While we anticipate the regional greenhouses and fields to produce in earnest, we are already enjoying an ephemeral bounty from forest and stream with wild-crafted watercress, nettles, and ramps. Harvested by trusted and familiar P6 farmers from Keewaydin and Harmony Valley farms (both in Wisconsin), these wild-crafted plants are nutrient dense, distinctly flavorful, and fleeting.

Watercress is a semi-aquatic perennial that grows in clean, flowing waters. A member of the Cruciferae family (think kale, mustard greens, arugula) watercress has a verdant brightness with a gentle bite. Watercress is high in vitamins A, C, E and K, calcium, iron and potassium, as well as numerous trace minerals and phytochemicals. To take full advantage of these robust nutrients, eat watercress raw. Add to salads and sandwiches or use as a bed for grilled or baked fish.

Many may have unpleasant memories of the stinging sensation brought on by a brush with nettles and would be full of surprise to hear that when prepared correctly they are both safe to eat and nutritious. Nettles are high in iron, potassium, manganese, calcium and vitamins A and C. Prepare nettles by rinsing and discarding the stems. Plunge the leaves in a pot of boiling water and cook until slightly wilted (2-4 minutes). Drain and press gently to remove excess water. Add to egg dishes or substitute for basil to create a woodland pesto.

Ramps are wild allium found in wooded landscapes of eastern North America and Canada. Their broad, flat leaves are milder than the bulb – the flavor of which is equal parts onion and garlic and can be quite pungent. If you enjoy this flavor, eat ramps raw –add to salads or garnish meats and fish. If raw ramps are too strong, cooking takes a little of the edge off. Brush with olive oil and grill or chop and add to egg dishes.

Pick up these spring ephemerals while they are still available as their days are numbered. On the horizon is rhubarb and hopefully wild-crafted morels.

Foragers Soup

4 TBSP butter
1 cup diced yellow onion
1 medium gold potato peeled and diced
2 cups hot water
2 cups creamy milk (1 cup whole milk, 1 cup cream) brought to a boil
9oz chopped wild greens (nettle*, watercress, dandelion, ramps)
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Melt the butter in a large saucepan until it foams. Add diced onion and potatoes – stir until well coated. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook on low heat for 10 minutes until the vegetables have softened. Add hot water and boiled milk. Return to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer and cook until potatoes are fully cooked. Add the greens and cook uncovered for 2-3 minutes. Do not overcook at this point or the soup will lose its bright green color. Blend and serve immediately with a drizzle of olive oil. If prepared in advance chill quickly after blending to retain the color.

*the nettles will cook in the soup so there is no need to prepare them in a hot bath beforehand

(adapted from Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen)

At Seward Co-op, organic ramps are like robins or the first day of baseball for some: Traditional signs of spring that we dream about longingly in winter.

But ramps might be unknown to many folks. That’s why we found this great recipe, to spread the love we have for ramps — a green, delicate, but oh-so pretty celebration of springtime.

RAMP PESTO PIZZA

Step One. Take this terrific recipe for Ramp Pesto from the Rodale Institute’s Organic Life website.

2 bunches ramps, washed, trimmed, and roughly chopped
1/4 cup Italian parsley
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/4 cup grated Asiago cheese
1/4 lemon juice
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more if more needed
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a food processor, mix together Ramps, parsley, pine nuts, Asiago, and lemon juice until you get a chunky puree.
2. With a machine running, add olive oil in a slow stream, until mixture is smooth; add more oil if necessary. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Store covered in the refrigerator. Makes about 1 cup.

Step Two. Use the finished Ramp Pesto in this pizza recipe.

Dominique Mazloom, our new Flow of Goods Manager

Friendship Store

At the moment, the Friendship store frame is up and insulation is being added this week. Over the course of the spring, we’ll continue to see exciting developments on the site. The roof will be finished next week, and the retaining wall around the east and south sides of the parking lot should be finished soon thereafter.

Next week the panel and metal siding installation will begin. In the coming weeks, much of the work will take place inside the structure. The second floor concrete was poured on April 10, and the concrete for the first floor will be poured the first week of May. If you pass the construction site on 38th St. and 3rd Avenue S. you’ll get a good view of how our store is progressing.

As for staffing, Friendship Store Manager Raynardo Williams says that the Assistant Store Manager and department manager jobs are posted now through Wednesday, April 22. Please spread the word and visit our careers page for job descriptions and details on applying. The opening date for the Friendship store is slated for early October.

Co-op Creamery

You may have noticed banners in the Co-op Creamery windows announcing the summer opening of the café! We’re hard at work on the interior of the café at this point, and additional exterior signage will go up in the coming weeks.

Last week we installed coolers, ceiling and lights in the production kitchen. Additional equipment has been arriving over the past two weeks, and will continue to do so over the next couple weeks. The painting and tile work in the café wrapped up last Friday.

Duct work on the east side of the building is almost complete. We are waiting on final details before the loading dock re-model begins. Once approved, that work will commence very quickly. This means excavation in the loading dock area and the parking lot will be repaved. We’re on track for a mid-July opening.

In staffing news, we’re pleased to welcome Dominique Mazloom our Flow of Goods Supervisor. Dominique has a wealth of logistics education and experience, coupled with enthusiasm for Seward Co-op and natural foods. Dominique’s first focus will be to work with co-op staff to develop and implement a distribution system for product being made at the Creamery and Franklin store. Please join us in welcoming Dominique to our co-op community!

Informational Open House on Employment

Seward Co-op will host an informational open house on employment: Attend the open house at the Sabathani Community Center (310 E. 38th St., Minneapolis) in room #103 on Tuesday, May 19, from 5–8 p.m. This is in advance of the Friendship store hiring fair we will host in August. The open house will provide an introduction to natural foods cooperatives and information about working at Seward Co-op. Representatives from human resources will be available to answer questions, and staff from various store departments will be on hand to talk about their work.

Seward Co-op is partnering with Minneapolis-based The Beez Kneez, to launch an urban beekeeping site on the rooftop of its Franklin store. The project, set to launch some time this month, will provide a safe habitat where bees will produce honey that, hopefully, will in turn be sold to Seward Co-op shoppers.

“The idea for an urban beekeeping hive site at Seward came after our team did a bee keeping class with The Beez Kneez,” says Tom Vogel, Marketing Manager at Seward Co-op. “Kristy Allen, owner of The Beez Kneez has been a great partner to Seward, and we look forward to working with her on this unique project.”

In late April, two beehives will be installed on the rooftop of Seward Co-op. The bees are gentle breeds that are not aggressive. The hope is that these hives will produce at least 100 lbs. of honey over the season, which will then be harvested at the Beez Kneez Honey House and, potentially, sold at Seward Co-op. When the bees arrive from a warmer climate, there will be a few thousand that go into each hive. By the end of the season in August, there could be as many as 50,000 bees a hive. If the program is successful, more hives may be added in the future.

“Our goal with zip code projects such as this one with Seward, is to produce honey in a community in which it will later be sold,” says Allen. “We’re excited to get this project underway in the Franklin neighborhood.”

To kick-off the partnership, on April 22 Seward Co-op will be a lead sponsor for the second year in a row in an event put together by The Beez Kneez called The Dandelion Honey Pastry Chef Challenge. The event will take place at The Lab Theater at 700 North 1st Street from 6:30 to 9:30 pm. Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 at the door.

This Saturday, March 28, we’ll be showing you how to make natural dyes for eggs at Seward Co-op. Pop by the store any time from 1-4 p.m. and see how to make great dyes from onion skins, coffee, turmeric, and tea!

We’ll have a recipe for natural egg-dyes in the recipe rack by the Customer Service desk, too, so be sure to grab one, or take a look at the article on egg-dying below.

If you want something a little less DIY, pick-up a Natural Earth Paint’s Natural Egg Dye Kit located on the display island by the Deli Hot Bar. This kit isa set of food based powdered dyes that are incredibly easy to use. Because the dyes are free from the petroleum derivatives and carmine that are found in conventional dye kits, they can also be safely used as a food coloring for baking projects.

New this year, check out the Wooden Egg Craft Kit, a great vegan option for egg dying! These kits include 6 wooden eggs, which are handmade in the Pacific Northwest from sustainable FSC certified wood, and 6 colors of natural earth paints.

Planning on a lamb or ham feast this weekend? We have great specials in the Meat Department that you’ll want to take advantage of! Local heroes Pastures a Plenty, the Lambe Shoppe, and Blooming Prairie will have all your favorite roasts, ribs, and lamb cuts for the big family get together. Let’s hope for grilling weather!

An article on egg-dying from the April/Mary 2014 issue of Sprout! newsletter:

“Celebrate Spring”

It comforts me to imagine that hunting and gathering colored eggs might be one of humanity’s oldest traditions, a way to celebrate our survival of another winter.

I don’t have much evidence for this. Egg painting can be connected to many cultures via folklore and mythology, but there’s no slam-dunk proof that any spring egg-hunt cults are terribly old. One custom, pysanky egg decorating of Ukraine, is more than likely ancient in origin. In excavations of Neolithic and Bronze-Age Ukrainian graves, cultic eggs have been found whose etched patterns are strikingly similar to pysanky “Easter egg” designs (pictured above).

Maybe. Or maybe I’m just feeling sympathy for my cold-climate ancestors after this harsh winter of 2014.

Watching my kids paint and gather eggs, I imagine that I see ancient, first-farming parents, emerging from another brutal Northern Hemisphere winter, keeping their parents’ hunter-gatherer ways alive by teaching kids how to gather wild multicolored eggs in the surrounding grasslands and woods. You know, just in case this new-fangled farming thing doesn’t work out.

How to Make Natural Egg-Dyes

Ingredients: Any number of hard-boiled white eggs
One pot per color of dye
1 Tbsp. white vinegar per cup of strained dye liquid (optional)
Bowls or egg cartons for drying dyed eggs
Paper towels

Don’t be too precious about this process. It’s meant to be fun for you and your kids, so proportions aren’t exact and don’t need to be.

1. Shop …for the veggies and other items that you’ll use for creating your dyes.

Some of these items can be gathered over the days running up to your egg-dying extravaganza. Red cabbage (blue, almost-indigo dye) Red onion skins (lavender or red) Yellow onion skins (orange or gold) Ground or cut turmeric (yellow) Red Zinger tea bags (lavender) Beets (pink; more of a brownish red the longer you leave eggs in this dye) Err on the side of more veggie matter rather than less when creating your dyes.

You can use juices and beverages for dying, too. Grape juice Old red wine Leftover coffee Juice from pickled beets Rule of thumb: If you’d freak out upon spilling a certain liquid on a white shirt, then it’s going to make a decent dye. We mixed some of these veggies to great effect, too. Eggs dyed in turmeric + yellow onion skins were bright gold. I want to try Red Zinger tea + red cabbage next year.

2. Chop …your veggies and prepare your dyes. We found that chopping fine, but not too fine, worked best. We used roughly 4 cups veggie matter for 4–6 cups water. Drop the veggies into the water and bring to a boil, turn heat down to low and simmer, covered, for 15–30 minutes. The dye is ready when it reaches a hue a few shades darker than you want for your egg. Add white vinegar now.

3. Pop …your eggs in the dye. There are two approaches here and both work well. A) Strain the veggie matter out and set your hard boiled eggs in the dye for several hours (or even over night); or B) Set your fresh eggs in the boiling water with the veggie matter and hard-boil them in the dye as it’s being created. The first way will give you clean, solid colors.

The second way is a little more haphazard, but it makes for fun and interesting patterns. After removing eggs from the pots, try draping wet onion skins over the eggs for an hour or two to take advantage of the onion skins’ cool patterns. Ditto red cabbage.

You can experiment also with different amounts of vinegar, too. More vinegar will leave a thick film on the eggs that you can leave on and let dry, making them look gnarly and wonderful (my kids called them “dinosaur eggs”). Or you can rub the film away with a paper towel to find interesting patterns beneath, as the veggies and vinegar will soak into different parts of the egg. Caution: Leaving eggs in too much vinegar overnight will make them rubbery. (Which also might be fun, but not if you plan to eat the eggs.) Dry your eggs in bowls or eggs cartons over night.

* Top photo by Elizabeth Brooks Barnwell

* Pysanky egg photo courtesy Wikipedia.

We plan to be ready to begin food production at the Creamery in late June: Deliveries to the Franklin store will start in July (then to the Friendship store in October). The café will open in July.

New windows recently went in on the Franklin and 26th Avenue walls, which is probably the most visible update that owners may have noticed. Meanwhile, construction continues on the central production kitchen and Co-op Creamery Neighborhood Café. Throughout May and June, site work and landscaping will continue, equipment will be purchased, and finishing touches will be added.

We’re still planning for completion of the store in early October. The building’s exterior will be finished by early summer, and landscaping and paving will take place throughout the summer. Work on the interior will begin in the spring and continue into the summer, when the store’s fixtures will be installed in the months leading up the opening of the store.

If you drive past East 38th Street and 3rd Avenue South, you’ll notice that the Friendship construction site is really beginning to take shape. About the time the roofing is finished, the underground rough-ins for plumbing and electrical will begin. Once complete, in early May, the concrete floor will be poured.

The exterior of the building will be finished by early summer, and the landscaping and paving will be completed throughout the summer. On the inside, the rough-ins will occur in the spring; the interiors, mechanicals, and finishes will go up in the summer; and the store’s equipment and merchandising fixtures will be installed in the two months leading up the opening of the store.

At this point, we are tentatively planning the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday, Oct. 7.

Frontier Co-op is voluntarily recalling 10 products manufactured with organic garlic powder that were sold under its Frontier and Simply Organic brands due to potential Salmonella contamination.

To date, no illnesses have been associated with these products.

The product in question was raw material received by Frontier. This product tested positive for Salmonella during a test by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Given that Salmonella may be present, Frontier is immediately initiating this recall.

Frontier Co-op is immediately initiating added precautions to the safety of the supply chain and instituting additional product testing, beyond FDA guidelines, to mitigate any future occurrence.

Consumption of products containing Salmonella can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy persons infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections, endocarditic and arthritis.

Recalled products were sold in all 50 states and in some parts of Canada to distributors, retailers and consumers. Below the release is a list of products containing the organic garlic powder. Images of the affected products can be viewed at the following link: http://www.frontiercoop.com/recall.

WHAT’S BEEN RECALLED?:

Frontier Powdered Garlic, Certified Organic 16 oz. (453 g)
Frontier Low Sodium Broth Powder Vegetable Flavored, Certified Organic 16 oz. (453 g)
Frontier Vegetarian Broth Powder No-Chicken, Certified Organic 16 oz. (453 g)
Frontier Organic Garlic Powder 2.33 oz. (66g)
Simply Organic Fajita Seasoning 1.0 oz. (28 g)
Simply Organic Alfredo Sauce Mix 1.48 oz. (41 g)
Simply Organic Ranch Dip Mix 1.5 oz. (42 g)
Simply Organic French Onion Dip Mix 1.10 oz. (31 g)
Simply Organic Guacamole Dip Mix 0.80 oz. (22 g)
Simply Organic Vegetarian Brown Gravy Mix 1.0 oz. (28 g)

Recalled product on Seward Co-op shelves has been removed as of 9:30 a.m. 3/17/15 and destroyed. We will return the items to the shelf as soon as non-recalled product is available.

If you purchased the above products, do not consume. Recalled products will be fully refunded at our Customer Service desk.

For more information on this recall, please visit the Frontier website.

Local mushrooms: king oyster, lion’s mane and oyster

A few weeks ago, I attended the organic farming conference hosted annually in LaCrosse, Wisconsin by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services. In workshops, keynote addresses, and casual conversation there was much talk of the increasing instability of the region’s weather. There were countless references to all of the extreme conditions farmers have faced in recent years. The long, bitterly cold winter of 2013-2014, the late, wet spring that followed, and the early frost this past October resulted in a truncated and tempestuous growing season. Conference attendees also recalled a few years ago when we enjoyed an early thaw – what seemed the promise of an extended growing season – only to suffer an April frost which delayed planting and had disastrous effects on orchard fruits across the region.

These past few days we have been enjoying balmy temperatures for March in the middle North. While the extra sunlight and warmer weather have many of us feeling giddy, for our region’s farms we’ve had a worrying winter of low precipitation and there is little trust that this apparently early spring will translate into a longer or more reliable growing season.

Considering all that our local farmers are experiencing and adapting to, it is a wonder that we have such a bountiful supply of locally grown food even in our more temperate months. It is all the more wondrous that Seward Co-op is able to offer locally produced food year round. As our lead buyer noted recently, “Local season never really ends, it just changes.” Just as we worked through the last cases of Wisconsin Growers (Mondovi, Wis.) sweet potatoes, we began to receive deliveries of Living Water Gardens (Wells, Minn.) hydroponic basil and English cucumbers.

Along with hydroponically grown produce, we’ve begun to receive more regular deliveries of oyster and king oyster (with an occasional treat of lion’s mane) from the Northeast Minneapolis-based Mississippi Mushrooms. Local turnips, winter radishes, onions, beets, and potatoes also help bridge the growing years. Soon enough, Living Water Gardens will be regularly delivering vine-on tomatoes – and after a winter of imported tomatoes, this is a milestone that for us will signal the official start of the 2015 growing season.

Each winter, when our shelves reflect a lull in local produce, we are working with local farmers to plan for the next year’s planting. Each year, we work hard to develop new relationships with farms, grow sales with farms that we only support minimally, and maintain the relationships we have with our current core farms. In 2015 we will be working directly with 33 local farms. We hope that the opening of the Friendship store will enable us to work with even more farms in 2016.

Seward Co-op staff presented a SEED check today for $15,708.88 to Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association (PPNA), representing 35,108 individual donations.

Funds will be used to support the Apetito por el Liderazgo/Appetite for Leadership program, envisioned by PPNA’s Latino Advisory Council. The program combines community building, leadership skills development and cooking.

“Yes, it’s a cooking class,” Community Organizer Sara Lopez explained, “but what we’re really doing is building leadership and strengthening our community.” Participants learn about healthy Mexican cooking for families while also sharing resources on topics as varied as financial planning, public health and self-defense. Planning is already underway for a similar model that will meet the needs of other cultural communities in Powderhorn.

Funding will support the expansion of the program in addition to equipment and fixtures for the kitchen. Congratulations, PPNA and thank you, Seward Co-op shoppers!

Picture: Seward Co-op staff with members of the PPNA during a small SEED celebration this morning. Picture by William H.