one works wonders, too. The broccoli florets are trees, the round carrots slices are car wheels, the apple slices are canoes, and your toddler is The Dreaded Giant.

“No, Giant, no! Don’t pull up that oak tree and EAT it!!”

You get the idea.

Till she was 7 or 8, my niece Andrea would say, “Pass the trees, please.”

4. Salad People. Mollie Katz is not just a cookbook author, she is also a brilliant strategist for good eating. The author of “The Enchanted Broccoli Forest Cookbook” also wrote a book called “Salad People,” and Katz’s approach to getting kids to eat should be adopted by parents and daycares everywhere.

At lunch or dinner, lay out a wide array of foods, fruits, and veggies to use as art material (even if it’s food they say they don’t like) and let your kids make faces, people, houses, cats, whatever they want to make. I used to keep a couple Tupperware containers of “food-art material” ready at all times for Salad People. Cooked spaghetti noodles can be hair and pickled beets from Angelica’s Gardens can be eyes. They both store well.

When finished, eat the eyes! Eat the hair! Eat the nose! Oh, no, DON’T EAT the nose!

I’m almost positive my son’s lifelong love of kalamata olives is traceable to making Salad People. He wasn’t born craving them.

The lesson of Salad People is to present your kids with lots of food options at dinner and to keep offering them. If they say they don’t like a certain food, make sure they have other options that they do like. Then, the next time you play Salad People, ask them to try it again. Then try cooking it. Try steaming it. Then offer it raw again. Your kid’s palate will change and they’ll go through different phases, so just because she hurled that cucumber across the room when she was 3 doesn’t mean she won’t pack it in her lunch box herself at 8.

5. Give Teens POWER. The same strategy of of letting the eight-year-old pack her own lunch can work with teens. Just remember: Don’t get into power struggles over food.

Find out what fruits or veggies that they will eat and keep those in stock. Fresh fruit? Organic rainier cherries? Hey, it’s better than Skittles and Nerds.

Then just do your best to keep your teen engaged with what you find fun about eating together. Ask her to make dinner with a new recipe one night a week or to join you cutting and chopping. Ask him to help you plant a garden next year, growing “ingredients” for Thanksgiving dinner; that’s a fun project for younger kids, too. Let her choose the dinner music or a movie during dinner. It’s absolutely amazing how much good food a kid will eat when distracted with “The Avengers.”

Always keep in mind what you love about food, and just do your best to keep your kids engaged with what they love, too. They’ll do the rest. Trust them.

For the most part, I adore living in a seasonal landscape. Still as I cycled to work this morning pushing against a truly Arctic wind, I felt defiantly not ready for the weather to change. One of our flower farmers dropped off buckets of celosia (cockscomb) and asclepia (Oscar) earlier in the week and he casually mentioned that snow was on its way. Our last delivery from our other local flower farm was a few weeks back after a frost put an end to the wild and beautiful blooms at Humble Pie. Whether I am ready or not, the season is turning.

The Last Local Tomatoes

That same frost signaled the beginning of the end for local tomatoes. While some plants may rebound from an isolated frost, the shortening days and overall cooler weather make it difficult for developing tomatoes to ripen. Once the field plants have passed we’ll continue to bring in delicious locally-grown hydroponic tomatoes until it just becomes too cold and dark for those operations to produce. Local tomatoes ripened on the vine have a far superior flavor and texture to winter tomatoes brought in from other regions. Take advantage of these fruits while you can – eat them fresh until you’ve had your fill then preserve them for a taste of the garden in February.

My favorite method for preserving tomatoes is roast them long and low in oil to create a type of tomato “confit”. Slice tomatoes in half, generously coat with olive oil, and set skin-side down on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt and place a half-dozen sprigs of thyme among the tomatoes. Place in an oven at 250° and cook slowly for several hours until the tomatoes have nearly flattened and are slightly shriveled. They should be chewy but not tough or leathery. Pack them tightly in a jar, pour over the oil and juices from the pan adding more oil if needed to cover the tomatoes then heat process to seal.

Winter Squash

In name and association, winter squash sounds like a cold-hardy plant but it really isn’t. Unlike tomato plants that may rebound from a dip below freezing, these temperatures more often than not finish the squash plants. Thankfully, by this time of year the plants have done their work – the squash themselves are mature and ready for curing and storing the winter long.

Squash has a flexible flavor- one that can be prepared beautifully as a sweet or savory dish. I use squash as a base for soups and risotto as well as for baking – my “pumpkin” pie is usually made with butternut squash. In the autumn, we see so many more squash varieties from our local growers. Stick to the old time favorites if you like, but the sweetness of a delicata and the nuttiness of the small orange Hubbard are not to be missed. Squash doesn’t need to be fussed with and any of these varieties can be halved, de-seeded, and roasted flesh-side down with a few herbs and a clove of garlic in the cavity. Or just roast them whole and do the cutting once cooled when the squash has softened from cooking.

Sweet and Hardy Brassicas

Luckily, there are plants that not only weather the cooler temps but are better for it. Most brassicas transform with a frost to become sweeter more flavorful versions of their summer selves as the cold triggers the plant’s starches to convert to sugar. There are so many delicious brassicas to choose from this time of year: several varieties of kale; broccoli, cauliflower, and the fractal florets of romanesco; kohlrabi in green and purple; red and green cabbage as well as savoy; and fresh, firm, and tiny Brussels sprouts. We are also lucky that some among this list not only withstand the cold but store well and will provide us with locally-grown produce well into the winter.

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes began arriving from Wisconsin Growers Co-operative a few weeks ago and along with long-storing brassicas, they will sustain us with some locally grown produce throughout most of the winter. There are over 300 varieties of sweet potatoes and this year we are excited to add the Bonita and the Stokes Purple varieties to the now familiar Beauregard, Jewel, Garnet, Japanese purple, and O’Henry White. In general, sweet potatoes fall into two categories: soft and firm. The soft varieties – Beauregard, Jewel, Garnet, and for the most part the Stokes Purple – become soft, moist and sweeten considerably with cooking. The firm varieties – O’Henry, Japanese purple, and now the Bonita – remain firm and have a nutty – only slightly sweet – flavor. Like squash, sweet potatoes can be roasted whole (with a few pricks to the skin with a fork) and the longer one cooks, the sweeter the result. This is especially true with the “soft” varieties. I love adding a few cups of mashed Beauregard to my biscuit batter for a beta-carotene rich and flavorful take on this classic.

For firm varieties, I prefer roasting. Using a knife or mandolin, cut thin disks from a firm variety of sweet potato – my personal favorite for its nutty flavor, firm texture, and contrasting color is the Japanese purple. Brush a deep oven-safe sauté pan with a mixture of butter and olive oil – reserving half the mixture for later. Arrange the disks in the pan in concentric circles similar to a roll of coins. Brush the sweet potatoes with the remaining oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake until the edges are golden and the flesh is cooked through. Heat a cup of crème fraîche along with a sprig of rosemary and a dried hot pepper until the crème fraîche is more liquid than solid. Pour the herbed crème fraîche over the sweet potatoes and garnish with chopped flat leaf parsley and rosemary. Warming and delicious.

Lundberg Family Farms has announced that it is voluntarily recalling specific bags of Sea Salt Rice Chips due to the possible presence of an undeclared dairy allergen. The recall applies to only 6 ounce bags (170g) of Sea Salt Rice Chips packed on Aug. 11, 2014, with the code “140811” and a best before date of “2015 JUN 08” on the upper right-hand corner of the bag. The product sold for $3.29/bag. The Sea Salt Rice Chips display the following UPC numbers: 0-73416-03530-0 for U.S., or 0-73416-03540-9 for Canada.

Lundberg Family Farms has identified the problem and has taken immediate corrective action. No recalled product is currently on Seward Co-op shelves. Recalled products will be fully refunded at our Customer Service desk. Any additional updates regarding this recall can be found here.

There is tremendous progress to report. Over the past several months the project has received zoning and land use approvals, as well as all of the permits required to build the new store. And recently, the project financing was completed, which allowed the co-op to purchase the last remaining parcel of land from the City of Minneapolis. This purchase coincided with the reassembly of the former parcels into one new property address, 317 38th Street East, the home of the Friendship store.

In the weeks ahead we plan to complete the demolition and utility work. During that time the site will be cleared of debris and the concrete footings and foundation for the new building will framed and poured.Work began on the site in August after two of the reusable houses were moved to new locations in the neighborhood and two were removed. The site plan calls for a new east-west section of alley at the southern end of the property. This section of alley was completed in September to allow the existing alley outlet at 38th Street to be permanently vacated. Demolition of the church building has started, and is being carried out in coordination with utility companies to ensure existing service lines are permanently rerouted around the perimeter of the property without disruption of service to their customers.

Thank you!
There are numerous people and organizations to thank for their support and for their help in getting this incredibly complex project to this stage: the Bryant and Central neighborhood groups, the Carrot Initiative, immediate neighbors, Sabathani Community Center staff, the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, city staff, Councilperson Glidden and her staff, HIRED staff, co-op Board of Directors and staff, the project team, the lender team, co-op owners for investing in the project, and the list goes on. Thank you everyone!

The co-op has requested that our general contractor, Watson-Forsberg, their co-contractor Tri-Construction, and all subcontractors make every effort to hire a construction workforce that reflects the neighborhoods around the Friendship store. We are using several metrics which mirror the goals requirements of projects which are funded with public dollars, specifically:

• 10% of subcontracted project dollars to women-owned businesses.
• 10% of subcontracted project dollars to minority-owned businesses.
• 32% of project hours completed by minority workers.
• 6% of project hours completed by women workers.

We are also asking:

• 5% of onsite project hours completed by apprentice labor.
• At least 10 people from the surrounding neighborhoods be employed on the project.

In August, the co-op co-hosted an open meeting with Watson-Forsberg and the local office of HIRED, then participated in a construction jobs open house hosted by the City of Minneapolis. These events were great opportunities for the co-op, HIRED, Watson-Forsberg and Tri-Construction to talk about the project. Both events were successful as HIRED received contact information of a large number of people from the area who are interested in working on the project. HIRED will work with the subcontractors to place as many of those job seekers on our project as possible.

October 2014 Workforce Participation Status